No More Learning

Thinking differently about power,freedom and subjectivity
Unlike Foucault's critics, the contributors to this volume see Foucault's unconventional philosophical approach as a strength. They reject the view that the critical aspect of his philosophy eclipses its positive and emancipatory potential. Each of the three sections of the book illus- trates how Foucault reconceptualizes a key philosophical concept - power, freedom and subjectivity - and provides examples of how that reconceptualization facilitates new ways of thinking and acting that are able to counter oppression and domination.
The essays in Part I of this book show that the view of Foucault's work as merely negative stems from a fundamental misreading of his conceptualization of power. Foucault argues that with the rise of the modern era, the exercise of power in the West takes new forms. In his book Discipline and Punish, he shows that sovereign power, which is held or possessed and then wielded repressively by one individual over another or others, became ineffective in the face of increasingly com- plex social, political and economic relations that developed in the latter part of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries. For example, violent public executions (such as that of Damiens the regi- cide, which Foucault graphically describes in his book's opening pages) were no longer having the desired effect of displaying the king's power and thereby discouraging criminal acts and ensuring social and political order. Instead, these events were invoking the peoples' rage against the king's authority, thereby promoting social and political unrest.
Throughout his work, Foucault analyses the new, "productive" forms of power that emerge as a result of the waning of sovereign power. 3 As Ellen Feder notes in Chapter 4, power is productive in the sense that it consists of "both positive and negative, unstable valuations that can be reversed through history". As the chapters on disciplinary power and biopower show, Foucault conceives of modern power as an interactive network of shifting and changing relations among and between indi- viduals, groups, institutions and structures; it consists of social, politi- cal, economic and, as many of the contributors to this volume show, even personal relationships (including our relationships to ourselves). "I hardly ever use the word 'power'," Foucault states, "and if I do sometimes, it is always a short cut to the expression I always use: the relationships of power" (1994: 1 1). Given its productive, ubiquitous,
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MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
dynamic and relational character, the pernicious effects of modern power are more difficult to identify, and therefore to counter, than the sovereign's power to take his subjects' lives in overtly violent and public ways.
Like most people in the modern West, Foucault's critics "[remain] attached to a certain image of power-law, of power-sovereignty" (1990a: 90). They therefore see Foucault's contention that "power is everywhere" negating freedom and subjectivity (ibid. : 93 ). Yet this would be the case only if we continue to commit the error of Foucault's critics and insist on conceiving of power only in its sovereign, "repres- sive" form. "It is this [sovereign notion of power] that we must break free of," Foucault writes, "ifwe wish to analyze power within the con- crete and historical framework of its operation" (ibid. : 90). Analysing the reality of the workings of modern power is crucial. Foucault argues that as long as we continue to adhere to a very limited and increasingly outdated understanding of power we cannot begin to navigate mod- ern power relations effectively. Uncritical acceptance of anything that is presented as natural, necessary, or ineluctable is problematic from a Foucauldian perspective. Such uncritical acceptance allows power relations to devolve into static states of domination, where only a very limited range of thought and behaviour is deemed valid or acceptable, with the result that many more modes of existence are considered invalid, immoral, or deviant and thereby deserving of social sanction, legal punishment, or eradication.
Taking Foucault's analysis of the workings of modern power seri- ously does not destroy possibilities for freedom and subjectivity. But it does mean that these important concepts need to be reconceptual- ized. If, as the contributors to this volume believe, Charles Taylor and Nancy Fraser are incorrect in their respective assertions that Foucault's conceptualization of power destroys possibilities for freedom, then what does freedom in fact look like from a Foucauldian perspective? First of all, if power is not something tangible that one possesses and uses in a repressive manner against others (i. e. the king deploying his power against his subjects), then freedom does not stand in an opposi- tional relationship to power. As the chapters in Part II show, Foucault does not conceive of power and freedom as opposed; rather, they are mutually constitutive. "Power is exercised only over free subjects," Foucault asserts, "and only insofar as they are free" (1982a: 221). Freedom for Foucault is not a state we occupy, but rather a practice that we undertake. Specifically, it is the practice of navigating power relations in ways that keep them open and dynamic and which, in doing so, allow for the development of new, alternative modes of
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INTRODUCTION: POWER, FREEDOM AND S UBJECTIVITY
thought and existence. The practice of freedom functions to " [discon- nect] the growth of capabilities . . . from the intensification of power relations" (1984a: 48).
