ABSTRACT
Exposing is the mode of elucidation that sheds light on the relationship of concepts to power. This relationship has two dimensions. On one hand, people deploy words in 'battle', to achieve particular moral or material goals. On the other hand, the meanings of seemingly neutral concepts are often shaped, in ways that people no longer notice, by past battles won and lost. This chapter discusses how to elucidate both of these relationships of concepts to power; how to expose concepts as both instruments and legacies of power. It looks at how Ido Oren proceeds, because he is unusually explicit in describing the practical basics of doing conceptual research that is both reflexive, turned back upon social science itself and genealogical, focused on the rediscovery of past struggles. To conduct analysis that is reflexively genealogical, Oren teaches, involves four basic steps: choosing a disciplinary concept; investigating the grammar of the corresponding term; relating the changes; and destabilizing the stable.
