Preface
The following is a work in progress that contains an answer to the question on the comprehensive exam. However, the answer has been intermingled with writings extraneous to the purpose of satisfying the comprehensive requirements, yet relevant to the overall purpose of this text, which functions as artifice to tease out the phenomena which comprise the mode of comportment known as writing.

The argument is structured according to the following format: The first step consists of arriving at a conceptualization of the act of writing, which, interestingly enough, turns out to include all human activity. In this conceptualization, I proffer a new concept, plastic, which not only transcends the traditional antinomy between structure and agency, but also situates subjectivity, which is synonymous with agency in my conceptualization, relationally with respect to the two modalities of human comportment, authenticity and in-authenticity.

The second portion of the paper consists of a phenomenological account of an exercise of writing, which takes as its topic the issue of power as it is related to Weber and Foucault. Although I have not exactly gotten to this stage of development in the paper, I intend to use the analytic I arrived at through the work performed in the first part of the paper to circumscribe empirical phenomena generated by my phenomenological description that is embedded in my exercise in writing. I am engaging in the paradox of authoring my own discourse as this word is understood in the analytics of Foucault.
I understand you may not want to read this paper in its entirety. Perhaps, you are only interested in the writings pertaining to the comprehensive exam. I could not possibly imagine this being the case, but, nevertheless, I shall refer you to the text in red found in the following paragraphs, which have been numbered for the reader’s convenience: 1, 2, 9, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 29. A narrative, which answers the exam question, can be extracted from stringing together the red portions of these paragraphs in the order they are listed.

Introduction
Much has been written about the interpretation of writing, yet not so much has been written about the act of writing itself. A phenomenology of writing seems to be lacking from the artifacts left behind by the literary public. This conspicuous absence of authorship from literary analysis is just as true of the literature comprising the hermeneutic tradition in its Gadamerian form as it is true of deconstruction, both of which were partially conceived from the writings of Heidegger, amounting to evidence of an inter-textual relation between deconstruction and hermeneutics. This could be a deficient explanation of the current state of literary theory, which emphasizes the text and language over the author and his agency; a proclivity of Heidegger, which seems to be implanted in the dispositions of those who practice hermeneutics and deconstruction. It is true however that deconstruction and its practitioners are more the progeny of Nietzsche and his descendents, Foucault and Derrida, rather than the late Heidegger, which dilutes the efficacy of my hypothesis, but I only suggested that my hypothesis provide a fraction of the explanation, not the antecedent in its entirety.

Mary Rogers, I should mention, has conducted some studies in this area, but, as far as I know, she is an isolated island in a sea of post-structuralism, which I consider to encompass deconstruction, that floods over, with the currents of discourse posited in its postulations, the role of authorship; and, I have intentionally excluded hermeneutics from this metaphorically saturated statement, because it seems to have only a peripheral status in contemporary literary thought.

When I say, –author,? I am not introducing an entity that possesses an intentionality that exists prior to and outside of language, as the analytic tradition so adamantly proffers as the starting point, and, in fact, the guiding principle for linguistic analysis. According to this discourse, language is an instrument of agency. Words are selectively used to communicate mental representations that exist outside of language, which mirror states-of-affairs in objective reality. Surely, however, we live inside of language, and our worlds are determined by the flexible, fuzzy boundaries that both restrict and enable the expansion of our conceptual apparatuses, as they continually fuse horizons with alien traditions of the past and the present, forming intersections of inter-subjectivity between and among interlocutors and the material objects that have cultural significances for them. Language, in short, illuminates the earth, giving birth to the world, which is threaded from the fibers that are the concepts, collectively forming the sometimes tangled, the sometimes organized, and the always elastic textile that is language. Language is the world. If we tried to unravel the fabric, however, we would find the substance to evaporate, rather than to reveal its constituent elements.

Simultaneously, nevertheless, the illuminating qualities of language create shadows with each new entity it brings to light—a point that constitutes one of the themes of a sub-narrative of the text: there is always a negation to every positively apprehended entity.

It is my contention, however, that the envelopment of man in language does not preclude the existence of agency. Its movement is always constrained by language, and, in fact, generated by language, but, nonetheless, it has the capacity for uniqueness, in that it flexes according to the chaotic whim that is embodied by the inherited, yet appropriated, will that is human decision-making. The agency of humans always finds itself embedded between two opposing structures that are both grammatically ordered—the reflexively realized master-narrative and the pre-reflexively given dispositions that allow one, mindlessly if he remains un-reflexive, to navigate through his social environment. Think of agency as the ordered chaos that results from the feedback loop that ties together reflexivity with pre-reflexivity. Agency is the will of the recursive equation that contains as subjects in its truth functions to two layers of structure, constituting their own systemic entities, resulting in the pattern of outputs, which are the manifestations of human will and agency. In other words, agency is the tension, the friction, resulting in an eruption from these to levels of systemic structure that must continually merge into a course of action on the part of the body. And, when I make these remarks, I am using a vocabulary that will eventually need to be transcended.
What I say is somewhat akin to the writing instantiated by the traditions of structuration theory and symbolic interaction, which recognize that there is dialectic between agency and structure, with a major exception. To begin an explanation, these
two perspectives, rather than simply illuminating a single side of the antinomy through their sociologically oriented circumspection, peruse the front side and backside of the pages comprising the text that is social reality—an attention to both the positive and negative sides to an antinomy, of which most sociologists simply acknowledge one side or the other. What I have done, however, is attempt to convey the possibility that agency is not involved in a dialectic with structure, rather it is the dialectic, itself, occurring between the two types of bodily posture; two forms of structure. This conceptualization allows me to bypass, or, in some sense, transcend, the traditional structure/agency problematic in my explication of writing. These speculations lead to the positing of a new more inclusive entity, which, of course, as we will see, leads to the entanglement of a new contradiction or opposition.

I propose to use the referent, plastic, to designate the repository of the two systems to which I have thus far attributed significance: reflexivity and pre-reflexivity. Agency would be an inappropriate term for this entity, because it is the midpoint between these two opposing grammatical structures, reflexivity and pre-reflexivity, not a concept under which the conflicting structures are subsumed. Consequently – and this explains why agency does not fall in as a substance within the set of elements constituting plastic – subjectivity is a property, not an object. So how can a property also be an output of a recursive equation? The answer lies in the fact that the output is a state of the plastic, but this state should not be equated with agency, itself.

I have applied this newly formed conceptualization to the study of writing – that is, the act of writing – and it is through writing that I examine writing, which is almost as surreptitious as conducting science on science. And, the concept of writing encompasses all forms of the bodily posture of plastic, because we are always constructing a story; two stories, in fact, on two different levels of abstraction. However, this contradiction helps to condition our palate for the central theme that should present itself during a reading of this text; the paradox that is human existence: the fact that we must write our own biographies according to rules and, contrarily, bend rules, on both the levels of the micro and macro, when attempting to connect and weave together the individual narrative threads that will someday comprise the biography of our finite existences; an activity that is always conducted in situ, not only concretely and practically, nor only reflectively and contemplatively, but all of these in a contemporaneous execution.
This lends itself to the interpretation that the structures, pre-reflexivity and reflexivity, are not really structures at all. For how can structures be constantly reshaping themselves in an ongoing evolution, as is the case with a story that has yet to reach its conclusion? There is no synchronicity. Indeed, what once appeared as structure has dissolved into plastic, and the opposition between agency and structure has proven to be an illusion, for agency is merely part of something that is larger than itself, not an entity, which cannot logical exist in concord with structure, but a condition of a more inclusive object. Like, the two grammatical structures, it is a property, not a substance; a relational property of the constituents comprising plastic, but atypical of a relation in the respect that it organizes the relationship between the entities, the reflexive and pre-reflexive, rather than merely existing as an instantiation of a configuration over which it has no influence.

To conceive of this slightly differently, what Jameson has referred to as the unconscious narrative is really quite circumspect to the conscious mind. It is always involved in conflict with the particular, which results in the wavering back and forth between the habitual and the reflexive—the authentic and the inauthentic, to use Heidegger’s terms—a process that dialectically modifies both sides of what we previously considered an opposition. It causes ripples in the plastic. The properties, or elements, of the plastic, analogously to the immediate impressions stimulated from the Cartesian ball of wax, are not substantive. They are merely transient conditions of the plastic. They are, perhaps, better understood as dynamic predispositions. Agency is always caught in the middle of this tension between the two poles of plastic, reflexivity and pre-reflexivity, both of which are engage in a struggle to exercise their strength in order to shape the plastic according to their own will. They jockey for position with one another, but in the end – similarly to the opposing concepts, man and woman, which are really just properties of mankind – they rely on one another for the continued existence of their information, which, like a fractal, bequeaths an organization to their progeny from an instructively coded message.

Mutations, however, are always encouraged from the need to conform to the pressures exerted by the other. Their relationship is both adversarial and symbiotic; two lovers who really hate one another. Both reflexivity and pre-reflexivity are constructed according to the grammar of language along with their influences that they mutually exert upon one another. We must organize our biographies—master-narratives—hopefully, in poetic fashion, according to the rules of language use—grammar; a function which is the teleology of the reflexive. Contemporaneously, the pre-reflexive must be disposed to conform to the grammar dictating our comportment in the present, which is determined by the protocol concomitant with the roles we assume in social interaction. With the exception of rare circumstances, the two imperatives arising from teleology of the pre-reflexive and reflexive are not synchronized or, even, compatible with one another. Their divergent demands must be integrated—synthesized—through a dialectical motion between the two.

To put it in a more poetic fashion, we must contort the macro, the reflexive, to a position suitable to intercourse, so we can implant it with the peculiarities of the particular—the imperatives of the pre-reflexive. In conjunction, we must caress, rub, and play with the pre-reflexive, which is instilled with the dispositional knowledge necessary to operate according to the social expectations resulting from social circumstances of the present, until the micro-narrative of the particular can penetrate the macro and inject it with the cipher in which the information of the story is embedded. This metaphor is not entirely appropriate since the process of fertilization occurs on both sides of the spectrum—the continuum between the polarized extremes of pre-reflexivity and reflexivity—which results in the impregnation of both the reflexive and the pre-reflexive—the macro and the micro.