During an interview, Foucault explains the relationship between power and freedom, and how engaging in the practice of freedom keeps power relations dynamic:
What does it mean to exercise power? It does not mean picking up this tape recorder and throwing it on the ground. I have the capac- ity to do so . . . [bJut I would not be exercising power if I did that. However, if I take this tape recorder and throw it on the ground - in order to make you mad or so that you can't repeat what I've said, or to put pressure on you so that you'll behave in such and such a way, or to intimidate you - Good, what I've done, by shap- ing your behavior through certain means, that is power . . . [I]f . . . that is to say, I'm not forcing you at all and I'm leaving you com- pletely free - that's when I begin to exercise power. It's clear that power should not be defined as a constraining act of violence that represses individuals, forcing them to do something or preventing them from doing some other thing. But it takes place when there is a relation between two free subjects, and this relation is unbal- anced, so that one can act upon the other, and the other is acted upon, or allows himself to be acted upon. (1980g)
If Foucault throws the tape recorder to the ground to shape the behaviour of the interviewer, the interviewer can respond in any number of ways: he can appease Foucault in order to finish the inter- view (without the use of tape recorder); he can refuse to conduct the interview on Foucault's terms and simply terminate it; he can simply appear to complete the interview on Foucault's terms, and then write whatever he originally intended to (or even include some uncompli- mentary remarks about Foucault). The point here is that although the relationship is not equal, the interviewer is free in so far as he can respond to and in turn attempt to influence Foucault's actions. The interviewer does not exist in a state of domination where no response to Foucault's actions is possible.
As mentioned previously, "effective" navigation of power relations involves critically analysing our present conditions in order to identify norms and practices that reinforce the status quo to the point where prevailing modes of thought and existence come to be seen as given, as what must be. It also entails thinking and acting in ways that do not simply reinscribe prevailing, narrowly defined terms of what it is
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MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
possible and acceptable to think and do. If, as Foucault argues, power relations are continually shifting and changing, then we must continue to analyse our present critically: practices that facilitate our navigation of power relations in one context or at a certain point in time may not be effective in other situations or contexts. While the interviewer may be able to appease Foucault by agreeing to Foucault's terms, this action might not be effective in a different interview situation. Some other interviewee might, for example, lose respect for an interviewer who immediately gives in to her demands and decide to terminate the interview herself. It is no accident, then, that Foucault characterizes freedom as "ongoing work".
Just as Foucault posits a relationship between power and freedom, so does he also conceive of a relationship between power and sub- jectivity. In a late text, Foucault emphasizes that although he is best known as an analyst of power, subjectivity has in fact been his primary concern. "My objective", he writes, " . . . has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made into subjects" (1982a: 208). What does Foucault mean when he says that human beings are "made into" subjects? As the chapters in Part III illustrate, part of what he means is that the idea of "the subject" is itself a historical construction. Foucault explicitly states that "the subject" is a "form" as opposed to a "substance" (1994: 10). Within the context of the Western philosophical tradition, "a subject" takes the form of an active agent, an individual "rational being", to use Immanuel Kant's terminology, that thinks about and acts upon the world (which takes the form of an "object") and is a bearer of political rights and moral responsibilities. This understanding of what it means to be a subject (and, therefore, the specifics of the distinction between and opposition of subject and object) is perhaps most explicit within Enlightenment thinking, but its roots may be traced as far back as the work of Plato. Foucault devoted several of his College de France courses to analysing the different forms that subjectivity acquired in ancient, Hellenistic and early Christian contexts (see Foucault 1999a; 2005a). In doing so, he illustrates and provides support for his argu- ment that subjectivity is a social, cultural and historical form rather than a pre-given "substance" that is outside of and therefore distinct from sociocultural norms and values.
By illustrating the sociohistorical character of a concept that is taken within the tradition of Western philosophy to be objective and neutral, Foucault helps us to see the extent to which the idea of being a subject is implicated in power relations. Remember that, for Foucault, power is productive: certain power relations give rise
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INTRODUCTION: POWER, FREEDOM AND S UBJECTIVITY
to or produce the definition of subjectivity presented in the previ- ous paragraph, relations which that definition effectively masks. Thus, while all rational beings are purported to be subjects, the reality of the situation is that the Enlightenment understanding of subjectiv- ity excluded a wide group of people, including, for example, women and the people of lands that had been colonized by white European men. 4 Foucault further illustrates the degree to which subjectivity is implicated in relations of power when he analyses the production of different categories of subjects, as well as the processes by which we as individuals construct ourselves in, through and in opposition to those categories. Focusing on the modern era, Foucault illustrates how the emergence of the human sciences (psychology, anthropol- ogy, sociology, biology, psychiatry) during the eighteenth century both solidified the Enlightenment understanding of subjectivity and gave birth to a plethora of new subject categories: human beings have now become both the subjects and objects of their own knowledge. In Vol- ume I of The History ofSexuality, for example, Foucault shows how the fields of psychology and psychiatry categorized a whole range of human behaviours as sexually deviant, thereby producing a multitude of new modes of subjectivity that allow for (if not demand) social intervention into the population intended to distinguish "normal" from "abnormal" behaviour, encouraging the former and inhibiting (or even eradicating) the latter.
But, as noted above, Foucault also makes clear that subjectivity is not simply imposed externally. We take up and occupy the subject positions that our sociohistorical context makes available to us: sub- jects are not only made, we make ourselves. And, as contributors to this volume show, in so far as we make ourselves, we can unmake ourselves, or make ourselves differently: we can use the norms and values of our society in new ways, work on creating totally new forms of subjectivity, or even dispense with "the subject" as a mode of exist- ence. "Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are," Foucault writes, "but to refuse what we are. We have to imagine and build up what we could be to get rid of this kind of political 'double bind,' which is the simultaneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures" (1982a: 216). By showing that subjectiv- ity itself is a sociohistorical phenomenon, as well as by illustrating oppressive effects of prevailing notions of subjectivity, Foucault makes clear that experimenting with being other than what we currently are is not only possible but also an integral part of navigating power rela- tions in a way that both constitutes and in turn promotes the practice of freedom.
