Power and the subjectPower is an inappropriate term. An attempt to adequately define power will ultimately reveal more about the invisible but all too real limits of language. Such an outcome may seem horrific, a direct attack on our sense of reason, and perhaps it is. Power resists the reasonable demand to respect the limits of its own definition. Power can and does exhibit a quality or intensity observed and captured in the written word; yet there is something slippery that allows power to defy a totalizing description. The power is active. Whatever one may write, power will not be objectified. Any talk about power therefore begins with this disadvantage. There is, however, much to be learned from the study of power, knowledge more valuable than a simplistic definition. By focusing on where power exists and has existed, we can also discuss how power relates to or impacts knowledge, ethics, and the individual. " "I mean that in human relationships... power is always present... These relationships are changeable. “reversible and understandable” (McCarthy 139). Like Foucault, my inquiry into power can be based not on the desire to discover the true nature of power but on the acquisition of a new method of approaching and understanding human relationships. arises in the face of power and demands to be taken into account, this is the question of the subject. A concept of the individual, whether seen as a historically linked effect of power like Foucault or as a unique, autonomous creative force like Habermas, seems to underlie and shape any description, definition, or discussion of power. For the Mom...... middle of paper ......New York University Press, 1992.McCarthy, Thomas. “The Critique of Impure Reason: Foucault and the Frankfurt School” In Rethinking Power. Thomas E. Wartenberg ed. New York: State University of New York Press, 1992. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Learn more about power/knowledge”. InRethinking Power. Thomas E. Wartenberg Ed. New York: State University of New York Press, 1992. Wartenberg, Thomas E. “Situating Social Power” in RethinkingPower. Thomas E. Wartenberg Ed. New York: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1992. Young, Iris Marion. “The five faces of oppression”. InRethinking Power. Thomas E. Wartenberg Ed. New York: State University of New York Press, 1992.