What the Foucault?
What is Power?
- Generally speaking, “the way in which the conduct of individuals and groups may be directed”,
the conduct in question here includes bodily as well as social conduct”
- Not conceived of as a property or possession of a dominant class but a “complex strategical
situation”, a “multiplicity of force relations” (power relations)
- Creates the individual
- “One of the prime effects of power is that certain bodies, certain gestures, certain discourses,
certain desires come to be identified and constituted as individuals”
- Both an effect of power and the element of its articulation
- We are active agents in our subjection —> self-regulation, the moment we become “the norm”
- “When there is power, there is resistance”
- Death is power’s limit
Relationship between Power and Knowledge
“Power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by
applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is
no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, not any knowledge
that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations”
#1: Knowledge is needed for the exercise of power
- Knowledge serving as the techniques for the successful control of an object
- We willingly submit to experts in their field
- Example of medical practice
- Patients submit to doctors, listen to their advice based on the premise that they are experts
in the area of healthcare provision whereas they are not, hence the party with more
knowledge is in a position of power
- Foucault emphasises that when there is power, there is resistance, can lead to disease
mongering where pharmaceutical companies try to unethically boost the sales of their
medicine —> resistance in the form of increasing criticism against exploitation by big
pharmaceutical companies
- The more something is known, the more controllable it becomes; need to be able to understand
something in its entirety in order to exercise control over it
- Population control
- Use of demographics and statistics to measure fertility rates, marriage rates etc to chart the
progress of society in order to figure out where and how best to intervene
- Power-knowledge relations reproduced not only between individuals but also over the
populations
#2: Disciplinary mechanisms use the formulation and accumulation of knowledge to exercise
disciplinary power
- Key aspect of disciplinary mechanisms is that of surveillance
- Signifies the connection between visibility and power
- Rendering an individual visible made it possible to know and alter their behaviour
- Disciplinary power remains invisible whilst individuals are located in a field of visibility,
subjected to a mechanism of objectification and thereby to the exercise of power
- Panopticon as an exemplification of this relationship
- Exercises a power of observation, producing “homogeneous effects of power”
- Inmates subjected to a state of potential perpetual invisibility
- Inmates unable to know for sure if they are being watched by the guards in the central tower
(asymmetry of knowledge)
- Consciousness of being in this space where their every move is potentially made visible to the
guards ensured an automatic functioning of power
- The more one observes, the more power one becomes
What is Power?
- Generally speaking, “the way in which the conduct of individuals and groups may be directed”,
the conduct in question here includes bodily as well as social conduct”
- Not conceived of as a property or possession of a dominant class but a “complex strategical
situation”, a “multiplicity of force relations” (power relations)
- Creates the individual
- “One of the prime effects of power is that certain bodies, certain gestures, certain discourses,
certain desires come to be identified and constituted as individuals”
- Both an effect of power and the element of its articulation
- We are active agents in our subjection —> self-regulation, the moment we become “the norm”
- “When there is power, there is resistance”
- Death is power’s limit
Relationship between Power and Knowledge
“Power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by
applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is
no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, not any knowledge
that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations”
#1: Knowledge is needed for the exercise of power
- Knowledge serving as the techniques for the successful control of an object
- We willingly submit to experts in their field
- Example of medical practice
- Patients submit to doctors, listen to their advice based on the premise that they are experts
in the area of healthcare provision whereas they are not, hence the party with more
knowledge is in a position of power
- Foucault emphasises that when there is power, there is resistance, can lead to disease
mongering where pharmaceutical companies try to unethically boost the sales of their
medicine —> resistance in the form of increasing criticism against exploitation by big
pharmaceutical companies
- The more something is known, the more controllable it becomes; need to be able to understand
something in its entirety in order to exercise control over it
- Population control
- Use of demographics and statistics to measure fertility rates, marriage rates etc to chart the
progress of society in order to figure out where and how best to intervene
- Power-knowledge relations reproduced not only between individuals but also over the
populations
#2: Disciplinary mechanisms use the formulation and accumulation of knowledge to exercise
disciplinary power
- Key aspect of disciplinary mechanisms is that of surveillance
- Signifies the connection between visibility and power
- Rendering an individual visible made it possible to know and alter their behaviour
- Disciplinary power remains invisible whilst individuals are located in a field of visibility,
subjected to a mechanism of objectification and thereby to the exercise of power
- Panopticon as an exemplification of this relationship
- Exercises a power of observation, producing “homogeneous effects of power”
- Inmates subjected to a state of potential perpetual invisibility
- Inmates unable to know for sure if they are being watched by the guards in the central tower
(asymmetry of knowledge)
- Consciousness of being in this space where their every move is potentially made visible to the
guards ensured an automatic functioning of power
- The more one observes, the more power one becomes