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MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
Risky business
Armed with an accurate understanding of Foucault's conceptualization of power and, therefore, of the ways in which freedom and subjectivity are not opposed to but rather interconnected with and implicated in power relations, Foucault's emphasis on experimenting and thinking differently begins to make sense, and the positive ethical and political potential of his work begins to take shape as well. Foucault's analyses of power, freedom and subjectivity make clear that not being able to rely uncritically upon existing norms and values in order to gain access to absolute truths about ourselves and the world in which we live, or to provide us with a moral code we can uncritically follow, does not leave us either in a state of epistemological and moral nihilism, or trapped within a perpetual state of domination. Rather, as Foucault readily admits, taking his work seriously places us in an oppositional posi- tion relative to prevailing modes of thought and existence and thereby deprives us of "access to any complete and definitive knowledge" of both the world in which we live and the "limits" of our ability to know and act within that world (Foucault 1984a: 47). We are, as he puts it, "always in the position of beginning again" (ibid. ).
Perhaps part of what troubles Foucault's critics about the position in which he leaves us is that it offers no guarantees and it requires much of us. No one tells us how to perform the work of freedom. While Foucault may offer us some "tools", we must figure out the use to which we will put those tools. We must critically analyse our present, identify oppressive norms and practices and figure out how we may counter those norms and practices: simply telling us what to think and do would undermine the emancipatory aspects of Foucault's work. Moreover, Foucault encourages us to reflect critically upon why it is that we desire someone else to tell us what to think and what to do, why we believe that we must have absolute and universal norms and stand- ards that dictate our thoughts and actions, as well as upon the effects of that desire. What is perceived by his critics as Foucault's inability to provide norms and standards by which to think and live thus needs to be seen instead as a refusal to do so. What would it mean for us to begin to think and act differently, to "seek out in our reflection those things that have never been thought or imagined" (Foucault 1 980g) ? "What is good", Foucault tells us,
is something that comes through innovation. The good does not exist . . . in an atemporal sky, with people who would be like the Astrologers of the Good, whose job it is to determine what is
8
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2.
3.
4.
the favorable nature of the stars. The good is defined by us, it is practiced, it is invented. And this is a collaborative work. (Ibid. )
Notes
Foucault states: "Each new work profoundly changes the terms of thinking which I had reached with the previous work. In this sense I consider myself more an experimenter than a theorist; I don't develop deductive systems to apply uniformly in different fields of research. When I write, I do it above all to change myself and not to think the same thing as before" (1991a: 27).
"I have never been a Freudian, I have never been a Marxist, and I have never been a structuralist" (Foucault 1990c: 22).
Foucault makes clear that sovereign power does not disappear completely with the rise of modernity. See Foucault ( 1 9 9 1 b) .
Many feminists and philosophers from a diversity of racial and ethnic back- grounds have argued that to the extent that the enlightenment notion of sub- jectivity continues to be adhered to it continues to produce oppressive effects.
INTRODUCTION: POWER, FREEDOM AND S UBJECTIVITY
9
PART I Power
? ONE
Foucault's theory of power
Richard A. Lyn ch
An important step in understanding Foucault's broader projects is to understand his view of power. 1 Foucault's analyses of power are simul- taneously articulated at two levels, the empirical and the theoretical. The first level is constituted by a detailed examination of historically specific modes of power and how these modes emerged out of earlier forms. Hence, he identifies modern forms of power, such as the closely related modes he termed "disciplinary power" and "biopower", and earlier, premodern forms such as "sovereign power". Indeed, much of his work on power is devoted to the task of articulating the emergence of later modes of power from earlier ones, and his analyses of disciplinary power in particular have been especially useful for subsequent scholars.
Three very simple examples can illustrate these forms of power. First, imagine a pyramid, with a king at the top, his ministers in the middle and the king's subjects (the people) at the bottom. If the king issues an edict, then his ministers will execute the order, imposing it upon the king's subjects. Traditionally, power has been understood as "being at the top of the pyramid"; and that was all that it was understood to be. But Foucault expands (indeed, totally reconceives) what constitutes power, and shows how this traditional view can be situated within a fuller understanding. He observed that in actual fact, power arises in all kinds of relationships, and can be built up from the bottom of a pyramid (or any structure). Thus, an academic transcript, the record of a student's courses and performance, becomes an instrument of power (how many times have you been told that "this will go on your per- manent record"? ), but begins from observation at the bottom of the pyramid, not from an edict from the top. Each and every student has a
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MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
transcript, and this record of their performance, the fact that each one is observed (and not that the school has a principal), is what influences students' behaviour. The academic transcript is an instrument of dis- ciplinary power: it serves to make a student regulate or discipline her own performance and behaviour. Similarly, observing which groups in the population are most likely to contract a disease (such as lung can- cer) can lead to a discovery of its causes (cigarette smoking, or asbestos exposure). Like academic transcripts, this third kind of power - in this case to save lives, by eliminating asbestos or smoke inhalation - does not require a "top of the pyramid" to function. But unlike an academic transcript, this kind of power does not directly address particular indi- viduals, but rather groups of people and populations as a whole. This third example is an illustration of what Foucault calls "biopower".
