ABSTRACT
It is characteristic of naive individualism to conceive of power in interpersonal relations as a property of individual persons, any one of whom may 'possess' more or less of it than any other. Despite the pointers to deconstruction and a continuing goal of de-mystifying structures of power, this is not really a post-structuralist position. But this need not necessarily be the case, especially if it is borne in mind that the vitality and fruitfulness of any theory rests in its power as an analytic tool. These are conceived of by both writers as capable of being overcome or turned to account through the processes of education, as if these very processes themselves were not deeply implicated in the production, maintenance and the reproduction of the structures of class power.
