单选题 My objective is to analyze certain forms of knowledge, not in terms of repression or law, but in terms of power. But the word power is apt to lead to misunderstandings about the nature, form, and unity of power. By power, I do not mean a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservience of the citizenry. I do not mean, either, a mode of subjugation that, in contrast to violence, has the form of the rule. Finally, I do not have in mind a general system of domination exerted by one group over another, a system whose effects, through successive derivations, pervade the entire social body. The sovereignty of the state, the form of law, or the overall unity of a domination are only the terminal forms power takes. It seems to me that power must be understood as the multiplicity of force relations that are immanent in the social sphere; as the process that, through ceaseless struggle and confrontation, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support that these force relations find in one another, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions that isolate them from one another, and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies. Thus, the viewpoint that permits one to understand the exercise of power, even in its more "peripheral" effects, and that also makes it possible to use its mechanisms as a structural framework for analyzing the social order, must not be sought in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms of power emanate but in the moving substrate of force relations that, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender local and unstable states of power. If power seems omnipresent, it is not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere, not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere. And if power at times seems to be permanent, repetitious, inert, and self-reproducing, it is simply because the overall effect that emerges from all these mobilities is a concatenation that rests on each of them and seeks in turn to arrest their movement. One needs to be communalistic, no doubt; power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategic situation in a particular society.
单选题 The author"s primary purpose in defining power is to______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】解析:作者在首段开门见山地指出本文的写作目的是讲权力,并指出“权力”一词往往会造成人们对其本质、形式以及统一的误解。作者接着对本文的“权力”概念进行界定,指出它不是使人们臣服的机构和机制,不是降服人们的规定,不是一个集团统治另一个集团的制度,也不是风行整个社会的制度,因为国家主权、法律形式和统治权的统一只不过是权力的终极表现形式而已,可见作者界定“权力”的概念是为了避免这些常用概念的误导性,D项符合文意,故为答案。
单选题 According to the passage, which of the following best describes the relationship between law and power?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】解析:作者在第二段给出了本文中所理解的“权力”的概念:它可以是多种多样的势力,可以是过程,可以是支持或冲突,还可以是战略。当该战略起作用时,“权力”的总体设计或机构结晶就会通过国家组织、法律以及各种社会支配权体现出来。“权力”作为战略无影无踪,要通过“法律”来体现,从而我们可以推断“法律”是“权力”的产物,D项符合文意,故为答案。
单选题 Which of the following methods is NOT used extensively by the author in describing his own conception of power?
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】解析:通读全文我们发现,作者通篇都在对文章主题“权力”一词进行阐述,power一词被多次重申(restatement)。具体来讲,作者首段用否定方式界定“权力”不是什么,接着第二段用肯定方式给出“权力”是什么,这种对比的写作方法不仅避免误导读者,更使得读者能够清晰地知道本文所述“权力”的含义;不仅如此,在第二段对“权力”概念的描述中,作者又按性质对其进行了分析和分类,可见A、C和D三项均是作者使用的写作方法,只有B项“给出具体的例子”没有出现,故为答案。
单选题 The author"s attitude toward the various kinds of compulsion employed by social institutions is best described as______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】解析:通过第二段作者给出的“权力”的概念可知,权力是随着势力关系的变化而变化的,作者接着在第三段末句指出,因为势力关系摇摆不定,当权者任何不公平的行为都会导致其权力的动摇,这就使得人们可以理解国家机器行使权力,允许国家体制作为维持社会秩序的框架,可见作者对国家机构实施压迫的态度是“科学的和超然的”,B项符合文意,故为答案。concerned and sympathetic“关心的和同情的”,suspicious and cautious“猜疑的和谨慎的”,reproachful and disturbed“谴责的和不安的”,均可排除。
单选题 It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes the conflict among social forces to be
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】解析:文章第二段作者在描述“权力”的概念时指出,“权力”是普遍存在于社会各角落的势力关系,不同势力通过无休止地斗争和冲突来变革,加强或推翻权力,他们可能在势力关系中获得支持,也可能被其他势力关系孤立,最后权力会因为战略而起作用,形成国家,法律和支配权,可见作者认为各个社会势力间的斗争和冲突是任何社会秩序中都不可避免的,C项符合文意。其他选项内容文章均未提及,可以排除。