Taking inspiration freely from one of the binarisms that underlie Lévi-Strauss's Mythologies, I suggest that the forms of power that dominate societies tend to have a cooked version and a raw version. The two versions imply different forms of exercise of power and each one poses different types of resistance and resistants. Contrary to what the culinary metaphor might suggest, there is no necessary sequence between raw and cooked. Both versions coexist, they can be activated alternatively or jointly, and the relative dominance of one or the other depends on the social, economic, political and cultural contexts in which the exercise of power takes place.
From the outset, it is convenient to define what I mean by power: power is the capacity of someone (person, group, idea, entity) to affect the existence of another without being affected by it, or to be so subjectively or objectively considered less intense. The greater the imbalance between the ability to affect and be affected, the more intense or brutal the form of power and the greater the inequality between the parties. Thus, brutality is not an extreme form of power, but an ever-present dimension of any form of power. The cooked version is the version that mixes the brute force of power with ingredients, condiments and preparations that disguise it and give it different flavors, clothes and makeup. It is not about costumes in the common sense of the term, something external and accessory that does not interfere with the "essence of the thing." On the contrary, the disguises of cooked power are constitutive because this is always the result of brute force and everything that is invested in cooking. Raw power is power that is wielded with full display of brute force. This does not mean that it does not have flavors, clothes or makeup. What happens is that these are used to emphasize the brutality, the rawness of raw power. It is as if the way of dressing for power is to appear naked. The two forms of power resort to different instruments for their exercise and to different narratives and rhetorics to justify themselves. While cooked power is justified with arguments that have nothing to do with power, raw power wants its exercise to be its justification. the disguises of cooked power are constitutive because this is always the result of brute force and everything that is invested in cooking. Raw power is power that is wielded with full display of brute force. This does not mean that it does not have flavors, clothes or makeup. What happens is that these are used to emphasize the brutality, the rawness of raw power. It is as if the way of dressing for power is to appear naked. The two forms of power resort to different instruments for their exercise and to different narratives and rhetorics to justify themselves. While cooked power is justified with arguments that have nothing to do with power, raw power wants its exercise to be its justification. the disguises of cooked power are constitutive because this is always the result of brute force and everything that is invested in cooking. Raw power is power that is wielded with full display of brute force. This does not mean that it does not have flavors, clothes or makeup. What happens is that these are used to emphasize the brutality, the rawness of raw power. It is as if the way of dressing for power is to appear naked. The two forms of power resort to different instruments for their exercise and to different narratives and rhetorics to justify themselves. While cooked power is justified with arguments that have nothing to do with power, raw power wants its exercise to be its justification. Raw power is power that is wielded with full display of brute force. This does not mean that it does not have flavors, clothes or makeup. What happens is that these are used to emphasize the brutality, the rawness of raw power. It is as if the way of dressing for power is to appear naked. The two forms of power resort to different instruments for their exercise and to different narratives and rhetorics to justify themselves. While cooked power is justified with arguments that have nothing to do with power, raw power wants its exercise to be its justification. Raw power is power that is wielded with full display of brute force. This does not mean that it does not have flavors, clothes or makeup. What happens is that these are used to emphasize the brutality, the rawness of raw power. It is as if the way of dressing for power is to appear naked. The two forms of power resort to different instruments for their exercise and to different narratives and rhetorics to justify themselves. While cooked power is justified with arguments that have nothing to do with power, raw power wants its exercise to be its justification. It is as if the way of dressing for power is to appear naked. The two forms of power resort to different instruments for their exercise and to different narratives and rhetorics to justify themselves. While cooked power is justified with arguments that have nothing to do with power, raw power wants its exercise to be its justification. It is as if the way of dressing for power is to appear naked. The two forms of power resort to different instruments for their exercise and to different narratives and rhetorics to justify themselves. While cooked power is justified with arguments that have nothing to do with power, raw power wants its exercise to be its justification.
As I mentioned, it is characteristic of cooked power to present itself from actions, forms and ideologies of not being able: universal principles, salvation or potential benefit of all, search for truth, virtue, purity, beauty, cooperation, solidarity, reciprocity, brotherhood in the fight for common goods or against common enemies. The institutions that promote it tend to be constituted according to organizational logics that are ideally not affected by differences in power. The two fundamental logics are bureaucracy and rhetoric. Bureaucracy is the logic of instrumental rationality that operates by (written) rules or norms to which everyone is subject. Rhetoric is the logic of argumentation that does not intend to impose anything on anyone. It only seeks to persuade or convince. There are differences of argumentative power, but they converge into mutally accepted results.
