Thursday July 27, 2023; 9:16 AM EDT
- On the first page of "The Power of the Powerless," Vaclav Havel's key essay about activism, he addressed two words that Western outsiders used to discuss citizens who did not walk the narrow pathways the Czech government set out for them. The harsh, calcified ways of an Iron Curtain government were deeply menacing, but the analytical language chosen by outsiders was also a burden to a disempowered people. In response, Havel sets out in this long essay to clarify the circumstances, thinking, and actions of people inside the country in their own context and on their own terms.#
- Disempowered people not allowed to explain themselves in public in language of their own choosing, in words they see as adequate to their experiences -- this happens to groups in the United States all the time. Other people's words and categories dominate the country's understanding of their lives.#
- Below is my summary or paraphrase of Havel's first page. The essay "The Power of the Powerless" appears in a longer book of the same name and in other volumes.#
- Section 1.#
- Because Vaclav Havel was first a writer, it is not surprising that he begins with the meaning of a key word. He says: This word, dissent, used by outsiders, Westerners, to describe what they see only from a distance, needs to be understood in finer detail than has been customary. The same goes for the companion word, dissident.#
- By 1978, the system of power in Eastern Europe no longer sustains itself by leading with brute force. Nonconformity finds expression now, but not within officially approved social structures. The system is too much frozen within its own structures and prejudices to make room for nonconformity.#
- Who are these people who have been called dissidents, and what is the nature of their dissent? What are their historical origins; what, if anything, can they accomplish in the way of changing their society? The West has crowned them as the local heroes, but what is their real nature? #
- To answer these questions--to see how those outside this harsh and calcified system of power can influence their society--it is necessary to look more closely at the operations of power here, Havel says. (End of summary of section 1.)#