The second level of Foucault's analyses (the "theoretical" level) tran- scends historical particularities and is common to the diverse modes of power that Foucault has described. It is at this level that we can grasp the most general and fundamental features of power and its operation, and so we would do well to approach Foucault's work from this theoretical perspective.
Foucault's most explicit thinking about power developed in the 1970s, particularly in two published works, Discipline and Punish (1975) andLaVolantedeSavoir(1976,translatedasTheHistoryofSex-
uality, Volume I: An Introduction), as well as his courses at the College de France between 1974 and 1979. We will focus upon his most con- densed and generalized presentation of power, Part Four of La Volante de Savoir, to accomplish three tasks. First, we will be able to grasp why Foucault's analyses can be called a "theory" of power. Second, we will identify the mistaken theories of power that his analysis is meant to sup- plant: the theories against which he is arguing. Third, we will be able to articulate the basic characteristics of power according to Foucault's theory: a network of force relations throughout society, relations that are characterized by resistance and which interact by means of local tac- tics and larger strategies. Since these characteristics serve to describe not only modern forms of power such as disciplinary power, but also earlier forms, they represent the substance of Foucault's theory of power.
A "theory" of power
What we can call a "theory" of power emerges from Foucault's mid- 1970s analyses of psychiatry, the prison and sexuality. This theory is not restricted to descriptions of one empirical period or "regime", but
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FOU CAULT'S THEORY O F POWER
describes certain general characteristics of power and its operation, across historical epochs and periods.
Foucault disliked the term "theory " . He noted in La Volante de Savoir that "The aim of the inquiries that will follow is to move less toward a 'theory' of power than toward an 'analytics' of power . . . " (1990a: 82; we will soon see how this sentence ends). Foucault emphasized analysis over theory in part because he was reluctant to make any claim to a permanent or complete understanding of the world in which we live. In his 1976 College de France course, Foucault explained at least part of his distrust for theory: "the question 'What is power? ' is obviously a theoretical question that would provide an answer to everything, which is just what I don't want to do" (2006a: 13 ). It is only in so far as theories can be used "untheoretically" in this sense - that is, without claiming to answer everything ? that they can be valuable. Nevertheless, he did refer to his own project as a theory: his task "is a question of forming a different grid of historical decipherment by starting from a different theory ofpower" (1990a: 90-91, emphasis added). 2 For Foucault, then, the term "theory" must be used with caution; we should embrace theory only in the sense of "a theoretical production that does not need a visa from some common regime to establish its validity" (ibid. : 6).
With this terminological caution in mind, I shall use the term "the- ory" in an experimental sense: a theory is a hypothesis to organize diverse data, but also to be tested and revised or abandoned in light of that data. That a theory aims to be more general than a description of a single historical period or epoch is an essential part of its value and usefulness for our understanding of the phenomena it encompasses, and it is for these reasons that the term remains a useful term with respect to Foucault's analyses of power. Such a theory does not "answer eve- rything"; its warrant comes from the empirical data that it organizes and that supports it, and it is subject to revision.
Foucault's theory of power suggests that power is omnipresent, that is, power can be found in all social interactions. As he put this in 1977, "it seems to me that power is 'always already there', that one is never 'outside' it" (1980e: 141). That power is omnipresent - that is, that power is co-extensive with the field of social relations; that power is interwoven with and revealed in other kinds of social relations - does not mean that power functions as a trap or cage, only that it is present in all of our social relations, even our most intimate and egalitarian. 3 Nor is Foucault saying that all relations reduce to, or consist of nothing other than, power relations. 4 Power does not "consolidate everything" or "embrace everything" or "answer everything"; power alone may not be adequate to explain all, or every aspect of, social relations. So
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MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
Foucault's theoretical task (and the conclusion of the sentence we left earlier) is to work "toward an 'analytics' of power: that is, toward a definition of the specific domain formed by relations of power, and toward a determination of the instruments that will make possible its analysis" (1990a: 82).
How notto understand power
Foucault first distinguishes his own theory from three mistaken, inad- equate or misleading conceptions of power (each ofwhich corresponds to a tradition or school of social thought, as I note below in brackets).
[T]he word power is apt to lead to a number of misunderstandings - misunderstandings with respect to its nature, its form, and its unity. By power, I do not mean "Power" as a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservience of the citizens of a given state [such as characterize many liberal analyses] . By power, I do not mean, either, a mode of subjugation which, in contrast to violence, has the form of the rule [typical of psychoanalytic approaches]. Finally, I do not have in mind a general system of domination exerted by one group over another [i. e. class oppres- sion] , a system whose effects, through successive derivations, per- vade the entire social body [as in many Marxist views].
