Abstract
The objective of this article is to propose the project of an analysis of power, at the level of social ontology, departing from the theory of speech acts. This allows a decomposition of the factors that determine the acceptance of a claim to exercise power, differentiating each of the felicity conditions of the speech act through which the exercise of power is specified. The proposed approach also requires the formulation of a critique of conflictual approaches to power, which presupposes an opposition of interests between agent and subject in a power relationship. Finally, the proposed approach allows us a renewed analysis of the function of background power, understood as a resource that agents can use in their favor.