Transmutation is always a possibility, if not a necessity, for both of the offspring resulting from this dialectical relationship. This is so because the task that is undertaken
by both these lineages is one of contending with contradictions that need constantly to be mitigated in the perpetual dialectic between the micro-narrative of present, which shapes the history of the past, and the macro-narrative, which projects itself into the future, both affecting impending shape of the other through the movement of dialectics. These two ancillary processes that form the dialectical dance that is agency belong to the amorphous entity that I have referred to as plastic.

Case in point, a man who conducts himself with compassion and kindness as thematic principles for the construction of his biography, master-narrative, where he is the protagonist faced with multiple conflicts as he struggles to maintain the dignity that he attributes to his character, finds himself in the situation where he must discipline his child. Can compassion and kindness extend to include the infliction of pain? Only if the punishment administered is mitigated and adapted to fit within the space that is contextualized by the functionality of the whole, the master-narrative’s guiding principles, which must be constantly reflected in the particular so that the master-narrative to retain its desired plot. Likewise, the man must fulfill the prescriptions of fatherhood in order to remain the social animal that he is, and, certainly, meaning can only be maintained by inhabiting the social world. He must not discipline his child as much as gently instruct his child, leaving disciplinary functions to the petty little people who enjoy being disciplinarians.

The father, through a synthetic process, must bend and negotiate the expectations of his role to fit inside of the contextualized space that is established by the guiding, thematic principles, patterning his existence as a whole. At the same time, however, the grammars of the themes shaping the interpretive whole are compromised by the peculiarities of the particular. In the case above, the grammar of kindness and compassion was stretched to include in their extension instances of gentile tutoring. We live in language and we must conform to its grammar and contemporaneously bend its grammar on both sides of the spectrum, so as to fit the concepts of language together in a design that is meaningful and beautiful; and, the two layers actually form a single fabric, so one can be both valiant in his character and his actions.
In the example above, the father had to twist the grammar of fatherhood. To put it more plainly, we must follow rules in order to be understood, and we must break rules in order to conform to the developing whole that already hints at the meaning of the individual parts, but will someday completely determine the interpretation of the parts—or, what we can call, the threads of micro-narrative—so that their significance will be established once and for all and be relived in either sorrow or exaltation in the recurrence of the same, to borrow one of the more eloquent concepts from Nietzsche’s metaphysics.

This is not to say that the abstract takes precedence over the particular, for they are mutually and equally interdependent. Sometimes we are placed in situations were the demands of the particular compels us to act in certain ways that force us to reinterpret the whole of our existences. A Calvinist might interpret his life as a sorrowful succession of disappointments, all of which fit in as parts to a biography that lacks predestined salvation. He lives in despair, until the opportunity presents itself for financial success—
an indicator that he was indeed blessed as a chosen one—which radically alters the plot of his master-narrative, and causes the particle micro-narratives to alter in meaning, since they are now interpreted under the scope of a different contextualizing whole. Like a gestalt figure, the parts change with the transformation of the concept deployed in the apprehension of the object in its entirety, but the refusal of a part to fit into that interpretation can precipitate a re-conceptualization of the whole.

There is an obvious objection that can be raised at this stage of the argument: ?What about the postmodern man, who cares not to construct a master-narrative through which he comes to form his essence? He merely leads a fractured existence, jumping from one micro-narrative to the next.? Quite simply, as a response to this, I shall simply point out that the ongoing effort not to string together a master-narrative out of fractured bits and pieces of micro-narrative that constitute his life is indeed a series of events connected by a central theme—the effort towards discontinuity, which, of course, entails continuity. Each micro-narrative must be interpretively prodded to possess discontinuity, to fit the scenery diagramed in the biography, and the master-narrative must be slightly modified on an ongoing basis – not to the extent that the guiding principles are altered – but to the effect that different aspects of its constituent parts are emphasized so to avoid overlapping and repetition of properties, which could represent central themes—continuity.

The plastic is always writing its narratives, both micro and macro, but, specifically, we are interested in a particular kind of writing; the kind of writing that does not just add to and modify the encoded crypt embedded in the two poles of the plastic, but the kind of writing that also leaves traces on paper. What is peculiar about this type of writing? The answer is that it leaves us the ability to circumspect the history of writing in its more general sense. The marks that are imprinted upon the page tell not only a story, but also the story of the telling of the story; the continual conflict and resolution occurring within the plastic that writes and writes on paper. I contend that this is a new phenomenal domain; one that I hope to open up in what follows by rendering explicit that which is typically implanted in the poles of the plastic but excluded from the print on the paper. The following is a story about power, involving two central characters, Weber and Foucault, and a cast of supporting actors that includes Nietzsche. The writing is a phenomenological account of writing in that I bracket the distinction between thinking and writing, and allow the two to merge on the page in an attempt to symbolically capture the dialectic that is agency.

Argument
To summarize, writing is an ongoing, diachronically structured conversation with oneself in the respect that the text must constantly be questioned and examined in order for the themes to speak and influence the construction and modification of new parts. This is the reflexivity in writing. Building original script also consists of the execution of pre-reflexive dispositions—adherence to the grammatical conventions dictating the
activity of writing. The pre-reflexive must embody the mandates of the reflexive. However, a change in a part or the addition of a new part creates a modification in the whole.

The relationship, therefore, is circular…it is recursive. Perhaps, even, the process of writing is equivalent to the processes rooted in the plastic…I should say that writing is the plastic. Script is the marks left behind; the output from the feedback loop between reflexivity and pre-reflexivity. Where does agency lie in all of this? It is the motion…the to and fro between the two.

1. What is interesting when we compare Weber to Foucault is that they have developed in their own analytics such apparently disparate conceptualizations of power, while, at the same time, they both seem to have a similar ancestry when it comes to their intellectual influences. That is, they seem to have divergent proposals for understanding power in society, while, oddly enough, they share strong inter-textual relationships to a common ?author? of texts, Nietzsche, who seems to have greatly shaped the perspectives of both Foucault and Weber. In the following essay, I shall delineate both Weber’s and Foucault’s appropriation of Nietzsche’ corpus of conceptualizations. Then, I will proceed to demonstrate how the two social theorists evolved differently with respect to their own insights involving power. In other words, I shall first demonstrate the indirect inter-textual relations between Foucault and Weber, stemming from their shared adherence to some of the postulations presented by Nietzsche; then, I shall discuss how, while launching from a common evolutionary node, to use a term from the paradigm of biological evolution, they seemed to evolve in their writings along different paths in their conceptualization of power.

2. Do not feel concerned, however. I shall most definitely fulfill the parameters of the question. Nonetheless, it would be an instance of in-authenticity to merely comport myself to be in accord with the expectations of someone taking a comprehensive exam…
So, we can see an instance of the conflict between the two levels of grammar…how will it be resolved?
…I would, in other words, be engaging in mere chatter, as Heidegger would put it. This is not to say that I am above taking a comprehensive exam, but, because of ethical concerns, I would rather engage in the creative function of thinking. Consequently, I shall fulfill fully the requirements of the exam under the guise of something more aesthetically appealing and less repugnantly ordinary than just the summarization of Weber and Foucault.

Ah…so art will integrate with function. This is quite clever of me…but we must not be deceived by the content of the text; we must, instead, concentrate on the praxis of writing that this artifact illuminates, while only using content to infer whether it is reflexive or pre-reflexive shaping the text. I make assertions, or predictions, concerning the shape that the essay will take in the first paragraph. I have conformed to the grammar of writing in the sense that the syntax and semantics are readily interpretable.
However, this activity involves and synthesizes the grammars of many games into a set of prescriptions that rule the game that results in the artifact that is the essay. I must play many games at once in order to move in the game that I am playing. And, one of the elemental games is the grammar of comprehensive exams. The maxims of this game have been bent in order to preserve one of the thematic qualities of my master-narrative: the persistence of authenticity, or as much of it as is socially possible.

3. The introduction contains redundant sentences that are extraneous. There is no need to enunciate more than a single phrasing of the essays thesis.

3b. Yes, but the principle that guides the speculative activities contained in the paper is rather abstract, and I hope that by providing more than one idiomatic articulation will help the reader conceptualize what is the central theme of the paper.
What is this?

3c. Very well…let us get on with it then, because this paper must serve the function of a comprehensive exam, not simply a literary exercise.

It seems that the bracketing of the distinction between thoughts and speech acts, expressed in the form of writing, have revealed the silent soliloquy that is distinguishable categorically only because it appears to be grammatically inappropriate in this context. So, the conflict expresses itself in private phenomena, but is this not just another example of being fooled by the content when we should concentrate on the praxis—the artifacts of agency—the output of subjectivity, or the recursive rippling of the plastic; or, I should say, inside of the plastic, because surely we cannot observe it…but it is in the writing…that is what we are doing, after all…no, we are archeologists, not ethnographers.
To return to the question of private phenomena, it is just writing…surely…because it is nothing more than the reverberations of the tensions in the plastic. We should not confuse this internal dialogue with a deliberative process of agency. The internal dialogue is an artifact of agency. What we usually describe as thinking is really writing, and writing is the byproduct of agency. But, how are we to identify, in a phenomenological sense, agency. We cannot, in short…we are left to archeology. I only bracketed the distinction between thinking and writing to arrive at the conclusion that thinking is writing.

4. To begin with, Nietzsche enunciated in his writings a form of epistemology that can be understood as a form of positivism, or, what we can call, pragmatism; yet, neither of these classifications fully does justice to the radical association that Nietzsche draws between knowledge and power; and, parenthetically, Foucault was heavily indebted to the conjunction between knowledge and power that was originally proposed by Nietzsche. Weber appeared to be less inclined to appropriate this analytical postulation
in his writings. Although Foucault certainly cannot be accredited with the origination of this insight concerning knowledge and power, Foucault was innovative in the respect that he implemented this theoretical insight to his genealogical studies, and demonstrated that the will to power was the impetus to the development of discourse, or, what we can call in a less esoteric vocabulary, knowledge.

5a. It is never a good idea to digress too much, but I shall anyway, since this is loosely related to the question of power.

5b. I must keep in mind, however, that essays must conform to grammatical conventions in order to be essays, so I shall not push the boundaries too far, but, nonetheless, I shall construct an extraneous part—an appendix to the paper—in the effort to add precision to my own erudition; the form of art that I try to live.
The tension reveals itself once again.

5c. I shall briefly point out that interests according to both Nietzsche and Foucault preceded the production of knowledge and, for that matter, subjectivity. Subjectivity and the knowledge that is possessed by it are resultant of the interests that are shaped by the unique position, or niche, that the human organism acquires with respect to its physical and social environment.