Raw power is wielded and presented in ways that accentuate brute force whose justification lies in its own exercise and the devastation it causes. Far from hiding this devastation, it exhibits it and, through it, exalts, ideally by excess, the differences of power. When this display may backfire, he apologizes in ways that minimize harm or liability, such as technical errors, false positives, collateral damage, sacrifice zones, "bad apples". The organizational logic that governs the exercise of raw power is violence, the unconditional exercise of force, whether physical (war, murder, arson, looting, physical torture, mutilation) or psychic (“tactless torture”, “advanced techniques of interrogation”, hate speech, threats), functional (slave labor) or structural (racism, sexism).
Both forms of exercise of power condition the resistance of those affected. The relative difficulty of resistance depends, in the first instance, on the degree of inequality between those who have power and those who do not have it, or between those who have more power and those who have less power. But the forms of resistance to cooked power and raw power vary substantially: different forms of struggle, different ideologies, as well as different roles by different types of resistance and alliances between them. Cooked power resistance has to be cooked, just like raw power resistance has to be raw.
The two forms of exercise of power tend to be present in any field (economic, social, political or cultural), scale (interpersonal, local, national, global) or historical time (past, present). In this text, I analyze some dimensions of contemporary political power.
Empires
By empire I understand the geopolitical space constituted by several countries, formally independent or not, subordinated, in their entirety or substantially, to a determined dominant country, the imperial country. Empires have always constituted forms of complex power in which cooked power and raw power were mixed. But the relative dominance of both versions varied greatly over time. In the early days of empires, crude power almost always dominated, but the demands of sustainability quickly required the presence of cooked power. Due to its expansionist logic, empires hardly coexisted with each other and, therefore, tended to follow one another over time. When they coexisted, a certain empire had to accommodate or subordinate itself to another. It was the case of the Portuguese Empire that, since the 18th century, survived subordinate to the British Empire.
To limit myself to modern times (15th century and following), we can identify the following empires, each of them with their cooked versions. The brute force that animated them was always disguised as universal principles, that is, ideas or values whose validity supposedly benefited everyone. The cooked version of the Portuguese and Spanish empires was the propagation of Christianity and the salvation of which it was the bearer; in the case of the British Empire, it was free trade and progress; in the case of the French Empire, it was, after the French Revolution, revolutionary principles and human rights; in the case of the Soviet Empire, it was the new man, socialism and communism; And finally, in the case of the American Empire (especially after WWII), it was democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Today it is being discussed whether or not another empire is emerging, the Chinese Empire, which would replace the American Empire. If so, the cooked version of the Chinese Empire will likely be economic and technological development, the Belt and Road initiative. The new Cold War between the United States and China seems precisely to herald a new war between empires. In any case, much of the world (in which the one from which I write is inscribed) dominates the American Empire, which I deal with in more detail. the Belt and Road Initiative. The new Cold War between the United States and China seems precisely to herald a new war between empires. In any case, much of the world (in which the one from which I write is inscribed) dominates the American Empire, which I deal with in more detail. the Belt and Road Initiative. The new Cold War between the United States and China seems precisely to herald a new war between empires. In any case, much of the world (in which the one from which I write is inscribed) dominates the American Empire, which I deal with in more detail.
Raw and Cooked America and Democracy
Analyzes of the decline of the American Empire are becoming more numerous and convincing. One of the most reliable sources is probably the National Intelligence Council linked to the CIA, considered the most important analytical center in Washington. Every four years it has published its analyzes on "global trends" and the references to the next global primacy of the Chinese economy (2030?) And the implications that this may have for the world and, above all, for the US, whose military superiority will continue, but whose effectiveness is increasingly being questioned (see US-imposed exit from Iraq and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan). More than the futurology about the new Cold War, it is interesting to analyze the ongoing changes of the US imperial power, because they have the greatest impact on the life of the countries subject to it and especially on the political regime that still dominates in the US, democracy.
The most noticeable change is the increasingly visible dominance of raw power over cooked power. It is not a question of affirming that, contrary to what happened before, raw power prevails today on a global scale and unequivocally over cooked power. I really believe that the two forms of power have always been present and that in different parts of the world crude power has always prevailed (let it be said by Central America and Latin America throughout the 20th century or the Vietnam of the 1960s and 1970s) . It is a matter of verifying that the form of raw power seems to be globally dominant today and above all more visible. There are two ways in which this visibility becomes more evident: on the one hand, the passage from victory over the adversary to the extermination of the enemy and, on the other, the hyper discrepancy between principles and practices.
From victory over the adversary to the extermination of the enemy
The extermination of political enemies has always been one of the weapons of choice for dictatorial governments. In recent times, the cases of Nazism and Stalinism are well documented. In the latter case, the murderous tare appears to have continued even after the end of Stalinism and the end of the Soviet regime, as illustrated by the poisoning murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in November 2006 by Kremlin agents, according to confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights in 2021.
