Ambrogio Lorenzetti, from Allegoria ed effetti del Buono e del Cattivo Governo, 1338-39
A good definition of political power is that which characterises it as the art of placing people in false relationships. This, and nothing else, is what power does first and foremost, in order to then govern them as it wishes. Once they have allowed themselves to be drawn into oblique relationships in which they cannot recognise themselves, people are easily manipulated and oriented as desired. If they so easily believe the lies proposed to them, it is because the relationships in which, without realizing it, they already find themselves are false.
The first step in a political strategy worthy of the name is therefore the search for a way out of the false relationships into which power has placed people in order to govern them. But this is precisely not easy, because a false relationship is precisely one from which there is no visible way out. Something like a way out becomes possible only if we understand that the false relationship is the very form of power, that to be in a false relationship is to be in a relationship of power. That is, the relationship is false not because we lie, but because we lack awareness of its essentially political character. Whether relationships that are apparently intimate and private, or those technically or socially determined, are in truth always already political—that is, we find ourselves in a false relationship from the very beginning—this awareness is the only way to fundamentally change the way we experience them.
Giorgio Agamben: On False Relationships
A good definition of political power is that which characterises it as the art of placing people in false relationships. This, and nothing else, is what power does first and foremost, in order to then govern them as it wishes. Once they have allowed themselves to be drawn into oblique relationships in which they cannot recognise themselves, people are easily manipulated and oriented as desired. If they so easily believe the lies proposed to them, it is because the relationships in which, without realizing it, they already find themselves are false.
The first step in a political strategy worthy of the name is therefore the search for a way out of the false relationships into which power has placed people in order to govern them. But this is precisely not easy, because a false relationship is precisely one from which there is no visible way out. Something like a way out becomes possible only if we understand that the false relationship is the very form of power, that to be in a false relationship is to be in a relationship of power. That is, the relationship is false not because we lie, but because we lack awareness of its essentially political character. Whether relationships that are apparently intimate and private, or those technically or socially determined, are in truth always already political—that is, we find ourselves in a false relationship from the very beginning—this awareness is the only way to fundamentally change the way we experience them.
Quodlibet, September 1, 2025