6. Now, to go back to and continue along the cognitive path that I began clearing with the description of Nietzsche’s epistemology, I should point out that Nietzsche did not subscribe to the propositions usually adhered to by positivists and pragmatists—at least the early ones—which contended that we live in a pluralistic universe where there exists ontologically differentiated objects that are immediately perceivable to human senses. Nietzsche, contrary to this tradition, maintained a radical version of nominalism where not only are classes of objects created by language but the objects themselves are created by language. The will to power, to put it crudely, is the impetus pushing forth the creation of languages that are developed in order to shape and organize the stimuli, according to humanly cognizable conceptualizations, in a way that facilitates the satisfaction of the interests emanating from organic teleological imperative for survival and dominance within the niche that it assumes—a force that can be referred to as the will to power. So, in short, versions of reality that are peculiar to the cultural perspectives of humanity are an answer to the interests that precede their development.
The master-narrative still holds sway…the output, the writing, is reflective of the reflexive character…but how so? The plastic was still producing grammatically conformed written expressions…yes, but remember, I was playing many games within one game, so the writing might conform and appear conventional within the interpretive guise of one game, but it might not with others and, thus, not within the game as a whole.

It is not right to say, however, that the writing does not conform. It does not entirely breach the expectation of it interlocutors. The traces left behind by the micro-narrative do not indicate the breaking of rules as much as the bending of them to adjust to the
themes guiding the plot of the master-narrative. So, why does the master-narrative hold sway in the game? It is so because it is bending the rules to the point that they are about to break…hopefully, they have not and will not.

7. At this point in the argument, I think that it is appropriate to point out how this facet of Nietzsche’s thinking similarly affected the writing of Foucault and Weber. Both Foucault and Weber, quite explicitly, reject that their postulations constitute a theory in the sense that they are providing causal explanations of events which fall under the rubric of social interaction. Nietzsche quite explicitly states that the notion of causality is a precept resulting from the nature of language, and, therefore, a necessary endowment of cognition. However, prior to the positing of causal relations it is first necessary to develop a vocabulary through which the entities comprising the phenomenal world can be differentiated and conceived. Weber quite clearly understood this point. Foucault seems to understand this principle in so far as one needs to construct an analytic in order to narrate reality. However, he appears to eschew the notion that knowledge must also consist of causal relationships between and among entities and their properties, at least in the respect that knowledge must consist of causal generalities. Although, it should be stated at this point that even narratives consist of causal relations in so far as events are strung together in a successive order, one occurrence leading to the next. However, these relations are not necessarily expandable to generalizations. Therefore, the extrapolation concerning the similarities of Weber and Foucault at this point can only be surmised to the extent that they both share with Nietzsche his radical form of nominalist anti-realism. Though, this does not diminish the inter-textual relationship concerning their epistemologies. Causality, in this instance, is more a component of the analysis, secondary to the considerations of epistemology. In other words, causality deals with relationships that are divulged through analysis after the epistemic process has taken place.

7a. Notions of causality would certainly be subsumed under a theory of knowledge.

7b. Perhaps, but Foucault probably does not dismiss the fact the some forms of knowledge consist of general causal relations…he is just not concerned with them in his own particular analytic. So, I suppose that the criticism that has been interjected above is correct. However, it is not relevant to my considerations.

Who is speaking with whom…certainly ?I? am speaking with ?me,? but does this indicate reflexivity? There appears to be dialectic present in these self contained discussions, but is it between the reflexive and the pre-reflexive, or is simply a manifestation of the ongoing pre-reflexive activities involved in writing? Perhaps I have discovered a new aspect to the plastic: a dialectic that is contained in the pre-reflexive. This would only make sense since not only must one integrate the imperatives of the master-narrative within the ongoing construction of micro-narratives, but he must also adapt his course of action – which partially includes the forming of the micro-narrative, as well as the continuous weaving together of the master-narrative – to the obstacles present in the environment. In short, problems arise and confront the output of the plastic’s agency—the recursive equation. Perhaps, this phenomenon is not a part of the
pre-reflexive but merely a new component to the plastic, but I do not want to multiply entities. It seems that this event includes the pre-reflexive and a newly discovered property of it—a self contained process, or system, which operates in conjunction to the dialectic of which the pre-reflexive is involved with the reflexive. Does the reflexive also possess such a capacity?

8. Now, at first, this might seem like a superficial similarity. However, it is indicative—and it is a profound commonality—of a commitment to the type of positivism or pragmatism—that I have referred to as a radical nominalism—which was made possible by the epistemology introduced by Nietzsche. The reason why the two theorists insist on providing us with analytics rather than theories is that they are attempting to organize our phenomenal worlds in a way that renders the stimuli that exists outside of ourselves, which is posited as the causal agent responsible for our resultant perceptions, intelligible to human cognition. In other words, one must order the confusion that is the posited metaphysical reality. So, we can see from this brief examination into the Nietzschean influences of both Weber and Foucault that they share a common epistemological perspective.

9. The answer to the question, which guides our speculations, appears to have been answered by the dialogue we have engaged in thus far: Weber and Foucault built different analytical accouterments with which to carve out and organize reality. Weber developed the concept of the individual with an intending subjectivity—a concept with which he molded stimuli into something graspable and sociologically serviceable. Foucault, on the other hand, since he was influenced by the tradition of structuralism, preferred to construct entities that embodied linguistic traditions that transcend the human bodies, and, subsequently, ignored the individual and his subjective consciousness.

10. Hark…stop what you are doing, for you have problematized the patterns of traces in the two books according to a philosophical kind of inquiry. Metaphysics has no place in social theorizing. Be gone with you, metaphysics and ontology…epistemology is permitted to stay since you are related to methodology, but, away with the rest of you.
The conflict within the pre-reflexive appears to be present once again, but where is the reflexive in all of this? A cognitive path has been found which leads to a resolution of the problem proclaimed to be the conflict organizing and vexing the speculation contained in this empirical instance of writing. Is their another alternative path that can be taken by the pre-reflexive when executing the task that is the construction of a micro-narrative? If there is, then this might illuminate the processes of agency. Let us read on and see.

10b. Very well…I shall acquiesce, and even concede, in the interest of elevating social theorizing to a position less embarrassing than a poor man’s philosophy, that it is an independent discipline, but I shall remind myself that even Alan Sica has described social theorizing as vulgar emulation of philosophy. Nonetheless, I shall abandon, altogether, the positing of stimuli, and, instead, maintain that Weber and Foucault possessed identical phenomenal worlds, meaning that their worlds were ontologically the same.
Yes, there is an alternative path that can be pursued, and it is the one that is taken. The former path opening is the more philosophical inquiry that seems to be the one preferred by the master-narrative. The abstraction of philosophy seems to appease the thematic demands of the master-narratives plot; namely authenticity and the artistic approach to writing; to living life.

Abstraction seems to suite these thematic imperatives so well because, I would contend, all art is a form of abstraction in the sense that it resides on a symbolic level. Of course, there is a concrete component to art; a painting consists of paint on a canvas, for instance. Nevertheless, the painting consists of more than just a denotative semiotic. It connotes concepts that correspond to more than a literal situation; they speak of the truths that express the human condition—the values embodied by a particular time and place in history juxtaposed to the concrete reality that does not always instantiate, or live up to, those values.

I write that art is always abstract because the normative principles are not empirically concrete. They are on a conceptual plain elevated from the physical, and find their concretion only through indirect indicators, which have to be interpreted to be instantiations of these abstract notions.

Aside from considering the proclivities of the master-narrative, this much we can surmise: New exigencies must me integrated into building of the micro-narrative under production—a dialectical process with reality. Of course, contemporaneously, dialectic exists between the pre-reflexive and the reflexive, which has an impact on the ever-present integrative process between reality and the pre-reflexive, because the way that reality is dealt with and absorbed into micro and shaped by the micro is partially influenced by the macro. We will need to elaborate on this newly discovered structural component to the plastic in the synthesis that will take place after the analysis.

The question arises, however, as to the ontological status of this reality with which the plastic must contend when exercising its agency. It is difficult at this moment to determine where the external reality stands in relation to our ontology, which already includes plastic, its movements, or dialectics, and language, which provides the systemic structures of the plastic with their elements.

10c. Assuming, now, that the epistemologies of Foucault and Weber were roughly the same and they possessed identical phenomenal worlds, it is time to explore the question as to why the path of these two thinkers diverged, but, prior to playing this game, I have one more argument.

10d. I want to point out that the guiding-question—the general line of inquiry that shapes the dialogue between the scientist and the reality with whom he is speaking—can usually be framed only according to a metaphysical vocabulary, because science, whether is explicitly wants to be or not, is an extension of metaphysical presuppositions, which determine the shape that the question will assume.

10e. In order to demonstrate this, let us first take the position that a sociological analysis should remain sociological, and should not examine the implications of the metaphysical persuasions of the writer under review. I shall refrain from mentioning that this is reductionist…although, I just did. A sociologically oriented approach, for instance, might take the following method: I think that we can safely say that the guiding-question for Foucault is, ?what is the nature of power in modern society?? Now, in Weber’s case the question can be posed quite similarly with the extraction of the word, modern. It would look as follows: ?What is the nature of power in society?? I should point out that latent within these two similarly posed questions are a whole array of metaphysical presuppositions that shape the ontology of the worlds within which the investigators are working. After all, to pose a speech act with the illocutionary force of a question that contains within its proposition the concept of power, demonstrates a fore-conception of power, itself—an easily forgotten pre-reflexive knowledge of the concept of power indicated by its successful use in a speech act. To be capable of using something is tantamount to having knowledge of it and the properties it instantiates, after all the meaning lies in its use, and the essence of the object is revealed through phenomenological circumspection, which awakens the forgotten, the taken for granted.

Now, since the knowledge of power is known prior to its study, only hidden, then the question has metaphysical implications, and, more specifically, ontological ramifications, because the knowledge of power is a priori. Therefore, power is not empirically derived from sociological study as much as it is a metaphysical orientation that resides in and influences the thinking of those who think prior to its sociological problematization. To attempt to disentangle metaphysics from sociology is nothing more than the perpetuation of the propensity to gloss over that which is easily ignored because of its commonness. We have only reinforced our preexisting prejudices; not brought them into circumspection so that they can be merged and broadened by their juxtaposition and possible synthesis with alternative perspectives.

