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In October 2017, #MeToo quickly became a global phenomenon: shared over 12 million times on social media in the first twenty-four hours, reaching over eighty-five countries, there would be a "before" and an "after." As a polyphonic global cry against the prevalence of sexual violations, #MeToo is hard to apprehend or theorize within traditional frameworks. Neither a social movement as such nor an organized, coordinated campaign, #MeToo has no leaders, structures, defined aims, or specific goals behind it. Hence, what exactly is #MeToo, and how can we understand it in all its contradictions, nuances, and complexities? This article argues that #MeToo can best be understood as a contemporary form of parrhesia, a practice from Ancient Greece that, as Michel Foucault writes, consists of speaking dangerous truth to power and taking risks in doing so out of a sense of duty to improve a situation for oneself and others. Seeing it in this way allows us to complicate our understanding of both #MeToo and parrhesia as a collective, polyphonic, and decentralized praxis that opened up new ways of being and doing (justice) in relation to sexual violations. It is the collective character of #MeToo and parrhesia on social media that led some dominant truths about sexual violations to be challenged while others remained intact. Hence, for feminist scholars and activists, seeing #MeToo as parrhesia and parrhesia as #MeToo provides avenues to capitalize on what courageous truth speaking on social media can achieve without exaggerating its reach, thus doing justice to the millions of voices that spoke out against sexual violations without ignoring the limitations of #MeToo and parrhesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature in philosophy of science has addressed purported notions of explanatory virtues--'explanatory power', 'unification', and 'coherence'. In each case, a probabilistic relation between a theory and data is said to measure the power of an explanation, or degree of unification, or degree of coherence. This essay argues that the measures do not capture cases that are paradigms of scientific explanation, that the available psychological evidence indicates that the measures do not capture judgements of explanatory power, and, finally, that the measures do not provide useful methods for selecting hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If one person dominates another, they have a certain kind of power over them, but what kind? I answer this question first by providing an account of why ordinary, innocent forms of social power don't enable domination. You can't dominate someone unless you have what I call "impositional power." But even impositional power counts as domination only to the degree that it can be wielded arbitrarily. I argue that we should understand the arbitrariness of power as a function of its "deliberative isolation": that it is checked only by the empowered person's (or persons') sense of relevant practical reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault developed different but complementary theories about visibility and power. In an Arendtian 'space of appearance,' the common visibility of actors generates power, which is understood as the potential for collective action. In a Foucauldian 'space of surveillance,' visibility facilitates control and normalization. Power generated in spaces of appearance depends on and reproduces horizontal relationships of equality, whereas power in spaces of surveillance depends on and reproduces vertical relationships of inequality. The contrast between a space of appearance and a space of surveillance enhances both Arendt's and Foucault's critiques of modern society by both clarifying Arendt's concerns with the rise of the 'social' in terms of spaces of surveillance, and enriching Foucault's notion of 'resistance.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the career of French intellectual François Ewald, a onetime radical who studied under 20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault and later went on to work with the French insurance industry and employers' groups on ways to reform the welfare state. Ewald's work with Foucault's ideas about power and "governmentality" is discussed, as is his atypical interpretation of Foucault as undermining the basis of revolutionary politics, and instead creating a rationale for engagement with the political and social system.

Deals with a study that analyzed the moral and ethical aspects of reasonable illegal force. Conception of a rule on liberal law in an ideal society by expositor John Rawls; Concepts of reasonableness and illegal force; Just use of illegal force in a nonideal society.

Argues that Michel Foucault, in his later work, strove to resituate the subject as being produced by power, and sought the balance between agency and structure, passivity and activity. Passive subject; Foucault's notion of freedom; Power as a constitutive force; Reexamination of the power-truth-relationship.

Discusses the traditional association between freedom and subjugation or defenseless susceptibility to interference rather than actual interference. Subjugation or domination exemplified by slavery; Empowerment of the powerless against the powerful; Antipower as a sort of power; Ways of promoting antipower.

Discusses the challenges of local politics in communist states. Analysis on the ideological imperative and practicalities of power; Overview of the problem of local power accretion; Comments on both party and state organizations.

Comments on an article which examined the concept and definitions of the term power. Comparison of ordinary and reconstructed language in the analysis of the term; Argument on the conceptual difference between power and rational persuasion; Contention on the analysis of relationship between power and intention.

Discusses various concepts and definitions of power from context of political science. Proposed definition of power; Power as excluding rational persuasion; Power as excluding inducements; Power as intentional control; Power related to a powerholder's preferences.

Presents a study that explored the concept of power, politics and personality in the post-industrial society in the United States during the 1960s. Literary criticism on the values and motivations of student radicals; overview of a cross-national study of student personality in the country; Conclusions drawn from the study.

Opinion. Comments on how political scientists conceptualize power as a phenomenon that wears a face, while focusing on Robert Dahl's analysis of power. Reference to debates among contemporary political theorists; Proposal of reconceptualizing power's mechanisms as social boundaries; Difference which de-facing power makes for critizing and analyzing power relations.

Addresses the issues discussed in a commentary regarding the concept of power. Analysis on the language used in the discussion of the term; Clarification on the relationship between power and rational persuasion; Discussion on the relationship of power with intention and cause.

This article discusses the insights of anthropologist Alcida Rita Ramos on the article of Michael Carrithers entitled "Anthropology as a Moral Science of Possibilities." Ramos points out that the Carrither's interpretation of the concept of man with virtually unlimited possibilities could easily be an anthropologist for whom established truths have no place and cultural relativism dissolves uncritical certainties. Carrither's notion of irony is a privileged trope in unraveling contradictions and differences of opinion that are equally legitimate in the social setting where they occur. Ramos relates the concepts of relational analyses and pragmatics of ritual wherein moral aesthetics highlights the component of improvisation in social interaction. The main point of the thesis of Carrithers notion of moral science of possibilities seems to be not simply to provide programmatic synopsis to help ethnographers unveil the complexities of otherness but to expose the rhetoric of the powerful at its ironic best. Ramos contended that the instruments of power are national symbols and cultural symbols.