Pragmatism and power, or the power to make a difference in a radically contingent world

Le résumé fourni par la source

Power seems to occupy an understated role in much pragmatist thought, both classical and contemporary. It is clearly a blind spot in Richard Rorty’s work, although ever present in the background, and for John Dewey and William James, it often appears as indistinguishable from the power to act or intervene in events to make difference. In this chapter, I want to push a practical account of power a step further by drawing out its expedient, anti-foundational character and its Dewey-style grounding in experience. I also set out to show how power to make a difference may just as easily be transformed into the powers of imposition and constraint, where one side gains at the expense of the other. Following that, I draw out a more provisional sense of power based upon the difference that space and spatiality make to what pragmatists have traditionally referred to as the contextuality and contingency of events. This is explored by considering what spatial experiments with power might look like when employed to bring about change and make a difference in the world.

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