Rethinking Power from the Perspective of Claude Lefort: an Interpretive Approach

Abstract

In this article I develop a different interpretation of power that derives from Claude Lefort’s works and that highlights the relevance of its symbolic dimension. To this purpose, I start by examining Clifford Geertz’s analysis of the Balinese ancient political society as the most radical example of a kind of “aesthetic power”. Later, I describe and comment Lefort’s remarks on the symbolic character of power and how these reflections show that power is always in dispute; furthermore, why power should not be merely identified with coercion or violence and exclusively analyzed from a material perspective either. To this purpose, I will examine three faces of power that, according to Lefort, correspond to three different political forms: Ancien Régime, totalitarianism and democracy.