WHAT IS POWER?

(Spring 2025)

Jaweria A. Chaudhry

Jc09631

Paper 1

(Assignment #2 Response)

“I believe, as a student of the sciences and someone who has close to no experience in
philosophy, that power is the root of human existence. Everything that we strive towards,
in one way or another, is a key to gain power. The ‘rat race’ that all humans are identified
to be a part of is just their hunger for power. All our physical traits that may seem
appealing to someone else is just a form of power, a weapon that we possess in our
palette. The power of wisdom, the base of seeking knowledge is just so that we may be
at a better position than the next person. Hence, making us more powerful.

Albeit it may seem like a word fulfilled with negative connotations, I resonate to its
positive aspect all the same. I strongly concur there is at least some beauty in it as well.
Not having read any famous philosopher, based on my limited knowledge and view of
the world, religion is probably the foremost in my list of subjects/topics that possess
‘power’.

Conclusively, the possession of power is a necessity and understanding of your own

true power is the ultimate goal.”

Rethinking Power

At the start of the semester, my understanding of power was intuitive and emotionally
driven. I believed power to be central to human existence, rooted in desire, beauty,
religion, and wisdom. Initially, I saw power mainly as something everyone desires, but
in a selfish, materialistic way. To me, it was a tangible goal—something individuals
sought for dominance, survival, or self-worth. Power appeared competitive, merely an
instrument to be used personally. While I didn’t explicitly connect it to structural
dominance or subtle social mechanisms, I strongly felt its significance, convinced that
everyone sought power because everyone needed it. Being a student of the sciences, I
doubted my ability to fully grasp such philosophical concepts.

My perspective changed significantly over the course of the semester, especially

through engaging with course readings. My original notion of power evolved into a more
complex and nuanced understanding. I now see power not simply as something one
possesses or wields but as deeply embedded within ideology, discourse, and
subjectivity in a Foucauldian context. This essay documents my journey from viewing
power as possession to understanding it as a pervasive social force, drawing on
insights from The Theory Toolbox by Nealon and Giroux, Michel Foucault: Key Concepts
edited by Diana Taylor, and our class discussions.

Nealon and Giroux’s The Theory Toolbox played a crucial role in reshaping my earlier
static views. Their discussions on language, identity, and ideology, particularly
regarding religion, challenged my initial perspective, helping me see power beyond
political institutions and individual action. I found their assertion that "everything is
suspect" both overwhelming and transformative, prompting me to reconsider beliefs I
had long accepted as facts, including gender roles, social norms, and religious
authority. Growing up in a conservative, religious household, especially as a girl, I
experienced many stereotypes firsthand. Understanding that these stereotypes were
not natural but socially constructed provided me with a liberating perspective.

Moreover, Nealon and Giroux helped me recognize reading and writing as power-laden
practices—both shaped by and shaping our world—leading me to challenge
essentialist ideas. Initially, I had regarded religion as the ultimate form of power due to
its eternal truths. However, Nealon’s work exposed how these "truths" are socially
constructed through power relations to maintain their authority (Chapter 6, The Theory
Toolbox). It became clear that societal consensus, particularly regarding religious
values and facts, is inherently ideological (Chapter 5, The Theory Toolbox). This
revelation profoundly impacted me, suggesting that power is not just misleading us but
actively constructing the very truths we live by.

The concept of language was particularly striking for me. From our first lesson, where
we explored the fundamental human capacity for understanding, I became deeply
intrigued. Nealon emphasized that language is social, contextual, and historical—not
natural or neutral (Chapters 2 and 3, The Theory Toolbox). This highlighted the deep
connection between what we say and what we are allowed to know. If language
mediates our existence, as Heidegger and Agamben argue, power must operate not
only physically but also through language itself. A class discussion about how colonial
narratives depicted the "Orient" as backward, thereby reinforcing imperialist power
dynamics, further clarified the significant role of discourse and language in exercising
power.

What I had once considered objective truth or neutral knowledge, I began to suspect
was influenced significantly by power. Our class lectures reinforced this by
demonstrating historical examples of how certain ideas, like those about gender or
race, became "common sense" through repeated authoritative discourse. Recognizing
this helped me appreciate power’s subtle yet profound role in shaping societal norms
and beliefs.

