Symbolic Power
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Symbolic Power
Symbolic Power refers to the capacity to shape reality, social order, and individual consciousness through the control and manipulation of meaning, classification, and representation. It is the power to define what is real, legitimate, sacred, true, and desirable—not through direct coercion or economic force, but through the encoding of dominant narratives, archetypes, and values into the symbolic structures of society (language, myth, ritual, law, media, education, etc.).[1]
Concept Map
Key Terms
- Accumulating Class
- Labour Value
- Mode of Accumulation
- Mode of Production
- Mode of Reproduction
- Slave Class
- Surplus Value
- System Agent
- Unfettered Accumulation
- World System
- Creation Template
- Ideological Institution
- Master Narrative
- Mechanisms of Compliance
- Narrative
- Subjugated Knowledge
- Symbol Factory
- Symbolic Fabric
- Symbolic Power
- Symbolic Structure
- Symbolic Violence
- System Architect
- Toxic Socialization
Syncretic Terms
Related LP Terms
Non-LP Related Terms
Why This Matters
Notes
Symbolic Power operates invisibly, embedding itself in Creation Templates, archetypal systems, and the normative scaffolding of everyday life. It is exercised by System Architects and the Accumulative Classes through Symbol Factories (religious institutions, schools, think tanks, entertainment industries) that produce and circulate symbols and meaning-frames designed to secure compliance, submission, and internalized subordination (false consciousness).
Symbolic Power legitimates structural inequality by disguising domination as destiny, hierarchy as merit, and exclusion as failure. It functions by making elite interests appear natural, sacred, or morally necessary, and by saturating collective consciousness with archetypes like “Only the Chosen,” “The Righteous,” “The Enemy,” and “The Unworthy.” Those who internalize these codes become self-regulating agents of their own oppression, believing their social position is deserved or divinely ordained.
Within the Triumph of Spirit Archetype System (TOSAS), Symbolic Power is a mechanism of the Old Energy Regime used to distort, hijack, and weaponize archetypes for the consolidation of power. It sustains Archetypal Corruption and resists the emergence of Harmonic Social Structures, where meaning-making is decentralized and aligned with authentic connection, equality, and evolutionary growth.
Quotes
Citation and Legal
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Footnotes
- ↑ Pierre Bourdieu, “Social Space and Symbolic Power,” Sociological Theory 7, no. 1 (1989): 14–25, https://doi.org/10.2307/202060;