Give and Take

Episode 206: Power in Modernity, with Isaac Ariail Reed



April 18th, 2020  •  1 hr 4 mins  •  Download (59.3 MB)  •  Link with Timestamp

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My guest is Isaac Ariail Reed. He's the author of "Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies." In it he proposes a bold new theory of power that describes overlapping networks of delegation and domination. Chains of power and their representation, linking together groups and individuals across time and space, create a vast network of intersecting alliances, subordinations, redistributions, and violent exclusions. Reed traces the common action of “sending someone else to do something for you” as it expands outward into the hierarchies that control territories, persons, artifacts, minds, and money.