DU POUVOIR. DE L’HORIZON ÉTHIQUE À CELUI ESTHÉTIQUE

• Main Author: Dr. Ileana TĂNASE
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Editura Muzeul National al Literaturii Romane 2012-11-01
• Series: Diversitate si Identitate Culturala in Europa
• Subjects: Power; struggle for power; the intoxication of power; to dominate
• Online Access: http://www.diversite.eu/pdf/09_2/DICE_09.2_Full_Text_p95-p100-Ileana-TANASE.pdf

The political context seems to have established two stock phrases which encapsulate the meaning of the mechanisms of power – the ‘struggle for power’ and the ‘intoxication of power’. If the power struggle is most fiercely enacted at the level of political speeches, which have to be convincing as to the truthfulness of the position they serve, the ‘intoxication of power’ is not confined to the domain of politics, it can be found anywhere within the realm of social relations. Then the question naturally arises: whatever inside us, innate in the fibre of our being, makes it possible for the powerful one to subjugate the less strong one? This question has multiple ramifications, pointing not only to the ethical horizon, but also to an aesthetic one. He who subdues another has on his side either the authority given by the particular qualities that he possesses or the ascendancy of the situation, dictated by various kinds of hierarchies based on age, social rank, more or less marked biological aggressiveness and sometimes sheer contingency. In the aesthetic realm, we sometimes find original answers. In Samuel Beckett’s play „Waiting for Godot”, the interpretation of power relations is actually based on a reversal of the poles of power. Paradoxically, the power lies not with the torturer, but with the victim, whose so called ‘helplessness’, regarded as the unconditional submission of a being for whom not to submit is both unconceivable and impossible, becomes in fact the power to understand the place and role meant for him in the game. Since it is the victim who sets the game, it follows he also leads it, so it is he who holds the real power. Besides, he knows to know beforehand something that the other misses: the harm of power has already become, through repetition, something banal.