(1990a: 92)
Foucault's worry is not that these analyses are entirely useless, but that they often mischaracterize an accidental feature of power in a particular context as an essential characteristic of power in general.
The analysis, made in terms of power, must not assume that the sovereignty of the state [liberal], the form of the law [psychoana- lytic] , or the over-all unity of a domination [Marxist] are given at the outset; rather, these are only the terminal forms power takes.
(Ibid. , my comments in brackets)
So each of these forms of power (sovereignty, law, domination) may in fact be present in certain contexts as terminal forms, but none are fundamental. And Foucault's first task in understanding power is there- fore to develop a new method - based on a richer theory - that begins with the basic molecules of power relations and then builds to more complex forms.
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FOU CAULT'S THEORY O F POWER
The most important misconception is what Foucault terms a "juridico- discursive" understanding of power. This misconception, "deeply rooted in the history of the West", is common to many "political analyses of power" (ibid. : 8 3 ) and approaches to sexuality. His argument is that this misconception, so generally accepted, has functioned as a mask by which much of the actual operation of power is obscured, thereby making manyoftheactualmechanismsofpowertolerable(ibid. : 86).
According to this "juridico-discursive" theory, power has five prin? - cipal characteristics: first, power always operates negatively, that is, by means of interdictions. Second, power always takes the form of a rule or law. This entails a binary system of permitted and forbidden, legal and illegal.
These two characteristics together constitute the third: power operates through a cycle of prohibition, a law of interdiction. Hence (and fourth), this power manifests in three forms of prohibi- tion - "affirming that such a thing is not permitted, preventing it from being said, denying that it exists" (ibid. : 84) - which reveal a logic of censorship. Fifth and finally, the apparatus of this power is universal and uniform in its mode of operation:
From top to bottom, in its over-all decisions and its capillary inter- ventions alike, whatever the devices or institutions on which it relies, it acts in a uniform and comprehensive manner; it operates according to the simple and endlessly reproduced mechanism of law, taboo, and censorship. (Ibid. )
Notice how Foucault has characterized this uniformity, "in its over- all decisions and its capillary interventions alike". Implicit in this char- acterization is a distinction between macro-structures (the "over-all decisions") and micro-practices ("capillary interventions"): a distinc- tion that will be very important in the development of Foucault's own understanding of power. Recall our opening illustrations: a transcript would be a "capillary intervention", whereas epidemiological studies of cancer rates reflect macro-patterns. Foucault's analysis begins at the micro-level (in Discipline and Punish, for example) and is modified as it encompasses the macro--level (especially in the 1978 and 1979 College de France courses). 5 That this distinction is not made in the "juridico-discursive" view is just another indication of how it differs from Foucault's own analysis, and how it is mistaken about, and masks, the actual operation of power.
Why does Foucault term this view a "juridico-discursive" represen- tation of power? First, it is juridical because it is modelled upon law, upon prohibition: "it is a power [more precisely a representation of
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MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
power] whose model is essentially juridical, centered on nothing more than the statement of the law and the operation of taboos" (ibid. : 85 ) . But as Foucault makes clear, the actual operation of power cannot be reduced to one model - the law, the state, or domination - but instead functions in a variety of forms and with varying means or techniques.
Second, according to this view, power is essentially discursive: its prohibitions are tied together with what one can say as much as what one can do; in this way restrictions on language should also function as restrictions upon reality and action - this is the heart of the "logic of censorship" (ibid. : 84). While this view emphasizes discourse as the primary arena in which power's effects manifest, Foucault notes that discourses are related to power in much more complicated ways than this view would suggest: "Discourses are not once and for all subservi- ent to power or raised up against it . . . discourse can be both an instru- ment and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy" (ibid. : 100-101).
Let us consider another example to illustrate this "juridico-discursive" view of power: is what you are wearing today an effect of power rela- tions? If you picked your clothes to conform to a dress code (skirts must fall below the knee, no profanity on T-shirts, etc. ), then your choices can be explained by a "juridico-discursive" account: a prohibi- tory, discursive law specified what you could or could not wear. Within those rules, on that view, your choices were presumably made without external interference. But when we look more closely, this view is not correct: a number of other, "capillary" (your friends) and "macro" (fashion) as well as extra-legal power relations have almost certainly shaped your choices of what to wear. Foucault's own theory of power is meant to replace these "juridico-discursive" accounts:
It is this image that we must break free of, that is, of the theoreti- cal privilege of law and sovereignty, if we wish to analyze power within the concrete and historical framework of its operation. We must construct an analytics of power that no longer takes law as a model and a code. (Ibid. : 90)
A Foucauldian view of power
It is time now for us to turn to this constructive task, and begin to articulate Foucault's own positive understanding of power. Foucault's self-described task is to use empirical analyses to discover a new theory
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FOU CAULT'S THEORY O F POWER
of power, which will in turn provide a new framework for (and the hypotheses to be tested in) subsequent historical analyses (Foucault 1990a: 90-91). He begins:
It seems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as [1] the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as [2] the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confron- tations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as [3] the sup- port which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and con- tradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as [4] the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies.
