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Title: The Subject and Power Author: Michel Foucault Date: 1983 Language: en Topics: power, biopower, subjectivity, not-anarchist Source: Foucault, Michel. “The Subject and Power.” In *Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics*, edited by H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, 208–226. The University of Chicago Press, 1983. [[https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.power/]] Notes: This essay was written by Michel Foucault in 1982 as an afterword to Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. (1) “Why Study Power? The Question of the Subject” was written in English by Foucault; (2) “How Is Power Exercised?” was translated from the French by Leslie Sawyer. Original Publication: Le sujet et le pouvoir (Gallimard, D&E Vol.4 1982)
The ideas which I would like to discuss here represent neither a theory
nor a methodology. I would like to say, first of all, what has been the
goal of my work during the last twenty years. It has not been to analyze
the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an
analysis. My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the
different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made
subjects. My work has dealt with three modes of objectification which
transform human beings into subjects. The first is the modes of inquiry
which try to give themselves the status of sciences; for example, the
objectivizing of the speaking subject in grammaire générale, philology,
and linguistics. Or again, in this first mode, the objectivizing of the
productive subject, the subject who labors, in the analysis of wealth
and of economics. Or, a third example, the objectivizing of the sheer
fact of being alive in natural history or biology. In the second part of
my work, I have studied the objectivizing of the subject in what I shall
call “dividing practices.” The subject is either divided inside himself
or divided from others. This process objectivizes him. Examples are the
mad and the sane, the sick and the healthy, the criminals and the “good
boys.” Finally, I have sought to study —it is my current work— the way a
human being turns himself into a subject. For example, I have chosen the
domain of sexuality —how men have learned to recognize themselves as
subjects of “sexuality.” Thus, it is not power but the subject which is
the general theme of my research. It is true that I became quite
involved with the question of power. It soon appeared to me that, while
the human subject is placed in relations of production and of
signification, he is equally placed in power relations which are very
complex. Now, it seemed to me that economic history and theory provided
a good instrument for relations of production and that linguistics and
semiotics offered instruments for studying relations of signification;
but for power relations we had no tools of study. We had recourse only
to ways of thinking about power based on legal models, that is: What
legitimates power? Or, we had recourse to ways of thinking about power
based on institutional models, that is: What is the state? It was
therefore necessary to expand the dimensions of a definition of power if
one wanted to use this definition in studying the objectivizing of the
subject. Do we need a theory of power? Since a theory assumes a prior
objectification, it cannot be asserted as a basis for analytical work.
But this analytical work cannot proceed without an ongoing
conceptualization. And this conceptualization implies critical thought —
a constant checking. The first thing to check is what I shall call the
“conceptual needs.” I mean that the conceptualization should not be
founded on a theory of the object-the conceptualized object is not the
single criterion of a good conceptualization. We have to know the
historical conditions which motivate our conceptualization. We need a
historical awareness of our present circumstance. The second thing to
check is the type of reality with which we are dealing.
A writer in a well-known French newspaper once expressed his surprise:
“Why is the notion of power raised by so many people today? Is it such
an important subject? Is it so independent that it can be discussed
without taking into account other problems?” This writer’s surprise
amazes me. I feel skeptical about the assumption that this question has
been raised for the first time in the twentieth century. Anyway, for us
it is not only a theoretical question but a part of our experience. I’d
like to mention only two “pathological forms” —those two “diseases of
power”— fascism and Stalinism. One of the numerous reasons why they are,
for us, so puzzling is that in spite of their historical uniqueness they
are not quite original. They used and extended mechanisms already
present in most other societies. More than that: in spite of their own
internal madness, they used to a large extent the ideas and the devices
of our political rationality. What we need is a new economy of power
relations —the word “economy” being used in its theoretical and
practical sense. To put it in other words: since Kant, the role of
philosophy is to prevent reason from going beyond the limits of what is
given in experience; but from the same moment —that is, since the
development of the modern state and the political management of society—
the role of philosophy is also to keep watch over the excessive powers
of political rationality, which is a rather high expectation. Everybody
is aware of such banal facts. But the fact that they are banal does not
mean they don’t exist. What we have to do with banal facts is to
discover —or try to discover— which specific and perhaps original
problem is connected with them. The relationship between rationalization
and excesses of political power is evident. And we should not need to
wait for bureaucracy or concentration camps to recognize the existence
of such relations. But the problem is: What to do with such an evident
fact? Shall we try reason? To my mind, nothing would be more sterile.
First, because the field has nothing to do with guilt or innocence.
Second, because it is senseless to refer to reason as the contrary
entity to non-reason. Last, because such a trial would trap us into
playing the arbitrary and boring part of either the rationalist or the
irrationalist. Shall we investigate this kind of rationalism which seems
to be specific to our modern culture and which originates in Aufklärung?
