Reading Aloud: What Is Power? by Fred Dewey (short version) (2024)

The late Fred Dewey’s essay "What Is Power?" rendered on film becomes something like a Greek chorus of very different voices, rising to affirm what we find hardest to believe at this moment: that power does not in fact reside among the powerful but is always there for we, the people, to reclaim. This film adds a new dimension to a text which asks many questions: What is the real nature of power? Where does it actually reside? How do we respond to, and understand, powerlessness? Why is protest utterly inadequate? What happens when people read philosophy out loud to each other? Inspired by Godard, people read the essay "What Is Power?" out loud to the film viewer as if across the table at one of Fred Dewey's table readings of Hannah Arendt's works.