Transformations/ Developments

The lectures deepened this thought process by not only tracing the historical shifts from
traditional foundationalism to anti-foundationalist critique but also painting modernity
itself as a system of ordering, of binaries. Although I was sceptical at have taken this
course as a freshman, but I must say, in most cases, the readings of this course aligned
rather directly with those of the “What Is Modernity” course, helping me unveil new
outlooks on the subject matter. The third interesting doctrine was: “Identity” how we
have prioritized sameness, and differences have been suppressed. This system being
upheld by “logocentrism”—a faith in reason, language, and the Western self; a concept
that was introduced in your lectures, led to the question posed by postmodernity: What
happens when you lose that certainty? (Chapter 9, The Theory Toolbox) It was
Agamben’s words that I found unsettling yet at least honest: “The foundations of
violence are to be sought in the violence of foundations.” This called into question even
the most well-intentioned structures. I began to see how binaries such as male/female,
civilized/savage, fact/fiction aren't just oppositions—they are hierarchies. (Lecture 2)
They enable some voices while silencing others. And so, power became not just what
people have, but how people are framed, who gets to speak, and what gets counted as
knowledge. How we just assume it’s natural that some people are on top and others at
the bottom – actually enables power relations to solidify into unchallengeable
dominance (6 Dianna Taylor — Michel Foucault - Key Concepts.pdf). This realization
resonated with my own values. Although not explicitly discussed in texts, I am implicitly
guided by an ethical outlook that values social justice and questions hierarchy.
Foucault’s perspective gave theoretical depth to that instinct: it is crucial to question
what is presented as inevitable or natural, because those narratives might be precisely
where power is operating to defend the status quo (6 Dianna Taylor — Michel Foucault -
Key Concepts.pdf).

From the philosophical idea of the sovereign individual, we moved to a world where
identity is not given but made. As a Pakistani woman, my “subjectivity” is not my
essence, but a layered, historical construction. Not decided by me, but shaped by
language, class, family, culture, and state. (Chapter 10, The Theory Toolbox)

The real transformation in my understanding came with our focused study of Michel
Foucault. The shift from Nealon’s broad theoretical tools to Foucault’s analytic
precision was like moving from a Monet painting to a microscopic cell review. I started
to see that power operates at multiple levels simultaneously. In class, when we
examined Foucault’s ideas, you outlined five propositions that Lynch attributes to
Foucault. Two of these especially dismantled my earlier view: First, that power should
be seen “not as a property, but as a strategy” – more like a continuous battle than a
legal right or possession (6 Dianna Taylor — Michel Foucault - Key Concepts.pdf). And
third (in Foucault’s schema), that “power comes from below”; initially, it was counter-
intuitive to me. I had thought of power mostly in terms of rulers and laws (a top-down
image). Foucault, by contrast, urges us to look at the “micro” level: the everyday, taken-
for-granted ways we behave and comply, which collectively give rise to larger “macro”
structures of power (6 Dianna Taylor — Michel Foucault - Key Concepts.pdf). Our
lecture on Disciplinary Power, aided by Bentham’s Panopticon design helped make this
belief concrete.

Feder’s work on Foucault’s concept of the “subject” especially challenged me. If we

are made into subjects through practices of discipline, language, and normalization,
then the very idea of agency that we previously touched must be rethought. The
intricate web of how we are “subjected” even as we try to “be” subjects. The Mobius
strip analogy captured this beautifully—how power and identity are interwoven, looping
in and out of each other endlessly. It really went on to show how power isn’t merely
coercive but productive. One lecture aimed towards how there was no concept of
“homosexuality” as an identity – it was through medical and psychiatric discourse that
such a category was created, bringing individuals under new forms of surveillance and
social regulation. This example acted as the best representation of power’s productive
nature.

Finally, my understanding of freedom also evolved here. Before, freedom meant self-
determination, maybe even rebellion. Now, I realize freedom may lie not in escaping
power -an impossibility. Instead, it finds home in understanding it, naming it, and
finding the slippages where resistance can be imagined.

Towards My (A General) Theory of Power

So what does power mean to me now?

It is still tied to hunger and beauty and religion, the difference? These are not individual
hungers. They are discursive fields. Power is not just the ability to act; it is the system
that defines what counts as action. It defines how we hunger, what we call beautiful,
and how we interpret the divine.
Power, to me, is the interwoven set of relations that construct the world and us within it.
It operates through language, representation, institutions, and bodies. It is not
inherently good or evil. It is productive and historical. I now understand power as a form
of knowledge—one that must be analyzed critically. As a Muslim woman, I find this
especially resonant. The frameworks that have shaped my faith, identity, and social role
are also power-laden. To critique them is not blasphemy—it is consciousness. As
opposed to an year old Jaweria’s beliefs that might have felt guilty to raise these
questions, or even contrary to how people around me think today, my views are now
real, and more importantly, my own. Not just what has been imposed on me. The point
is not to escape power, but to become aware of its operations. To ask: Who benefits?
Who speaks? Who is silenced? And in those cracks, to imagine otherwise.

