Power operates as a communication medium of conditional alternative-pairs, not raw force

Evidence

3. The basic structure of power as a communication medium, that is, as a combination, which is made conditional in reverse (unfortunately it cannot be formulated more simply), of pairs of alternatives which are comparatively speaking quite negative and again comparatively speaking quite positive, accounts for the fact that power appears as possibility (potential, opportunity, disposition) and also acts effectively as such. On this basis communicative interactions are rendered into different modalities from the standpoint of power. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 624

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines power as a recursive combination of alternative-pairs — the core Luhmann reversal moving from “condition then act” to “act conditioned by reverse-coding.”
• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s project: power-as-medium mirrors Luhmann’s trust-as-medium, and Stevens’s deference is the ‘reversal’ that makes the master’s control conditional. — connects to: The concept is a formative power, not an empty receptacle — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 208; Media report power relations without transmitting their lived effects — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 883; Networks are how power operates, not how it gets dissolved — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1583