Particularly worrying and intriguing is the recourse to the liquidation of political opponents in democratic regimes that, despite convulsions and contradictions, have prevailed in the field of American hegemony. It is estimated that the decline of the American Empire began or became more evident in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq and the war on terror. The idea of the global superiority of capitalism in combining the promise of global development with the promise of freedom (a combination that the Soviet model could not achieve) fell apart and was replaced by the nationalist and unilateral defense of the United States against external and internal enemies.
The conflictive coexistence with rules agreed between political adversaries, which is the essence of democracy, was gradually replaced by the idea of the urgency of exterminating the enemy, before which the end justifies the means. And the media became the different forms of violence, both legal (the enemy's criminal law) and illegal (counterinsurgency), both physical and otherwise. I insist, this was not a 360-degree change, it was a significant inflection that affected the most diverse forms of political action, not only by the United States, but also by its allies. The growing confusion between the external enemy and the internal enemy has led to the hardening of criminal law (limits to the right of defense, increased punitiveness), the increasing militarization of the police and the use of the army to restore "internal order." Given the obstacles to the violent action of crude power contemplated in international human rights treaties in theaters of war (namely, the Geneva Conventions), unconventional forms of war were invented, irregular wars, the creation of forces was encouraged. illegal parallels to act in conjunction with the armed forces, such as militias and paramilitary groups (for example,in Colombia), and recourse to mercenary armies was extended with the same objectives of circumventing international human rights defense organizations.
The violence of raw power is exercised today in many ways that may or may not involve physical violence. The neutralization or cancellation, as it would be said today, of political adversaries has become a common measure carried out by national or foreign agencies, resorting to illegal wiretapping, false news, threats, hate speech. In the last ten years, the neutralization of politicians considered hostile to US interests has new weapons, such as the so-called "soft coups", supposedly carried out within the framework of democratic normality, and lawfare, the crude manipulation of the judicial system (almost always with the militant support of the hegemonic media) to achieve specific political objectives, of which the Lavo Jato Operation in Brazil is today one of the most notorious examples on a global scale.
When neutralization was not possible or sufficient, the assassination of political, military and social leaders was resorted to. The involvement of the CIA in the assassination of political leaders is well known, from Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected head of government in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, assassinated in 1961, to the assassination project of Julian Assange, apparently in force. since at least 2017. The multiple and, at times, bizarre attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro were also known. It seems fair to say that the more intimate the alliance with the United States, the more common has been the resort to murdering political opponents. These are the cases, among others, of Colombia, Israel and Saudi Arabia. In colombia, Despite the formal end of political violence with the signing of the Peace Accords with the most important guerrilla group (FARC) in Havana, in 2016, 1,237 social leaders have been assassinated since then, including 348 indigenous leaders and 86 Afro-descendant leaders . In addition, 295 ex-combatants, guerrillas who began or resumed civil life in compliance with the Peace Accords, were assassinated. On September 18 of this year, the unsuspecting New York Times reported the assassination, through some kind of sophisticated remote control, of another Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, perpetrated by Mossad, the Israeli secret services, apparently with the prior knowledge of President Donald Trump. It was just the latest example of state terrorism by Israel. In fact, He followed the example of the United States, whose secret services had assassinated, on January 3, 2020, by drones, one of the most respected Iranian generals, Qasem Soleimani. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of Prince Mohammed bin Salman was particularly well known.
In the period of greatest visibility of crude power in which we live, perhaps the analysis of the well-known historian Alfred McCoy should be taken into account, according to which, given the history of destabilizing actions of the CIA, a country allied to the United States. it is in a more vulnerable and dangerous position than an enemy country. In fact, over many decades, the CIA showed great difficulties in destabilizing countries such as the Soviet Union, China, North Korea or Vietnam, but it was very effective in destabilizing governments of countries that, being allies, wanted to claim at some point. some autonomy in relation to US geostrategic interests. Whenever conflicts were intense and outcomes uncertain, destabilizing actions tended to be ambiguous and misleading (conflicting messages to conflicting parties) to ensure that US interests prevailed, whichever party was victorious. On the other hand, this experience should be especially taken into account by politicians in the orbit of the American Empire in the current international political situation.
Translation by Antoni Aguiló and José Luis Exeni Rodríguez
Boaventura de Sousa Santos - Portuguese academic. Doctor in Sociology, Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). Distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) and various academic establishments around the world. He is one of the world's leading social scientists and researchers in the area of legal sociology and is one of the main promoters of the World Social Forum. Article submitted to Other News by the author's office.
Original Contents by Other News - Voices Against the Tide