This course has not given me easy answers. It has, in fact, made everything harder to
explain.. And maybe that’s the point. What began as a simple belief—that power is
something we chase, something beautiful and tied to wisdom—now feels almost naïve
in hindsight. But I don’t regret starting there. That early idea wasn’t wrong; it just wasn’t
ready. Power, as I now understand it, is not an object we hold—it’s the architecture that
defines what holding even means. It doesn’t sit outside us, waiting to be seized; it runs
through the grain of our gestures, our silences, our certainties.

Foucault was right when he said, “Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what
we are, but to refuse what we are” (Foucault in Taylor, 2014). That refusal—the courage
to rethink is the most radical form of power I’ve encountered. And Nealon and Giroux
gave me the vocabulary to realize that theory is not about mastering content, but about
being mastered by the questions that haunt us. As they put it, “thinking begins in
provocation.”

This class has made my world a little less stable, and I’m thankful for that. It means I’ve
started to see. My understanding of power isn’t complete. It’s alive. It moves. It resists
definition. And maybe that’s the most honest definition I can give: power is the
condition of becoming—of rethinking, of being undone, and of imagining otherwise.
Ultimately, I now define power not in a single sentence, but in a dynamic model: power
is everywhere, but it is not everything.

Works Cited

Nealon, Jeffrey T., and Susan Searls Giroux. The Theory Toolbox: Critical Concepts for
the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. 3rd ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.
Taylor, Dianna, editor. Michel Foucault: Key Concepts. Routledge, 2014.

Lynch, Kevin. “The Political Rationality of Power.” In Michel Foucault: Key Concepts,
edited by Dianna Taylor, Routledge, 2014.

Feder, Ellen K. “Power/Knowledge.” In Michel Foucault: Key Concepts, edited by

Dianna Taylor, Routledge, 2014.

Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Translated by Michael Hardt, University of

Minnesota Press, 1993.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by

Robert Hurley, Vintage Books, 1990.

When I first encountered Muhammad Iqbal's poetic statement, "Your arm is enforced
with the strength of the Divine Unity; You are the followers of Mustafa, your country is
Islam," it vividly captured the intertwined reality of religion and nationalism in
contemporary Pakistan. Growing up here, I constantly noticed how religion wasn't
merely a personal faith but a fundamental element of our collective national
consciousness. Exploring this deep connection reveals the enduring legacy of
orientalist and colonial perspectives, which continue to influence modern notions of
language, religion, and national identity. This essay will examine the continuing legacy
of orientalist-colonial ideas of language and religion in the modern world, drawing
heavily from Tomoko Masuzawa’s critique in The Invention of World Religions and
connecting it to ongoing forms of religious nationalism.

Nationalism, in essence, constructs identity through differentiation—it tells us who we

are by explicitly defining what we are not. This notion of identity is deeply embedded in
language and religion, two powerful markers historically utilized to set groups apart.
Tomoko Masuzawa explores how 19th-century European scholars invented a category
of "world religions" to classify and control global religious diversity. This process was
not neutral or objective. Instead, it reflected deep Eurocentric biases, where
Christianity was implicitly taken as the benchmark of universality, rationality, and moral
progress. Other traditions, especially Islam, were interpreted through the lens of
colonial suspicion and racialized hierarchies.

Masuzawa outlines how comparative philology—the study of language families—played

a pivotal role in shaping orientalist ideologies. Scholars such as Franz Bopp and
Wilhelm von Humboldt asserted the superiority of Indo-European languages,
constructing a racial and civilizational hierarchy rooted in linguistic origin. Humboldt
famously argued that language was "the whole essence of its speaker," imbuing
language with metaphysical and cultural significance. Through this lens, Indo-European
(Aryan) languages—and by extension, cultures—were framed as inherently superior,
while Semitic languages were associated with intellectual and moral rigidity.

This linguistic essentialism led to a bifurcation in the perception of religions. Buddhism,

seen as originating from Aryan linguistic and cultural roots, was reimagined as a
rational, philosophical, and universal religion. Islam, by contrast, was depicted as
inherently ethnic and tribal, an extension of Arab culture, incapable of the abstract
philosophical and spiritual depth supposedly found in Aryan traditions. Masuzawa
writes, “The construction of Aryan Buddhism and the reconstitution of Semitic Islam
occurred by virtue of the new science of language.” This observation encapsulates the
orientalist impulse to remake world religions according to European projections,
sustaining a civilizational dichotomy between the West and its constructed East.

