Ideas about Power as an Object of Historical Research

Approaches to the Problem

Abstract

The article raises the problem of ideas about power as an object of historical research. After analyzing the Russian humanitarian tradition of thinking about power and ideas about it, the author emphasizes that for Russian-speaking researchers, power, as a rule, is conceived as a timeless, ahistorical entity. Such a thing leads to the fact that in the works of historians, all attention is focused on the analysis of imperious paraphernalia, imperious rituals and ceremonies. At the same time, medieval theories of power seem to be ignored, domestic scholars replace them with the definition given by Max Weber. The author notes that power and ideas about power have a different nature - while power itself has a socio-psychological nature, the concept of power and ideas about it have a socio-linguistic nature. This means, first of all, that they arise in the language environment, live and develop in it. Accordingly, the study of ideas about power without close attention to the epoch's language and the then-existing discursive modalities of thinking about power will be obviously incomplete and will not bring satisfactory results. In the final part of the article, the author suggests ways to overcome the current situation. First, we are talking about the need to increase attention to the discursive models of talking about power, adopted in a particular age. The appeal to language implies, in this case, a detailed analysis of the existing theoretical constructions about power created in the era under consideration. Only after this, it seems legitimate to turn to the analysis of ceremonies, rituals and symbols.