10f. Now, when I say metaphysics, I am not intending to convey a sense that leads to the designation of a philosophical practice that has been referred to by Derrida as the metaphysics of presence. What I am attempting to communicate is a sense that refers to the attention given to the speculative thinking concerning the ontology and the epistemology of the phenomenal world, which is constructed through the linguistic practices transmitted through time in the form of social traditions. Linguistic phenomenology would, perhaps, be a more suitable term to refer to what I am attempting to designate, but this is an issue that is hardly worth harking over.

10g. Fine and well, but you are arguing in a language that belongs to philosophy, not sociology. I do not want to play your game; in fact, nobody wants to play your game with you. You must play with us, the social theorists, or you will be all alone, and will have no one with whom to play.

10h. I must concede. So to avert an existential crisis, which might result from playing on my own, I shall assume a position in a game with competitors. Consequently, I shall continue along in the fractured narrative, as soon as I have laid the following revisionist
interpretation to what has already been said: What I have been intending to express by the traces sketched above are the sentiments of the symbolic other when the social theorist attempts to define his own essence; the pleas of the ugly philosopher who ignores practicality and merely vexes and confuses with convoluted interpretations of the political entanglements resulting from the struggle to dominate lexicon, such as ?power,? between competing discourses in sociology. The relativist philosopher is merely the priestly element in society bent on propagating a slave morality that prevents the battle over survival among discursive entities—a conflict that would propel social theory to acquire new organic powers and strengths. It should be the survival of the fittest. The same criticism can be directed towards postmodern thought in general with its sickly sentimentality towards the weak, and its moral argument for the preservation of that which cannot persist without restraint and pity of that which is more adept at survival. Rape and plunder…I say…rape and plunder with the whimsicality and forgetfulness of the warriors of the past, who were not encumbered with the imprisoning implications of a moral order, whose cages are constructed from the resentment of the meager.

10i. But I go too far. Lexicon can be shared by competing discourses…surely. We do not need to choose among theories; we can preserve and occasionally use one or the other depending upon which one fits the circumstances. Assume the ideology of a pragmatist…be an epistemological pluralist.

10j. Yes…but certainly you must agree that to conceptualize power entails occupying a particular niche in social theorizing. I shall contend that even if I am to grant that the two competing discourses are not incommensurable, they are still in competition for the sociological bodies, which provide the medium through which the will to power finds its material manifestation. In short, each of the two theories has the will to grow, to expand, and to refine—processes that require the consumption of sociologically disposed bodies, and there are only so many sociologists to go around. Further, to prevent the two forms of knowledge from attacking one another would be tantamount to incarcerating a large predatory animal. It will pace in its cage, longing to exercise its instincts, until it finally grows sickly and insane.

10k. Yes, but perhaps these two beasts aid one another in survival. Maybe they are complimentary to one another. Here is an analogy: the relationship that once existed between primitive man and wolves, which eventually evolved into dogs. Wolves helped to hunt and even operated as warning device to alert clan members of the approach of animals that might compromise with their ill intentioned prowling the security symbolized by the space illuminated at or around the clan’s fire. These two beasts, man and wolf, roughly occupied the same niche, but, oddly enough, formed a single cooperative unit when it came to survival.

10l. This is a good point and I shall run with it. Perhaps, though Weber and Foucault are situated in identical ecological positions with respect to the matrix of social theorizing, they have accidentally evolved in a manner that makes them amenable in regards to partnership with one another: the yin and yang of a single object. I shall now bracket this meta-narrative analysis over which we have been chatting, and resume with
the tale of two social theorists. Yes, this story has been fractured for the second time with a reinterpretation of the original interpretation, which is analogous to backtracking over the path we have just walked in order to find another, but this new path might prove to be more sanguine than the dark road down which I was about to venture.
Ah…so the macro circuitously protruded its head out of the water one last time before diving under in retreat. Agency bounces back and forth between reflexivity and pre-reflexivity emphasizing one side of or the other of the opposing layers of fabric, which comprise either the micro or the macro. The opposing sides of the fabric, both of which contribute to the design of outputs that is attributed to agency, are woven by the exemplars of use that comprise the threads of twine, the family-resemblances, the lexicons, the words, forming the fabric of the reflexive and the pre-reflexive. But, the question still remains to be answered: What is the reality that contains the recalcitrance with which the pre-reflexive dispositions must overcome in order to be performed?
In the description of the plastic, I mentioned that language transforms the earth into the world; a suggested conceptualization first presented by Heidegger. But, to imply that there is an earth—a concept that seems to be akin to the Kantian notion of a world-in-itself—is a manifestation of modernity, which maintains the existence of an objective reality; a cold, dead reality, where there is no teleology, no purpose and no will. Why should we accept such a distasteful, nihilistic interpretation of reality?

Nietzsche, as usual, provides the remedy to this modern cancer without falling into the servitude and indebtedness that is invoked by a religion that posits god or gods, who inhibit our agencies with sickly slave moralities. The vitalizing tonic that Nietzsche peddles is the will to power. Each entity possesses teleology, purpose, which finds its concretion in valorous campaigns propelled by a will that strives to power; power over the environment; power over other wills. The ancients possessed a master binary, which organized their action. It was the opposition between the master and the slave, and morality was simply an extension of the master’s will to dominate. Morality maintained the division, keeping the sacred cultural space inhabited by the master free from the contamination, the pollution, excreted by the profane existence of the slave, who might, motivated by his own will to power, attempt to invert his position in this binary.

We should not, however, limit the extension of this metaphor to people. The will to power, the desire for mastery, is present in all of the things delimited by language. We live in a world not comprised of lifeless objects, but one that is animated with gods, whose only purpose is the elevation of their own authority, just like the Christian God, who vengefully punishes anybody who opposes, or even attempts to circumvent, his will. Nonetheless, there is a difference between the plastic and other entities that we have traditionally considered to be lifeless: Those who possess the faculty for reflexivity can stylize their existence.

But, what is the ontological status of language? And, in a metaphysical sense, is it another god or is it something else? As a preliminary conjecture, I shall suggest that language is merely a collectivity of gods, or words, in a more pedestrian language. In the
construction of our narratives, we must impose our will upon the wills of words to render them serviceable to our interests. They struggle and attempt to resist by creating ambiguities that are caused by the proliferation of their possible senses. All language, after all, is essentially indexical, unless a will forcibly interprets it and situates it within a pattern that provides a context; something that is created by the scaffold of a narrative. So, how is the will of a word tamed? The dialectical process will be examined closer in later chapters, but for now we can conjecture that the word is not repressed as much as it is constrained in certain ways so direct its power down particular avenues. The will of the word is not subdued entirely. It is controlled and vented to the purposes of the writer by a dialectical exchange where the writer not only exerts his force, but also modifies his posture to reflect the will of the word in a way that the word’s dynamic contributes to the shaping of the narrative. This dialectic occurs between the pre-reflexive and reality. When the dialectic takes place between the pre-reflexive and the reflexive the words have already been interposed into the structure of narratives, so the process looks a little different.

Furthermore, reality is language. Let us take a quick glance at the elements involved in the traditionally posited semiotic that was used to explain the meanings of words. The process of the semiotic consisted of the transposition of the word to the concept, which corresponded, in turn, to an object or property in reality. I want to suggest that we collapse the distinction between reality and language, and, subsequently, understand objects and their properties as simply manifestations of language. Furthermore, we have already established that thinking is writing. It only happens to be conducted in private. Therefore, our ontology is left with two objects, language and agency, and agency is simply a dialectic between two opposing streams of language. I use the term plastic, but plastic is just another index of language, for it is part of reality. Objects persist within language as simply signs, and all signs point to other signs, whether they are privately instantiated or part of the public reality that all plastics can circumspect.

11. The fact that there is such a striking resemblance between the ways the two questions, guiding-questions, are posed would lead one to suspect that they would receive the same answers from the social reality they are studying. They are, after all, studying the same reality; something that we have to assume if we are to constrain ourselves from any excursions into metaphysics and its sub-discipline, ontology. And, since they have similar epistemologies, we should certainly suspect that the results of their analyses would be relatively the same. Epistemology would be the impetus for the construction of methodologies that might diverge in their proclivity for the use of different analytical tools for inferring whatever causal relationships might exist between and among the data, even though the basic orientation towards the accumulation of data would not diverge. Since they are both positivists, not logical empiricists, but positivists, Weber and Foucault acquired roughly the same observations from their empirical investigations.

12a. Stop…you stated before in a conspicuously Popperian language that their selection of facts might have diverged according to their prejudices. How can you now assert that they should have gathered the same facts from their observation of empirical reality?
This is another instance of a recalcitrance faced by the dispositions belonging to the pre-reflexive of the plastic.

12b. Quite simply because, and you have created this situation through your insistence on the banishment of ontology from our considerations, they both concern themselves with power in society. Furthermore, we have uncritically adopted a prejudice: We have assumed up till now that the concept, power, is a second-order construct. Power might not be an abstraction; perhaps, it is real. But, let us continue with the scouting of the impediments blocking the path to the interpretation of power as a second-order construct.

12c. But you also stated that power, as a second-order, logical construct, might be assembled differently by the two thinkers. After all, you conceded that different languages can possess some of the same lexicons, and still manage to use the words to designate different objects; or, in the case of second-order constructs, the lexicon can be used to refer to divergent posits that are correlated to reality through the disparate use of indicators.

12d. Positing of second-level analytical constructs might have differed according to the intellectual peculiarities that they possessed, such as their prejudices when it comes to inferring the theoretical entities and mechanisms responsible for the diverse collection of constants from one state-of-affairs to the next.