(Ibid. : 92-3 , my numerals)
There is much to unpack in this sentence. The bracketed numbers indicate four principal aspects of Foucault's initial definition. We have a set of "force relations", processes by which these relations are trans- formed, systems or disjunctions that are constituted by the interplay of these force relations, and larger strategies (or "terminal forms") with general and institutional characteristics that emerge from these rela- tions, processes and systems. He begins at the micro-level, looking at local relations of force rather than at the macro-level of hegemonies and states, which can only be fully understood as functions of the local relations. In other words, Foucault begins with individuals' behaviours and interactions ("local relations" like academic transcripts, or choices of what to wear), to see how larger patterns, and eventually national norms or regulations, grow out of them.
First, then, power must be understood at the micro-level as relations of force. Foucault is unambiguous on this point: "It is in this sphere of force relations that we must try to analyze the mechanisms of power" (ibid. : 97). But what are these "force relations" at the basis of power? With this term, Foucault makes an explicit analogy to physics; he refers on numerous occasions, for example, to the "micro-physics of power" (1979: 26; 1990a: 16). 6 Force relations seem to be the basic unit, the undefined or given, in this approach to power. Very broadly, force rela- tions consist of whatever in one's social interactions that pushes, urges or compels one to do something.
We can use the analogy to help us understand this notion of force relations as the basic unit of power. In Newtonian physics, force is
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MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
defined as mass times acceleration. Force is thus the extent to which a body will be put into motion: larger objects (greater mass) will require a greater force to begin moving; a greater force will also be necessary to make an object move more quickly (greater acceleration). The impor- tant point here is that "force" is whatever serves to put an object into motion, regardless of the origin or source of that force. Force may be introduced by gravity, magnetism, or some other means. Its action thus can be described independently of any particular agent or object as the "creator" of that force. Analogously, Foucault speaks of power relations in terms of force relations without reference to a source or agent. This suggests that Foucault does not mean to imply that individuals cannot act as agents within power relations, but rather to draw our attention, especially for methodological reasons, to the force relations as such rather than to agents or actors. Closer examination of the characteristics of these force relations should help to make this clearer.
To recall, Foucault began with the claim that "power must be under- stood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization" (1990a: 92). Three features of these force relations are thus delineated, as follows.
First, that there is a multiplicity means that we will find many dif- ferent relations of force, intersecting and overlapping, in our social interactions. What is more, this multiplicity suggests that these force relations will not all be of the same quality or kind: there will be mul- tiple sorts of force relations, which may have different particular char- acteristics or impacts. To draw on the analogy to physics again, we could say that different forces will be present in the same field, as are gravity and magnetism, and that some of these forces will be stronger than others, and some stronger in certain contexts but not in others. To make this more concrete, recall (or imagine) yourself as a high school student, and consider what you chose to wear to school each day. You probably considered a number of different perspectives - or relations of force: what will my best friends say? Will a certain special someone think I look "cool" or "geeky" if she or he sees me in this? (Indeed, what constitutes "cool" or "geeky" is defined through mul- tiple overlapping relations. ) What "group" (the "popular" set, jocks, brains, punks, skaters, etc. ) does dressing like this put me in? Is it fash- ionable? What will my parents and teachers think? Is it in accord with the school's official dress code ? Most or all of these questions probably influenced your choice - whether you aimed to please or annoy any particular one of these groups - and they represent the very different, but intersecting relations within which you decide what to wear.
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What sort of presence do these relations have then? The second fea- ture delineated in this description is that force relations are "immanent in the sphere in which they operate". That these relations are "immanent" means that they exist only within a certain domain or discourse. In other words, they are not concrete, like bodies, but incorporeal, like the laws of physics. They are nevertheless genuinely present - and, like laws, their presence can be felt in very concrete ways. The analogy to physics is again useful here. As physical bodies interact, they exert relations of gravity, magnetism and so on upon each other. Similarly, social interac- tions are constantly permeated by these relations of force, power rela- tions. Foucault thus describes force relations as a "substrate" : "it is the moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender states of power, but the latter are always local and unstable" (ibid. : 93 ) . He notes in the 1976 College de France course that "power is never anything more than a relationship that can, and must, be studied only by looking at the interplay of the terms of the relation- ship" (2006a: 168). 7 This means that power relations are not outside but rather "immanent in" other kinds (economic, knowledge, sexual) of rela- tionships (1990a: 94). So "power is not an institution [or] a structure", nor an individual capacity, but rather a complex arrangement of forces in society (ibid. : 93). Excepting an explicit dress code, none of the ques- tions we asked above about what to wear could be answered institution- ally, but they all have a significant impact on your status in school. And we are all quite aware of them, at least implicitly. Your choices of what to wear thus reveal "a complex strategical situation [how you want to be perceived by various groups] in a particular society [your school] " . And so your self-presentation has been shaped by power relations. This has an important corollary: power is omnipresent (as discussed above) "because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere" (ibid. : 93 ) . It even shapes our choices of how to dress on a daily basis.
