A post-humanist, feminist approach to power
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2021-01-16

Power is a key aspect of our volatile political times. It runs through all relationships and plays a central role in sustaining unequal and damaging assemblages that seek to marginalise those who are different. For radical feminists who seek to make the world anew it is clear that power will be central to this project. But, what is power, and how is it best understood in a post-humanist and relational approach? In this paper, I argue that all too frequently we adopt a very traditional reading of power where it is understood to be exercised by male subjects over a multitude of increasingly powerless objects; objects including things, plants and animals but also women, minorities and the less privileged. Re-understanding power is necessary to fight injustice and to combat climate change. I argue for an understanding of power in a post-humanist frame where the category human is historical and relational and difference is not about measuring the distance travelled from humanism’s idealised ‘Man’. Power is not something to be possessed or owned but rather something that flows through all relationships. By shifting our perspective on power we can see new ways to disentangle the assemblages of the patriarchy and build new assemblages in their place.


Rachel Crellin, University of Leicester