13. In fact, the data that they record would, in all likelihood, differ in its description of facts, for even a video camera must be pointed in a particular direction when recording the events that comprise our phenomenal worlds. This fact, however, would not preclude the veracity of the assumption that the worlds of the two observers would be comprised of the same facts. The divergent prejudices that they probably instantiated, despite their shared proclivity for Nietzsche’s view towards philosophy, might affect the selection of facts that they consider relevant to their scientific purposes. So, to summarize, the selection of facts might diverge as well as the second order constructs composed from the crude observations. Consequently, power—which we might assume for the present moment to be a second order construct—might be composed from different elements, according to its divergent conceptualizations by Weber and Foucault. Nonetheless, the fact that the logical construction of power might differ in respect to its proposed composition by Weber and Foucault should not be taken to indicate that the two concepts, which share in their designation the referent, power, are incommensurable. Once again, if we are to exclude metaphysics from the analysis, then the facts, or elements, which comprise the logical construction of the two different versions of the concept, ?power,? should be parts, or members, of the same phenomenal world. Now, this is the crux of the argument: If we can problematize sociology independent of metaphysics and philosophy, then ontology should never be an issue to sociological inquiry. In short, the philosophical sub-discipline of metaphysics, ontology, would be a mute issue for sociological practice and sociological theory. We would merely allow sociological theories to be appraised according to their pragmatic properties—what they can accomplish, and the problems that they allow us to conceptualize and hopefully
solve, thus providing us with technological possibilities that we would not possess without them. And, I should mention that I agree with the collapse that has occurred between what once stood in a dichotomous opposition; namely, science and technology. However, it is my point that not all technologies, which stem from different understandings of the objects that comprise the sociological domain, are reconcilable with one another; sort of like direct television and cable. While these two technologies might share a common ancestral node, this should be taken as no indication that they have evolved similarly with respect to their ontological domains. Well, the counter is: this goes without saying…They certainly posit different entities in their logical constructions…Further, they might select different facts, or elements, when constructing these higher level entities…But, this in no way implies that they are incommensurable or incompatible with one another. It gives me great pains to do this, but I shall attempt in the following analysis to humor the objection. In short, I shall try to find a way to explain the divergence in the concepts of power while maintaining that the two theorists possess identical phenomenal worlds. And, as we will see, the fact that something belongs to a phenomenal world does not necessarily mean that it is perceived. So to speak, there is always blind spot to our perceptions resulting from the shadow that is cast by the side of the object that is illuminated by our circumspection.

It appears as though the obstacles, facing the pre-reflexive dispositions that are currently activated, are not insurmountable. A path has been found which allows the grammatical imperatives of the essay, which the dispositions of the pre-reflexive attempt to adhere, to contend with the dynamics emanating from the texts that are under examination.

We have determined that all objects, as indices of language, have a will to power. They want to ensure their persistence and pursue their domination over opposing wills. But, what does it entail to be placed in a position of servitude to a text? Does a text have a single interpretation that it attempts to impose upon the one who peruses it? Surely not…a text can have manifold, equally justifiable interpretations, depending upon the linguistic horizon of the one who reads it. Perhaps, this is the will of the text: to multiply in meanings; to proliferate in possible interpretations; to expand its semantic circumference to include as many possibilities as possible.

Yes, but what about the author that creates the text? Does he not desire to convey a single, coherent message? Does he not wish to place the text in servitude; to render it serviceable to his projects of communication with others or, even, to his future self? Herein lays a conflict between wills, but I shall come back to this later perhaps, putting it off in order to recover the earlier subject of speculation: the relationship between text and reader.

The text desires to have no single interpretation imposed upon it. Its will is to expand and dominate the interpretive faculties of the reader without end; to at once captivate and frustrate; to render the reader helplessly entangled in the labyrinth of interpretive patterns that crisscross over the individual traces. The reader, however, need not comply with the interpretive imperatives of the text. He can inflict the text with his own will and conform the meaning to act as an accouterment utilitarian to his own agency. In short, he can conduct the cacophony of noises resonating from the text into a harmonious musical sound that operates as an anthem to his march.

The inability to control a text results in intellectual impotence, where one can only envision the text as his argumentative obstruction—an antinomy to the objectification of his reason. Also, the conflict between the reflexive and the pre-reflexive is always present. The dialectic between the two appears to have taken the form of a jostling between the possibilities of discarding the prospect of pursuing a grammatically appropriate path for the construction of a comprehensive exam, in order to retain the beauty that is found in the detached contemplation of abstraction and philosophy, and the bypassing route, which beckons the pre-reflexive to transverse and circumvents the treacherous portions of topography that laden the texts.

14. We will first take a look at Weber’s conceptualization of power. To begin with, I should proffer the following disclaimer: Taken literally, Weber does not consider the three forms of legitimization that he introduces to sociological theorizing to have constituted forms of power or ideological supports of power relations within his analytical framework. He only considers power to be instantiated where imperatives are enforced by coercion on the part of an individual or group in society. Nonetheless, the author’s intentions, as he states them, are not always the best counsel when interpreting a text. In short, a text should be interpreted apart from the subjective intentions of the author, as a cultural artifact that has meaning contemporaneously with reader’s expansion of his own linguistic horizons, which depend on their starting point, of course, on the cultural milieu in which the text and the reader find themselves in history. What is important about this statement is to realize that according to a Gadamerian interpretation of hermeneutics the historical circumstances out which the text emerges as a piece of art is not necessarily crucial to recover in order to construct an understanding of the text, because—surely, Phillip Smith is wrong about this point—the text, once again, should be interpreted contemporaneously with one’s own time in history and his linguistic prejudices. The meaning of the text is always left unfinished and can undergo changes depending upon the evolutionary state of language during the time in which it is read, leaving the original cultural context in which the text was constructed relatively insignificant, because such a interpretive restriction would do injustice to the reckoning that history, language, and the meaning of the text are always in a state of incompletion. Consequently, I suppose I should consider Weber’s text according to the meaning that it assumes in contemporary considerations; and, within this context, surmising from the fact that I am doing a rewrite, the three forms of legitimization certainly do signify, connotatively, power. That is, they conjure up conceptually in their semiotics from sign to concept associative notions of power that connect themselves to the idea of legitimacy. Consequently, our guiding-question needs modification. It is no longer appropriate to merely phrase the guiding-question in the form: Is Weber attempting to give an analytical construction of power applicable to human societies? Rather, the following provides us with more penetrating orientation to our speculation into power as it is conceived by Weber: Is Weber attempting to give an account of the social processes that allow the preservation of social structure without the exercise of power?

This can be considered the negation of the original guiding-question. However, since the positive apprehension of power as it is conceived by Weber and its negation—the forces, which are absent of physical coercion, that are responsible for the adherence to imperatives—are necessarily part of the same entity, we have not abandoned our speculation into Weberian conceptualizations of power. We have merely illuminated the side to power that we were originally blind to because it was always in the shadow of its positively valued opposition. It is now time to take a closer look at that which does not constitute power in Weber’s conceptual framework. First, however, it is valuable to examine that which does constitute power in Weber analysis: Indeed, before attempting to explore the dark side of the moon, it is usually a good idea to gain a foothold on the side of the celestial body, or, in this case, celestial concept, that is more readily accessible. Consequently, we will first peruse the side of power that is positively enunciated by Weber.

This was quite a clever maneuver on my part. It appears as though, in practice, I am using the dynamics of the text—a force emanating from the collectivity of words—in my own advantage. The tendency of the text to expand into multiple semantics has allowed me to navigate down a channel of meaning that detours the impassable hydraulics that appeared down the interpretive river.

We can see that rarely does the relationship between two opposing wills merely consist in a master-slave binary. Like the dialectic between the reflexive and the pre-reflexive, entities can express their being, in many occasions, in accord with one another. The pre-reflexive has demonstrated its skill to adapt to the linguistic environment in which it finds itself. The will of the plastic – which is the streamlining of the wills of the reflexive and pre-reflexive – has rendered the text of Weber serviceable to its interests, while not totally inhibiting the will of the text.

I should ask, before reading on, how has the will of the reflexive faired in all of this? Has it managed, at the very least, to preserve the integrity of its thematic principles, or have those principles undergone transformation, fracturing the construction of master-narrative and impelling the reflexive to reinterpret its contents while searching for a new path, which consists of the rearrangement of the elemental micro-narratives? When pondering over this question, keep the following in mind: You are reading what I am writing, and writing consists of playing of many different games at once, all of which belong to the Omni-game in which I am currently engaged, which, in turn, is just another micro-game contributing accent to yet a larger game. Am I writing an answer to a comprehensive question, or something larger? Is the reflexive or the pre-reflexive exercising its will? In order for me to answer this question, I would have to transcend to yet another interpretive layer, which would be tantamount to conducting an archeology of an archeology. Ah…the infinite regress of self-awareness that threatens to ensnare all postmodernist literature. But, I shall say this: Do not think in dichotomous terms when pondering the questions I have posed above. Let us read on…

15. Weber considers power to be the exercise of force over other people in order to ensure that speech acts with an illocutionary force of an imperative are carried out. Now, this rather limited conceptualization of power does not include situations where people
carry out orders because they are conditioned to habitually respond in a deferential manner of deportment to such commands. I believe that the threat of physical intervention by a social instantiation of the dynamic of power would also constitute power in the Weberian sense of the word. An example of power would be situations that occur in prisons, where inmates are subject to physical coercion by guards or whatever disciplinary capacities help to comprise the penitentiary system, in order to guarantee that imperatives are followed by the recipients of these forms of speech act. We can see from this exegesis of power, as it is elaborated upon by Weber, that it is extremely limited in its extension to empirical phenomena. With such a narrow conceptualization of power in human society, it becomes necessary for Weber to posit other mechanisms whose functionality consists of maintaining the social order, whether it is composed of traditional maxims, rationally legislated laws and regulations, or spiritual authority derived by a leader’s communion with divinity. Now that we have firmly established all that which power is, we can begin to expand to the realm that power is not. Remember, in order to understand death, Plato asserted that we must study what is accessible to us first: namely, life. Life and death are atoms of the same linguistic molecule. To isolate one would entail the creation of an ion that would not constitute a concept at all until bonded with one or more other concepts through the dynamic of its attraction to oppositely charged linguistic atoms. To merely establish what a concept positively involves would neglect to realize its phenomenological instantiation in its entirety, because the positive field can only be understood in opposition to its negation. Therefore, we will positively describe all that is negated by the positive apprehension of power—a process which involves the very negation of power, itself.

Rhetoric belongs to the pre-reflexive, and it has been exercised masterfully in this instance. Weber’s text has been interpreted in a fashion which permits my writing dispositions to execute the task of fulfilling the imperatives of the comprehensive instructions, which included describing the three forms of legitimization according to Weber, while maintaining my own intellectual integrity; a reflexive imperative that stems from the themes of authenticity and artistry, which compelled the plastic to mold in a way that not only satisfied social demands, but did it in a style that was both original and conformist to the artistic principle of manifesting symbolically historically relativistic truths: in this case, the cultural value of speaking one’s mind.