So there is a multiplicity of force relations, which are immanent in social interactions. The third feature in this initial characterization is that these force relations "constitute their own organization". On the one hand, these force relations "are the immediate effects of the divi- sions, inequalities, and disequilibriums which occur in [other types of relationships] " (ibid. : 94) . But on the other hand,
If in fact [force relations] are intelligible, this is not because they are the effect of another instance that "explains" them, but rather because they are imbued, through and through, with calculation:
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there is no power that is exercised without a series of aims and objectives. (Ibid. : 94-5)
Each school has its own distribution of social groups or cliques, with inequalities and occasionally shifting alliances. These calculations, these aims and objectives, which Foucault will refer to as tactics and strategy, constitute the internal organization of power relations.
Several other propositions also emerge from this core understand- ing of power. Foucault delineates five. First, since power emerges in relationships and interactions, power is not possessed, but exercised. "It is not the 'privilege,' acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions" (ibid. : 26). At stake here are two competing models of power: one based on a contract (pos- session), the other based on perpetual battle (strategies or war). As he notes in Discipline and Punish, his analysis of power "presupposes that the power exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy . . . that one should take as its model a perpetual battle rather than a contract regulating a transaction or the conquest of a territory" (1979: 26). Second, reiterating the point about immanence, power relations are not exterior to other relations.
Third, "power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all- encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations and serving as a general matrix" (1990a: 94). So power is not reducible to a binary relationship (we cannot reduce all sorts of power to one model); furthermore, power comes from below (as discussed above, a multiplicity of power relations exist; power emerges from a variety of overlapping and intertwined relationships rather than from a sovereign individual).
That power comes from below means we cannot best understand power by looking at monarchies or states, at the top of any chain of command. Rather, we must look at the complex webs of interwoven relationships : what Foucault calls the "microphysics" of power (1979 : 26). Power develops in the first instance in specific, local, individual choices, behaviours and interactions. These combine in myriad ways to constitute larger social patterns, and eventually yield macroforms, which one typically thinks of when one thinks about "power" (socie- ties, states, kings) - just as everyday objects are constituted by atoms and molecules. We thus have a micro-level of individuals (disciplinary techniques of the body) and a macro-level of populations (biopolitics).
Fourth of the five propositions that emerge from Foucault's concep- tion of power is that "power relations are both intentional and nonsub- jective" (1990a: 94). This juxtaposition is, frankly, puzzling, and this
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claim has led to a fair amount of misunderstanding about Foucault's analysis. First, power is intentional: power relations are "imbued, through and through, with calculation: there is no power that is exer- cised without a series of aims and objectives" (ibid. : 95). What you wear says much about you, and your status at school - not to mention your broader socioeconomic status (not everyone can afford designer labels) -and you have intentionally chosen to communicate a number of mes- sages with your clothing. Foucault refers to these aims and objectives as "tactics" and "strategies", and notes that these are what constitute its "rationality". But power, he insists here, is also nonsubjective: "But this does not mean that it results from the choice or decision of an individual subject" (ibid. : 95). Nor, he continues, can it be located in groups such as economic decision makers, governing castes or the state apparatus. No one student, or social caste, or administrator can control what will be "cool" or "loser". Indeed, what is "cool" today could be "out" tomor- row, and an out-group can rise in prestige (or vice versa).
The problem here, the apparent paradox, is that according to Foucault's description, power has to be exercised by someone or some- thing, but if it is nonsubjective, there cannot be a "someone" exercising that power. Foucault seems to be erasing agency ? individuals' capacity to choose and act for themselves ? or rather, locating this capacity to act in a noncorporeal "power" rather than in individuals and institutions. It is as if "power", not you, decides what you are wearing today. I think this problem can be resolved with two observations. First, part of his point here is that the effects of the exercise of power reach beyond any individual's (or group's) intentions or control. As we have already seen, Foucault is arguing against the view that "the state" acts as a monolith, and he is arguing for the importance of micro-events, with their rip- ples and interactions, in order to understand macro-phenomena. This means that local actions often have unintended macro-consequences, and that one's control of macro-processes will always be limited and incomplete. Macro-phenomena result from the concatenation of many micro-events, but they are not the direct result of any particular individual action or choice. This is, then, an argument for a system- level, rather than individual-level, understanding of power relations. Foucault's distinction between tactics and strategy parallels this micro/ macro distinction. Tactics are local, micro (individual choices about what to wear today); and strategies are macro, systemic (school- or culture-wide understandings of "cool" and "uncool").
The second observation to be made here is a logical one. To under- stand subjectivity as constituted (in part) through power relations is not to deny that subjects can act intentionally. You still choose what you'll
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wear each day, even if those choices are conditioned and limited by the "strategical situation" in which you find yourself. Given this problem, the status of subjectivity will become a focal point of Foucault's investi- gations in later years. It is an important point, because one of the funda- mental questions for ethical action has to do with the individual's ability to make decisions that are not "merely" determined by the relations of power in which they emerge - in other words, a question of freedom.
