What is Power?

Power is a pervasive phenomenon yet there is little consensus on what it is and how it should be understood.

In this book the cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han develops a fresh and original perspective on the nature of power, shedding new light on this key feature of social and political life.

Power is commonly defined as a causal relation: an individual's power is the cause that produces a change of behaviour in someone else against the latter's will.

Han rejects this view of power, arguing that it doesn't do justice to the complexity of power.

In Han's view, power is better understood as a mediation between ego and alter which creates a complex array of reciprocal interdependencies.