This orientalist framework had far-reaching implications. Abraham Kuenen, a Dutch

Arabist and theologian, argued that Islam lacked true universalism. According to him,
Muhammad borrowed elements from existing traditions—Judaism and Christianity—
without proper spiritual innovation. Kuenen wrote, “Mohammed made Islam out of
elements which were supplied to him very largely from outside… we miss the true
character of universalism.” In his view, Islam’s success was not due to its spiritual
depth but its political virulence and ethnic narrowness. He deemed its expansion a
result of Arab ambition, not genuine universal appeal. Such assessments ignored the
vast theological, cultural, and linguistic diversity within the Islamic world, reducing it to
a monolithic, rigid tradition bound by Arab identity.

This attitude did not remain in the academy. It shaped colonial policies and popular
imagination. Otto Pfleiderer, another influential figure in the European religious
scholarship of the 19th century, went further. In his lectures, he declared Islam to be
rigidly legalistic and lacking in religious thought or depth. He portrayed it as “a brake on
the progress of free human civilization,” and likened Allah to an Oriental despot—
emphasizing fear, vengeance, and fatalism. Pfleiderer argued that Islam's conception
of God was devoid of philosophical sophistication, rendering it incompatible with
modern civilization. These sweeping generalizations not only racialized Islam but
entrenched the idea that certain religious traditions were obstacles to progress,
freedom, and development.

Meanwhile, Buddhism was reconstructed as a pure, universalistic tradition—especially

in its so-called "original" form. As Masuzawa explains, European scholars believed that
“those Asian Buddhists had little connection or access to the early textual sources of
their religion,” suggesting that Europeans were better positioned to understand and
represent Buddhism than its actual practitioners. This ironic twist, where colonizers
claimed more authentic insight into a tradition than its followers, illustrates the deep
paternalism at the heart of orientalist knowledge production. In essence, Buddhism’s
philosophical allure allowed it to be claimed by Europe as part of its Aryan heritage,
while Islam remained stuck in its Semitic otherness.

In the case of Pakistan and other Muslim-majority nations, these orientalist

constructions continue to shape religious nationalism. Islam is often invoked as both a
unifying force and a cultural boundary-marker, linking language, script, dress, and
behavior to sacred identity. In Pakistan, Arabic script and Arabic words carry an aura of
sanctity. As a child, I remember the reverence with which anything written in Arabic was
treated—irrespective of its actual content. This linguistic sanctification stems not from
a deep understanding of the language, but from a colonial inheritance that ethnicized
the sacred, transforming script into a sign of spiritual authenticity. Masuzawa critiques
this tendency when she writes, “The modern world order has been created on racial
order, which has interlocked the ideas of race, culture, language, religion, and
territory.”

This phenomenon is not limited to the Islamic world. In India, Hindu nationalism
constructs a narrative of national purity rooted in Hindu religious identity, where other
religious communities—especially Muslims—are treated as outsiders. In the West,
anti-Muslim rhetoric often draws on orientalist depictions of Islam as violent, irrational,
and incompatible with secular democracy. These discourses may seem disparate, but
they share a common genealogy in colonial constructions of religion. Even seemingly
secular policies, such as France’s bans on hijabs, are steeped in colonial histories that
racialized Muslim bodies and sought to regulate them under the guise of modernity.

Religious nationalism thus continues to reproduce colonial power structures by

encoding religion into statecraft and identity. It leverages religion not only as a source of
moral authority but also as a tool of exclusion and homogenization. What began as a
scholarly effort to classify and understand religions became a mechanism of control—
dividing traditions into world religions, ethnic cults, universalist philosophies, and rigid
legalisms. As Masuzawa’s work demonstrates, the very notion of "world religion" was
constructed to uphold European cultural superiority, presenting some religions as
capable of universal truths while casting others as parochial and fixed.

Yet, there is also room for resistance. The same religious traditions used to justify
colonial hierarchies have also inspired anti-colonial struggles. In South Asia, Islamic
revivalist movements, Sikh militancy, Hindu reformism, and Christian missionary work
all played roles in resisting imperial domination. The language of faith provided a
vocabulary for justice, solidarity, and emancipation. These histories remind us that
religious nationalism is not a monolith; it can also be a site of contestation and
transformation.

In conclusion, the modern entanglement of religion, language, and nationalism cannot

be understood without grappling with the orientalist-colonial legacy dissected by
Masuzawa. Her work reveals how European scholars racialized religion through the
emerging science of language, constructing enduring hierarchies that continue to
shape political and cultural discourses. Recognizing these legacies is not merely an
academic task—it is a necessary step toward unlearning the colonial scripts that still
govern our subconscious assumptions. Whether in the sanctification of script, the
exclusion of religious minorities, or the persistent stereotype of Islam as violent and
irrational, we see colonial echoes in our contemporary world. Deconstructing these
narratives allows us to reimagine a world where religion is not a boundary but a bridge—
a space for pluralism, not policing.