This question may in fact lie at the heart of readers' varied reactions to Foucault's analyses. Those who understand the claim that individuals are constituted by power relations to constitute a denial of freedom find his vision to be bleak. Those of us, on the other hand, who find in his analyses the tools with which to increase our self-awareness, and hence our own freedom, hear wellsprings of hope in his discussion of the con- tinuous transformations of power through history. (Understanding how "cool" comes to be defined and how certain groups are "cooler" than others, one can - perhaps even through one's choice of clothes - begin to break free of or even redefine these categories and groups. ) At a mini- mum, on the latter view, if power relations are in fact best understood as a necessarily ongoing battle, then the battle is never utterly lost.
Indeed, Foucault seems to anticipate this objection, this worry about freedom, in the fifth of five propositions that he discusses here. Power is always accompanied by resistance; resistance is in fact a fundamental structural feature of power: "Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power" (1990a: 95). Without resistance, without two bodies (or minds) pushing or pulling against each other, there is no power relation. And through resistance, power relations can always be altered.
This fifth point encapsulates each of the preceding four. Power is exercised (first proposition) in the very interplay of force and resistance; this interplay is present in all social interactions (second proposition); force and resistance are manifest even in micro-interactions between individuals as well as states (third proposition); and while each person may choose to apply force or resist, the ultimate outcome of the relation cannot be controlled by one party (power is intentional and nonsubjec- tive - fourth proposition).
On the role of resistance in constituting power, Foucault's position will not change. In a 1984 interview, for example, Foucault reiterates that "in the relations of power, there is necessarily the possibility of resistance, for if there were no possibility of resistance - of violent resistance, of escape, of ruse, of strategies that reverse the situation - there would be no relations of power" (1994: 12). He adds that "there
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cannot be relations of power unless the subjects are free . . . [I]f there are relations of power throughout every social field it is because there is freedom everywhere" (ibid. : 12) .
Let us stop for a moment and recall where we are in the discussion. We began this section with a long quotation, in which Foucault identi- fied four principal aspects of power. 8 Our discussion so far has focused on explicating only the first of these, that power consists of multiple force relations. (We have covered a good deal of ground along the way. Indeed, we have implicitly addressed the other three aspects of power. )
The second aspect that Foucault identifies here is that these force relations are processes, not static, and are constantly being transformed. These transformations take the form of ceaseless struggles and con- frontations - between the original force and its accompanying resist- ance - and sometimes strengthen the power relations, but sometimes weaken or reverse it. These processes also produce a number of interre- lationships and systems, as various power relations reinforce or under- mine each other (third aspect). Here Foucault introduces a distinction between tactics and strategy: tactics are the local rationalities of power in particular cases; strategies, on the other hand, are the larger systemic or global patterns of power. And (fourth aspect) these strategies are built out of combinations and concatenations of those local tactics.
[T]he rationality of power is characterized by tactics that are often quite explicit at the restricted level where they are inscribed . . . tactics which, becoming connected to one another, attracting and propagating one another, but finding their base of support and their condition elsewhere, end by forming comprehensive systems. (1990a: 95)
These comprehensive systems, or strategies, constitute "institutional crystallizations" out of the interaction and combination of locally fluid power relations, and become recognizable terminal forms like the state and the other types he enumerated.
The movement of Foucault's analysis here is from the micro-level to the macro, from the molecular to the everyday - from (1) specific, individual force relations through (2) their processes of transforma- tion and (3) the networks or systems that their interplay produces, to (4) their larger, strategic manifestations in the state, the law and other hegemonies, such as ownership of the means of production. In the end-forms that Foucault identifies here, we should recognize the three traditions of analysis that Foucault earlier criticized as partial and inade- quate(liberalism,psychoanalysis,Marxism). Eventhougheachofthese
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strategies may be one-dimensional, the networks of power taken in sum are multi-dimensional and cannot be reduced to only one strategic mode, "juridico-discursive" or otherwise. Foucault's point is that while they may have adequately described some particular strategy (or termi- nal form) of power, each approach fails to grasp the fundamental form or operation of power at the molecular level. But as Foucault reminds us again, analysis of power must begin not with these end-forms, but with "the moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender states of power" (ibid. : 93). Observing power in its local and peripheral effects provides a new viewpoint from which to begin a study of power, and will thus entail a new methodo- logical approach: the theory of power that we have just outlined.
An ongoing project
To review, we have unpacked a dozen or so dense pages at the heart of La Valonte de Savoir. What we have discussed provides only a basic framework: a set of theoretical presuppositions that constitutes the heart of Foucault's theory of power. There are important elements of this theory that we have not discussed, and many aspects of Foucault's analysis of power would continue to evolve over the next decade, as Foucault's ongoing self-critique continued. This basic framework, how- ever, is consistent throughout the theory's subsequent development and elaboration.
Notes
1. Special thanks to David Cylkowski, Stacy Klingler and Dianna Taylor for their very thoughtful responses to earlier versions of this essay.
2. The French original is at Foucault (1976: 120): "en se dormant une autre theorie du pouvoir".
3. These are not necessarily the same relationships.