16. The first form of legitimization that I shall examine is referred to by Weber as rational/legal. People submit to this form of legitimization because it embodies the rational prescriptive elements that are derived from the Kantian activity of practical reasoning. It consists of an abstract set of principles that are logically consistent in the sense that they do not contradict one another. I do not believe that Weber ever stipulated as to whether these principles need to be derived from a democratic process that is deliberative. However, since there appears to be a strong inter-textual relationship here to Kant – and, more specifically, to his notion of practical reasoning – it would probably not be a precariously unsupported proposition to assert that Weber is emulating certain patterns of traces first observed – although inter-textually indebted to previous writers, as is the case with all writings – in portions of Kant that are concerned with practical reasoning. Consequently, it seems only appropriate to assume that the principles sustained by the dynamic of rational legitimization are derived from a process that ensures that the prescriptions elevated and objectified to an ontological status are reflective of the proclivities of the culture. In other words, the principles are adhered to because they are rational in the sense that they find backing through consensus. Of course these prescriptions must sometimes be imposed by the legitimate use of force – or, the exercise of polity, in other words – but this does not indicate that cultural members who transgress these normative principles are disinclined to adopt these values during rational deliberation, but simply that their competing interests supersede their penchant to abide by what is legal.

17. Next, I shall examine its traditional legitimization. This form of legitimization is the product of a culture’s predilection to maintain norms, or normative principles, that have been traditionally valued by the culture. This valuing of traditional principles, which constitute the rules that organize social interaction, stems from the objective, ontological status that have acquired from their constant reification by members of the culture who existed in the past.

18. An excellent example of a traditional form of legitimization would be the tribal societies who practice forms of politics that are based upon practices that have been inherited from previous generations. These practices might be called into question during time of social crisis, or drama, and reshaped by ritual intervention, but, for the most part, they are accepted as always being present and part of the objective reality, which includes the social norms that dictate the form that social interactions take; in short, the social norms that organize the flow of interaction into a systemic movement have an ontological status that is rarely called into question.

19. Now, I gave this interpretation of traditional forms of legitimization a Durkheimian twist or, more precisely, a splash of Victor Turner to our drink of Weber. I stated that social change occurs during times of social drama by ritual intervention. For the most part, this is compatible with an understanding of Weber. However, his vocabulary is a bit different and he does not specifically ascribe to ritual the role of initiating social processes. Weber attributes the function of social change to a quality that is possessed by individuals; namely, charisma. To implement, once again, a term from the Durkheimian tradition in anthropology, people with charismatic attributes seem to possess, in liminal quality; meaning, that they somehow appear to have the capacity to commune with forces that transcend the normal social order. They are in a state in between the sacred and the profane. It makes sense, then, that figures with charismatic characteristics emerge during time of social drama, when the existing social order no longer appears to be capable of coping with the exigent circumstances that have arisen. Take, for instance, the Hebrew culture, which has had numerous figures in its history claiming to be the messiah who has the divine authority to lead the Jewish people out of situations that are threatening to their cultural survival.

20. The charismatic form of legitimacy obtains its authoritative capacity through its pretense to have been sanctioned by divine intervention. Jesus, for instance, legitimized his position of authority through supposed intimacy with God. In short, he was the form
that god assumed in his corporeal, human form. His followers adhered to his mandates not because they were traditionally instructed by the socializing organs of the culture, but because they were innovative and reflected new insights concerning the sacred, or the spiritual world. These teachings were intended to transcend the ordinary and infuse the culture with new techniques for coping with the capricious forces – both social, emanating from rival cultures, and natural – that created undesirable events, causing strife and friction that the traditional order was unable to resolve.

21. Now, it should be mentioned, the evolution of a society, similarly to other biological organisms, occurs in spurts and leaps rather than in a slow, methodical fashion. And, I should point out, I am not implying that society evolves linearly, as some sociologists who have vulgarized the paradigm would suggest. I am not sure how Weber would stand on this issue, but this is neither here nor there. The radical changes that take place with charismatic forms of leadership do not indicate that society will remain in a constant state of flux. Rather, after the charismatic leader has deceased, if his teachings and insights are to survive, then the innovations that he has provided must be institutionalized and structured in a way that represents more ordinary forms of societal forces that induce social cohesion. In other words, the charisma must be captured by the leaders and integrated into a structure that maintains its legacy and efficacy.

22. Our guiding-question, surmising from the above enunciated investigation, should now undergo some alteration before we launch into our speculation concerning Foucault. We can now understand power not only as the use of coercion to obligate recipients of speech acts with the illocutionary force of an imperative to abide with the dictates of the command, but also as the absence of forms of legitimization that would induce the recipient of a command to obey without necessarily considering the threat of forceful interdiction. Consequently, moving along in our dialectic, we can now positively conjecture the following question that propelled Weber’s analytical speculations: What are the dynamics in society—both including power and all that which is negated by power’s presence—that are responsible for the adherence to social imperatives, emanating from both individuals and social norms? What we have arrived at is a specification of the speculative mode of thought that provided the impetus for Weber’s critical reading of the text that is social reality. When I say Weber, I should point out that I have not endeavored to reveal the psychological state that propelled the construction of the pattern of traces that constitute Weber’s writing, nor have I attempted to interpret Weber’s writing in accord with the cultural peculiarities of his historical period. What I have done is strive for is an understanding of the text within a horizon that is contemporaneous with the truth of the text and the present state of language. I have fused by own prejudices with the interpretive parameters of the text, creating a reading of a cultural artifact that has meaning according to the present evolutionary state of our own linguistic practices.

It appears as though the reflexive has flavored this rather pedestrian account of Weber with accents of hermeneutical theory, which symbolize the theme of authenticity in the text that is the master-narrative. I am interjecting originality to my comportment, rather than simply falling into the role of the ?they?, and engaging in mere chatter.

23. It is now time to conduct an exegesis on the text entitled The History of Sexuality Vol. 1. Once again, I am reading the text selectively, looking for traces that can that can be interpreted as contributing to the development of an analytic of power. I have already enunciated the following hypothetical guiding-question, which supposedly provided the trail markers for this text’s speculations into power: How can we conceptualize power in modern society in an analytically efficacious manner? I use the words, analytically efficacious, because Foucault has given some attention to criticizing the current conceptualization of power as emanating from a central source in society. He writes that the idea that power is somehow in the possession of individuals who possess capacities of authority in society is an ineffective mode of analysis for the understanding of the operation of power in modern times. He disparages this type of critique as a remnant of philosophies concerning pre-modern vestiges of power; a time when power was embedded in the role of the monarch. This type of conceptualization, in short, was a product of the Enlightenment’s attack on the institutionalization of power within a hereditary framework, which oftentimes stifled the interests of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie was an economic class that enunciated the principles of the Enlightenment in order to create a societal architecture that freed one from his feudal, familial obligations, which transverse the political space, so that he could be empowered to pursue his own economic interests. The bourgeoisie could not tolerate the exercise of power by the feudal regime, because it was oftentimes capricious, unpredictable, and hindered the creation of an environment that fostered the ability to safely invest capital in economic ventures. What is important to extrapolate from the preceding is that power was assumed to reside in the hands of the privileged individuals in society, who assumed positions of leadership. It was personified by the whims of the nobility, and was considered to be a product of their subjective proclivities, which conveyed the sensibility that power was centralized in the respect that it was monopolized by tyrants. Foucault, so to speak, wanted to finally cut off the head of the monarch. He strove to demonstrate that power was not an attribute of individuals, but a product of the linguistic practices of a society that organized the relationships that were assumed between and among bodies. Resulting from this conceptualization, power was not to be observed as possession that was centralized in the sense that it belonged to an individual body and exercised according to his subjectively determined desires, as is the case with Weber. Foucault, as we will see, radically re-conceptualizes the subjectivist interpretation of power, and in doing so breaks from the Enlightenment’s traditional reflections concerning political philosophy and its theorization of the dynamic of power in society.

24. Prior to initiating this exercise in hermeneutics, I should point out that Foucault bothers not to illuminate, as Weber did, the negative side of power. Therefore, we can limit analysis to what has been positively enunciated concerning power and its mode of operation in modern society. According to Foucault, power is instantiated in the oppressive relationships that occur between the positive and negative terms that comprise the conceptual molecules forming the system of relations that constitute language. Now, this is not to say that there is one pervasive linguistic framework that exists in each society. Rather, society is fractured in the sense that it consists of multiple linguistic traditions, even if they share in the use of common lexicons. This does not mitigate the fact that identities, which are denoted by signifiers that invoke their correlating concepts through a process of semiotics, must be defined in opposition to what they are not. A man, for instance, must be defined in opposition to a cluster of concepts, such as woman, child and animal, which assume negative values when the concept, man, is positively apprehended. These clusters of positively and negatively valued concepts are what I previously referred to as conceptual molecules. My use of the concept, conceptual molecules, is justified by the fact that Saussure appears to implement the paradigm of molecular physics to the study of language.

These binaries, which allow for the conceptualization of identities in society, define what is considered to be normal—identities sanctioned by the norms of society—and abhorrent in the sense that the negatively valued identity deviates from the positively valued definitions that encapsulate the sacred in society. In other words, the positively valued identities embody the sacred values, according to which the discourse attempts to organize the behaviors of bodies. I use the word sacred because of the inter-textual relationship, intermediated by Saussure and Levi-Strauss, between Durkheim and Foucault. They are both stucturalists, whether or not Foucault believes that his philosophical anthropology is too sophisticated for this label. And, according to the form of structuralism that Foucault espouses, discourses push their binaries forcefully onto the bodies comprising society, organizing the bodies into relationships that instantiate power. Discourses compete with other discourses, vying for space and dominance in what can be referred to analytically as the discursive matrix, which situates discourses on a grid from which their relationships with one another can be represented.

