Let's Explore Empowerment with Virginia Vigliar & Matilda Cini
Seedlings of power
Minna Salami puts it very poetically in her essay on exousiance, a term she has coined to redefine power in society: “Power is to human beings what gravity is to rivers. It is the vital source that helps us flow through the meandering streams of our lives.” I believe humans are born in power; that it is not something you have, but something that you are.
To be empowered, we need to understand power. As Virginia Vigliar explains, that’s a lot harder than it might seem – because we might have it all wrong.
Biography
Virginia Vigliar is a culture writer based in Barcelona. Her writing questions, and reflects on, the social paradigms currently in place through an approach centred on the emotional and spiritual as well as on the political and logical.
Mati Cini is a ceramist based in Barcelona. Her work explores the line between utilitarian and artistic objects, the objects and gestures where the menial meets the metaphysic.
Marginalia
Robert Dahl’s power equation — A has power over B to the extent that B does something B would not otherwise do — is a classic example of power interpreted as a relational concept. Read more on in Robert Dahl’s “The Concept of Power“.
Power is everywhere, he said, and comes from everywhere, so in this sense is neither an agency nor a structure. Michel Foucault described power as a meta power that was in constant flux and negotiation. Explore Foucault further by reading “The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge“.
