Areas Of Life In Which Power Is Hidden Behind The Amiable Countenance Of Cultural Familiarity [03.15.98]

‘Foucault has made an important contribution to the analysis of the forms of bourgeois domination. This is a subject that is directly related to my own research interests. I too think that relations of power are incorporated in the least ostensive forms of communication, and that analysis of systematically distorted communication yields results analogous to Foucault’s analysis of discourses. ...The real problem is to understand what is hidden behind intuitions like those, for example, of the ecologists. I think what is involved is a sense that areas which were still more or less the sites of free interaction are now being infringed. Similarly, in spheres of traditional life not yet completely penetrated by capitalism, comparable forms of interaction probably also existed. We must not limit our critique of relationships of power to those institutions in which power is overtly declared, hence to political and social power only; we must extend it to those areas of life in which power is hidden behind the amiable countenance of cultural familiarity.’

Jurgen Habermas [1986]. Habermas - Autonomy & Solidarity. [Interviews - ed. P. Dews]. London : Verso [p. 69/70]