25. What I have presented so far projects upon Foucault the appearance that he was concerned with a meta-theoretical conceptualization of power. The case, however, is quite the opposite. Foucault spent more time providing historical accounts of concrete instantiations of power rather than speculating as to the nature of power in a theoretical format of writing. Foucault demonstrated in his genealogies of modern discursive powers in society that the dynamic of power was exercised through disciplinary agencies, which sought to regulate the behavior of those whose social definitions, or identities, assumed negative values in juxtaposition to those that were defined positively as normal. In fact, these disciplinary mechanisms, which operated insidiously underneath the purview of political scrutiny – and, nonetheless, maneuvered surreptitiously with a political function – introduced the social definitions that created the power ?cleavages? that transverse modern society. In other words, they initiated and contributed to discourses. The medical definitions, contributing to the discourse of sexuality, of the positively valued, ?biologically normal? heterosexual identity and the homosexual identity, which assumes a negative value in opposition to heterosexuality, are an instance of one of the power relations that were imposed upon the fractured conglomeration of modern society. Society was organized to the extent that particular discourses, such as sexuality, could impose will over bodies. Politics, to paraphrase Foucault, is the practice intended to modify the practices of others who fall within the political scope of those who exercise politics. Disciplinary discourses, such as medicine and sociology, most definitely practice politics, because they produce technologies that are intended to modify the practices of individuals and societies. Nonetheless, their endeavors and social
implications are for the most part clandestine because they are considered to fall, institutionally, within the sphere of civil society, not polity.

26. What is important to keep in mind about power, as it is conceptualized by Foucault, is the fact that it is embodied in linguistic practices, not the intending subjectivity of individuals who happen to occupy positions of social authority. Power, in other words, is discursive, and language is an entity, within the paradigm of structuralism, that exists over and beyond the individual; although, it is concreted in acts of speech. Power, therefore, is not implemented by intentional acts originating through the mechanisms comprising the subjective consciousness of individuals; rather, power is the force that organizes the relationships of individuals into positions of mastery and servitude. This process entails subsuming the bodies under social identities; and, resultantly, the identity generates an awareness of the self, which is posited in the reflexive cognition of social members. Power precedes and shapes subjectivity in this respect.
Is it the plastic or the text that has been styled? Let us go over some basics; such an endeavor might inspire the clearing of a path, which leads to the answer of this question. The reflexive and the pre-reflexive engage in dialectic with one another, resulting the moving and shaping of the plastic. Agency is the wavering prioritization of one pole of the plastic or the other, which results in the actions that we attribute to agency. Now, without the implantation of the thematic qualities, guiding the construction of the master-narrative, into the micro, the pre-reflexive would fall into the role of the ?they?—in-authenticity. Mere chatter would be the result; mindless implementations of dispositions, which would produce nothing but a repetition of traditional practices with slight modifications due to the dialectic between the pre-reflexive and the environmental exigencies of the present time.

What is important to surmise from this brief summary is that the actions of the plastic are derivative of agency, not agency itself. The movements of the present are already remnants of the past. Actions are simply cultural artifacts, whose origin can only be theorized from archeological surveys. Agency is the arbiter of the struggle between the micro and the macro. Stylization might be the product of agency’s emphasis – never exclusively, but always in varying degrees – of the master-narrative. Agency, itself, however, cannot be styled, because it is never in a state of being in the sense that is used by the logo-centric tradition, since how can that which is always in a state of becoming ever be predicated as a substance? Its attributes are always yet to be determined, because its state depends upon its preference one or the other properties of plastic—the reflexive or the pre-reflexive—which, as I have argued and will partially argue again, are always in perpetual flux. How, then, could agency possibly have dispositions directing its motion, when the objects it burns towards or away from are always changing in composition? Agency must be capricious in its choices because it never has the same two things from which to choose. Nonetheless, it seems to sense when it must activate the pre-reflexive, because during times when the plastic is in jeopardy actions seem almost instinctual.

Further, people, oftentimes, violate the principles of their character when faced with danger or impending doom. The demands of the circumstances take precedent. On the other hand, the agency of the plastic seems to favor the reflexive when engaged in life defining events that might be recorded in the collective biography of a group of plastics. For instance, a Supreme Court Justice might infuse jurist deliberations with motifs of social progressivism, practicing a kind of judicial activism that bends the grammar of his social position. Keep in mind, that agency is only responsible for the proportion of macro to micro, and we should not confuse the construction of the master-narrative with agency; although, we are conscious of it when we chose to be.

The author, consequently, can only be styled indirectly, through the artifacts testifying to his artistically fashioned existence. Surely, though, the master-narrative—the systemic structure that generates individuality—has an ontological status. It is the repository of indices of micro-narratives, which collectively comprise the biography of the plastic; a story that is definitive for the plastic and destined to be relived over and over again in the recurrence of the same. To say that the master-narrative has no existence would entail the existential negation of plastic, itself, for it is the master-narrative that testifies to the unity of a subject.

But, remember, the master-narrative is plastic in multiple senses of the word. It must constantly be modified and reshaped, so to absorb the micro-narratives that are always being produced by the pre-reflexive, which strain the interpretive pattern the whole—the master-narrative—the biography—due to the social imperatives that they must reflect, which do not always exist in accord with the thematic qualities of the master-narrative. Consequently, the master-narrative only provides the illusion of constancy. It must always give rebirth to itself each time it is injected with the micro, and with each generation comes mutation…adaptation…not only is the macro-narrative augmented with the genetic information the micro-narrative…which, of course, is already the partial offspring of the macro, since the macro helped to determine its character…but the parts of the master-narrative also undergo slight changes, mutations, in order to adjust to the newly instantiated content.

But what, then, is the process of fertilization, where the new is integrated with the old and the old mutates so to be in accord with the new? Is it not an archeology of the self?—an interpretation of that which has been left behind in the form of artifacts, consisting of both material culture and the mnemonic artifices hidden in the interior of the plastic; memory impressions, to put it differently. With each birth of the master-narrative a hermeneutic act is performed, rarely changing the interpretation of whole to any significant degree, but, nonetheless, always subtly and delicately shifting, bending, and reshaping the grammar of the thematic principles, which constitute the functionality of the whole; its defining purposes.

Sometimes the twists in grammar cause a snap, where there is a need to reinterpret the parts according to a new guiding theme, or themes, but this is only the case in life altering events. The answer to the question posed in the beginning of this section of analysis, therefore, is that the text stylizes the author.

The preceding analysis has done more than simply answer a question; it has provoke new queries from its speculations: If agency is not responsible for the construction of the biography, or the master-narrative, then what procedure produces the guiding, thematic principles that afford the impetus to the master-narrative’s pressure on the plastic’s courses of actions? Additionally, from what is the uncanny sense of agency to choose between its alternatives derived? It no longer appears to be as capricious, but trained and even sensible, like the operator of a draw bridge.

27. So, the question that was posed earlier is now pregnant: what is the cause of the divergence in the conceptualizations of power by Weber and Foucault? They both shared a common epistemology, resulting from their shared influence of Nietzsche, and they are both concerned with the same empirical question. Now, the easiest explanation, and perhaps the best one, is that they do not share the same phenomenal world, but this would lend itself to metaphysical speculation, not a sociological form of thought. But, I should point out that they obviously do not possess the same posits, despite the fact that their worlds are supposedly comprised of the same facts, or single predicate propositions, and the actuality that they share similar inclinations when it comes to empirical investigation; they are both concerned to a certain extent with power. So, does the fact that their theoretical constructs diverge entail the incommensurability of their concepts? Certainly not if I am to remain sociological…I have before raised the possibility that, perhaps, their uses of the word, power, are not incommensurable, but, rather, simply constructed in each case differently, stemming from the fact that they chose divergent facts, or elements, when building this second order construct. However, can we really reduce these divergent conceptualizations to elements without forming antinomies between the different sets of substances? If we reduce Weber’s notion of power to imperatives subjectively intended and commanded by individuals in conjunction with the threat of coercion and Foucault’s conceptualization of power to disciplinary practices exercised by dominant groups in society onto subservient groups in society, is this not an instance of an ontology involved in a logical ensnarement. How can both individuals and groups exist on the same plane of abstraction simultaneously? Both individuals and groups are first-level concepts. Foucault might subscribe to the existence of bodies, but they are inert and void of subjectivity until they are subsumed by a group, which gives them their identity and resulting reflexivity. Let us pose the question a little differently now: Can bodies and individuals exist simultaneously? Well, can something be both inert and lacking in subjectivity while possessing intentionality; a function of subjectivity. Certainly not…this leads us to the inference that the two conceptualizations of power in reality are indeed incommensurable. Nonetheless, I would contend that power, according to Foucault, is not a second order construct, but something that can be experienced immediately without first extending it through indicators to instantiations of its concretion. This is because it is not a higher-level abstraction that subsumes in its extension concrete oppositions which give first-level signifiers their value; rather, it is a property of the oppositions that endow concrete entities with their positive or negative charges. It is just as real as the relation enunciated in the following proposition: I am sitting in front of my computer…the relationship between the two subjects, myself and my computer, is directly observable. I would contend that in the case of Weber, power is
also a first-level property belonging to the relations between concrete entities, not a theoretical construct. Physical coercion and even its ominous threat of deployment are directly observable. I can say, for instance, the man is being coerced into submittal by another man. ?Coerced,? in this proposition there is a relationship that can be directly observed. Consider now the proposition, he was acting justly towards the man. Can the relation, justly, be observed without intermediary relations residing on a lower level of abstraction. Absolutely…it is just as concrete as the relationship, power. One could retort that these relations are not concrete; they are abstract…one can only infer, justice, for instance, from indicators, such as a balanced ledger in transactions. However, is not the relation in, ?balance equally,? just as abstract, if it is indeed abstract, as the relation, just? The relation, balanced, also seems to be reducible to more concrete relations, such as an evenly tilted scale. But, as we are beginning to discover, this type of inquiry can go on ad infinitum. Therefore, I would contend that there is only one level of abstraction to which relations can ascend, and that is the immediately perceivable, the concrete. But what about the objection that power, according to Weber, is not a relation but merely an attribute, a possession? I agree that there is textual support for this interpretation, but the deeper sense of the word, power, forbids this reading, because the word, power, always entails power over something or it would not be power at all. Take the following counter-intuitive assertion: The rock possesses power. One would ask: power over what? Do not say that is because rocks cannot wield possessions because it is a grammatical impossibility, because I could counter: Rocks can possess veins of quartz.

The reason that the proposition, the rock wields power, is so counterintuitive is because it is not within the grammar of ?rock,? except in exceptionally contrived, narrated circumstances, to act, and actions always involve a relational predicate between to subjects. This reinforces my contention that power is a relation not an attribute, and I have already proffered the conclusion that all relations are concrete.
Philosophy, here, was not exactly practiced, so we cannot attribute the preceding to a show of muscle by the reflexive, which strives to infuse the text with the beauty of abstraction. The writings consisted of more of a conceptual analysis, which is more empirically oriented than it is positioned towards an a priori analysis, because exemplars of concepts’ usage are always employed during the disclosure of the word’s grammar. The meaning of concepts is revealed empirically, rather than deposited in analytical reflections.

