Conferred Power: Where Power Comes From and Where It Goes

Abstract: This paper develops a relational theory of power, arguing that power is not a substance or possession but an asymmetrical structure constituted within an intersubjective field. Power originates not from the ruler’s coercion or explicit social contract, but from the continuous, often unconscious conferral of the governed, which operates primarily through the sedimentation of obedience into the will’s perceptual bundle, transforming habitual compliance into a “second nature.” The paper analyzes the preconditions of power—the intersubjective field, conferred rule, fashioned symbols, and the veiled will—and demonstrates that power harbors an internal contradiction: its exercise inevitably erodes the very intersubjective conditions that sustain it, leading to a “self-cancellation” of power. This self-cancellation reaches its extreme in the normalization of the state of exception and the figure of homo sacer, where power annihilates both the subjectivity of the governed and that of the ruler. Based on this diagnostic, the paper proposes a tripartite distribution of responsibility for the erosion of intersubjectivity among the ruler, the governed, and the symbolic order, distinguishing between cases of conscious choice and unthinking habituation. Finally, it delineates three forms of counter-power—communication, violence, and withdrawal—each operating on a different logic to renegotiate, rupture, or exit the power relation. The legitimacy of restorative violence is grounded in the “specter of liberation” that returns the repressed possibility of equal subjecthood to reality, yet it remains a tragic measure strictly bounded by necessity, degree, and purpose. Keywords: power, intersubjectivity, conferral, sedimentation, symbolic violence, state of exception, homo sacer, will, responsibility, counter-power, communication, restorative violence, withdrawal