But why, to turn to a different subject, did I just use the metaphor of flexing muscles to describe the possibility that the reflexive was disproportionably imposing its will over the plastic? Did I not previously state that agency was the dynamic that arbitrated the conflict between the reflexive and the pre-reflexive; the operator of the drawbridge that determines whether the micro or the macro will dominate the passage that leads to the will of either or to communion with the plastic in its entirety, shaping and organizing the plastic according to its whims? And, of course, the passage is never completely overtaken by the dynamics emanating from one pole of the plastic or the other. The actions of the plastic always resonate with both the pre-reflexive and the reflexive. But why use the metaphor of muscle?

I would conjecture that my writing embodied the previous analogy for the following reason: The conflict between the opposing wills might be adjudicated by agency, but agency is influenced in its decision-making by the veracity of the wills under assessment. In other words, the vitality of the reflexive and the pre-reflexive can be sensed by agency and reacted upon by in an affirmative or negative manner. For instance, an uninspired master-narrative will have only a perfunctory reception by agency. One will simply go through the motions, so to speak. Inadequately skilled dispositions will not only prevent efficacious action on the part of the plastic, but their deficiency might be compensated for with the exaltation of macro principles that manifest plastically into fantastic, socially eccentric forms that hardly allow for the satisfaction of the plastics biological imperatives.

28. These writings would lead us to conclude, in all likelihood, that, in fact, the phenomenal worlds of Weber and Foucault are not the same; they are different gestalt switches resulting in different phenomenal worlds, emanating from the same stimulus, which is inaccessible to cognition. However, in this particular case, it is not necessary to go so far as to assert incommensurability. I would like to raise the possibility that the two writers are in fact writing about the same thing; only, they are describing different sides of the same coin. One man’s object is another man’s shadow, and one man’s shadow is another man’s object. In other words, the negative side to Weber’s conceptualization is the one positively enunciated in Foucault’s conceptualization; although, I should point out, that Weber does not ignore, as Foucault does, the negative side to his positive assertion concerning power.

29. In Weber’s analysis of power the subjectivity and intentionality of the individual are emphasized. It is the ability to coerce others into obeying the stipulations of one’s imperatives that constitute power. The negation of power—legitimacy—seems to be a dynamic that is not necessarily a component, or property, of individual consciousnesses; quite to the contrary, legitimacy appears to be a force that exists beyond individuals. To borrow a conceptualization from the later Heidegger, legitimacy is a module of Being—the traditional linguistic prejudices, which mold the projection and comportment of Dasein, as the future is always opened by the past. Now, I know that Weber explicitly states that analysis must begin with the individual, but this does not preclude the plausibility of my interpretive hypothesis, for contradictions are a norm in literature, even great literature, not an occasional exception that originates from carelessness and faulty thinking. Therefore, it is not unseemly to conceive of legitimacy as akin to Foucault’s discourse in an ontological respect; they both are first-order concepts that shape the behavior of individuals without belonging to the individual’s subjectivity. Foucault, on the other hand, focuses in his analysis on the forces that influence the comportment of individuals, and, in doing so, negates human subjectivity, which is nonetheless part of the same entity, only it is excluded from the conscious concretion of discourse and power. What we arrived at through our exegesis of two seemingly disparate texts and conceptualizations of power is a single conceptual object, comprised of structural and agential sides, that instantiates a contradiction; one that is not new to social theorizing, but just a different form of the structure/agency problematic.

The antithesis between the imperatives arising from the social, which are dealt with by the bodily knowledge encapsulated in the plastic’s pre-reflexive dispositions, and the thematic values of the reflexive have found their synthesis in the text. The game that was being played by the plastic consisted of multiple subsidiary games all involved in forming a larger game, the grammar of which I had to effectively reflect in the moves I made when writing this paper.

One of the subsidiary games consisted of the grammar of prose, which, of course, involves the manipulation of words according to their grammatical conventions; they are the chess pieces, so to speak, of the game of prose. I have also conformed myself to be in accord with the grammar of building a sociological essay, on one hand, and the grammar of speculative sociological dialecticism, on the other, which similarly involve the manipulation of words. Additionally, I have played the game of typing on a keyboard and, even, printing a hard copy. All of these indices of games contribute to the larger project that is the writing of this paper, which also has its own grammatical conventions.
I teased out the thematic motives that were willed by the reflexive component to the plastic, which left this comprehensive exam answer behind as the artifact that is subject of our archeological excavation. The themes of the larger master-narrative, of which the project of writing the paper under review was a component, or micro-narrative, consisted of authenticity and artistry. Authenticity, which designates the modality of comportment that recognizes the duty to construct a biography and, consequently, stylizes its existence in an original fashion, interjected its imperatives throughout the construction of this artifact which echoes the plot of the micro-narrative. We witnessed this phenomenon in several instances. To reiterate the description of just one of the glimpses we caught of the great macro beast, we perused early on a philosophical digression in paragraph 4 of the text. The beast obtruded its head only to quickly pull back and conceal itself from the pressures of the pre-reflexive; an exercise of force on the part of the micro, which indicates that the agential capacity of the plastic adjusted the facet to let more of the micro into the mix; a concoction of wills that determines the demeanor of the plastic’s comportment.

This jostling was present throughout the text, and was continually synthesized into the writing. One of the grammars that I adhered to pre-reflexively was what I have referred to as speculative sociological dialecticism. The rules of this game, however, were bent. In short, it did not remain entirely sociological. It sometimes dipped into the aesthetically appealing dominion of philosophical problematization. Nevertheless, despite the occasional excursion into problems that reside on a different discursive divide than sociological theorizing, which was intended to take a dialectical form, the imperatives of the game were not disobeyed, only loosely abided by in a way that integrated their fulfillment with the implantation of originality and artistic stylization to the essay’s form. This assimilation is best manifested by the conclusion to the dialectic, where the Hegelian theory of mind and phenomenology is fused with an explanation for the divergence in Weber’s and Foucault’s conceptualizations of power. The rules were bent because philosophy is not the subject proper to social theorizing. Nevertheless,
Hegel was used in a way that contributed to the resolution of a sociological problem; the difference in theoretical conceptions of power.

Now, of course, philosophy was also used during the grounding of the two concepts of power from abstraction to material reality, but, once again, rules were only bent, not broken, because philosophy was merely a tool used in the answering of a sociological problem, not the object of speculation itself. This is not to say that other cognitive paths could not have been forged, which do not require philosophical equipment to travel, but philosophy, once again, is the proclivity of the macro; an sleight of hand designed to conjure aesthetically appealing qualities in the writing.

So, the comportment of the plastic—the writing in which it is always engaged—is a product of both social dispositions and aesthetic preferences concerning the themes that should lead the struggle to leave behind the traces of a master-narrative that speaks of one’s greatness.

The question remains as to where the thematic principles, which guide the construction of the master-narrative, are derived. Where do they come from? Is it a function of agency to implant these themes into the reflexive, or is it a process of socialization that creates the functionality of the whole? It seems crucial to answer this question before going any further, for without a resolution we will be tempted to regress into queries which posit the existence of the antinomy between structure and agency. I say this because we are habituated to look to either side of this opposition when accounting for the causal mechanisms responsible for the generation of the body’s comportment. Therefore, we will now search for a cognitive path which avoids the quagmire that is the structure/agency problematic when contending with the issue just raised: the origins of the .

Now, earlier in the analysis, I alluded to structure existing within the expansion of language; the shared biographies of a collectivity of plastics. What is the nature of this entity, and does it require the positing of another object in our ontology, which currently consists of language and agency, which is really just a motion of language; a tornado in the atmosphere, so to speak? As a preliminary conjecture, let us suppose that the shared biography of plastics in somehow related to the grammar of the pre-reflexive. The pre-reflexive resides in the realm of the social, since it is composed of the dispositions that allow plastic to conform to the rules of the many games that form the omni-game in which it is involved. It seems only reasonable to assume that the shared biography of plastics is interconnected to the grammar of the pre-reflexive. We must tease out, through our speculative analysis, the relationship between these two properties of language. I should mention that since these properties are secondary, not primary, in a Lockean language, I am not including them constituents of our ontology.
It is my contention that the shared biography of plastics performs as a justificatory dynamic for the actions constituting the moves that comprise the games of the pre-reflexive. In other words, plastics revert to the shared biography in order to give reason for their actions; actions belonging to the games in which plastic socially engages.

But a move can be justified by referring to the game. Yes, but the game, in turn, must be supported, and this is done by alluding to its significance within the shared biography of plastics. John Ashcroft, for instance, justifies the Patriot Act by situating it within the context of a grand narrative that maintains that the legislation is a reaction to a terrorist threat yet not a fracture in the collective biography of plastics, which embodies the thematic quality of individual privacy rights. In short, he places the act in the context of the collective history of Americans; a maneuver that establishes the move as a legitimate exercise of his position within the social game, in which he assumes the capacity of Attroney General.

But what precipitated this act of rationalization on the part of the plastic? Lyotard described language games as agonistic, meaning that there was a competitive spirit instantiated on the part of those who participated. Latour, as well, depicted the process immediately following the externalization of scientific propositions as combative in the sense that the community of scientific practitioners can challenge their validity prior to their objectification. Perhaps, the plastic executed this act of justification for the reason that his actions became suspect to the community of plastics with whom the plastic engages in games. I think that this is probably the case. The validity of his move – whether or not it conformed to the grammatical standards of someone making that particular move in social interaction – was not consented to by the entirety of the community of plastics. Some plastics, taking an adversarial position towards the move, invoked the lack of conformity to grammatical conventions typically expected of one assuming that capacity and exercising that form of movement within the game. Since the rules of the game were in question, the only recourse of the plastic under scrutiny was to refer to the shared biography of the community of plastics. What a strange entity this is; this collective discourse of plastics; this oral history; this written history; this collective representation of the past.

Questions arise as to the origins of this shared biography and the work involved in its ongoing construction? It is the community’s collective discourse…surely. It situates individual plastics with respect to their social position in the community. It offers justificatory support to the social orde