I think that was the approach of some of the members of the Frankfurt
School. My purpose, however, is not to start a discussion of their
works, although they are most important and valuable. Rather, I would
suggest another way of investigating the links between rationalization
and power. It may be wise not to take as a whole the rationalization of
society or of culture but to analyze such a process in several fields,
each with reference to a fundamental experience: madness, illness,
death, crime, sexuality, and so forth. I think that the word
“rationalization” is dangerous. What we have to do is analyze specific
rationalities rather than always invoke the progress of rationalization
in general. Even if the Aufklärung has been a very important phase in
our history and in the development of political technology, I think we
have to refer to much more remote processes if we want to understand how
we have been trapped in our own history. I would like to suggest another
way to go further toward a new economy of power relations, a way which
is more empirical, more directly related to our present situation, and
which implies more relations between theory and practice. It consists of
taking the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a
starting point. To use another metaphor, it consists of using this
resistance as a chemical catalyst so as to bring to light power
relations, locate their position, and find out their point of
application and the methods used. Rather than analyzing power from the
point of view of its internal rationality, it consists of analyzing
power relations through the antagonism of strategies. For example, to
find out what our society means by sanity, perhaps we should investigate
what is happening in the field of insanity. And what we mean by legality
in the field of illegality. And, in order to understand what power
relations are about, perhaps we should investigate the forms of
resistance and attempts made to dissociate these relations. As a
starting point, let us take a series of oppositions which have developed
over the last few years: opposition to the power of men over women, of
parents over children, of psychiatry over the mentally ill, of medicine
over the population, of administration over the ways people live. It is
not enough to say that these are anti-authority struggles; we must try
to define more precisely what they have in common.
country. Of course, they develop more easily and to a greater extent in
certain countries, but they are not confined to a particular political
or economic form of government.
the medical profession is not criticized primarily because it is a
profit-making concern but because it exercises an uncontrolled power
over people’s bodies, their health, and their life and death.
people criticize instances of power which are the closest to them, those
which exercise their action on individuals. They do not look for the
“chief enemy” but for the immediate enemy. Nor do they expect to find a
solution to their problem at a future date (that is, liberations,
revolutions, end of class struggle). In comparison with a theoretical
scale of explanations or a revolutionary order which polarizes the
historian, they are anarchistic struggles. But these are not their most
original points. The following seem to me to be more specific.
one hand, they assert the right to be different, and they underline
everything which makes individuals truly individual. On the other hand,
they attack everything which separates the individual, breaks his links
with others, splits up community life, forces the individual back on
himself, and ties him to his own identity in a constraining way. These
struggles are not exactly for or against the “individual” but rather
they are struggles against the “government of individualization.”
knowledge, competence, and qualification: struggles against the
privileges of knowledge. But they are also an opposition against
secrecy, deformation, and mystifying representations imposed on people.
There is nothing “scientistic” in this (that is, a dogmatic belief in
the value of scientific knowledge), but neither is it a skeptical or
relativistic refusal of all verified truth. What is questioned is the
way in which knowledge circulates and functions, its relations to power.
In short, the régime du savoir.
are we? They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and
ideological state violence, which ignore who we are individually, and
also a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which
determines who one is.
To sum up, the main objective of these struggles is to attack not so
much “such or such” an institution of power, or group, or elite, or
class but rather a technique, a form of power. This form of power
applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorizes the
individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own
identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and
which others have to recognize in him. It is a form of power which makes
individuals subjects. There are two meanings of the word “subject”:
subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own
identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form
of power which subjugates and makes subject to. Generally, it can be
said that there are three types of struggles: either against forms of
domination (ethnic, social, and religious); against forms of
exploitation which separate individuals from what they produce; or
against that which ties the individual to himself and submits him to
others in this way (struggles against subjection, against forms of
subjectivity and submission). I think that in history you can find a lot
of examples of these three kinds of social struggles, either isolated
from each other or mixed together. But even when they are mixed, one of
them, most of the time, prevails. For instance, in the feudal societies,
the struggles against the forms of ethnic or social domination were
prevalent, even though economic exploitation could have been very
important among the revolt’s causes. In the nineteenth century, the
struggle against exploitation came into the foreground. And nowadays,
the struggle against the forms of subjection —against the submission of
subjectivity —is becoming more and more important, even though the
struggles against forms of domination and exploitation have not
disappeared. Quite the contrary. I suspect that it is not the first time
that our society has been confronted with this kind of struggle. All
those movements which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries and which had the Reformation as their main expression and
result should be analyzed as a great crisis of the Western experience of
subjectivity and a revolt against the kind of religious and moral power
which gave form, during the Middle Ages, to this subjectivity. The need
to take a direct part in spiritual life, in the work of salvation, in
the truth which lies in the Book —all that was a struggle for a new
subjectivity. I know what objections can be made. We can say that all
types of subjection are derived phenomena, that they are merely the
consequences of other economic and social processes: forces of
production, class struggle, and ideological structures which determine
the form of subjectivity. It is certain that the mechanisms of
subjection cannot be studied outside their relation to the mechanisms of
exploitation and domination. But they do not merely constitute the
“terminal” of more fundamental mechanisms. They entertain complex and
circular relations with other forms. The reason this kind of struggle
tends to prevail in our society is due to the fact that, since the
sixteenth century, a new political form of power has been continuously
developing. This new political structure, as everybody knows, is the
state. But most of the time, the state is envisioned as a kind of
political power which ignores individuals, looking only at the interests
of the totality or, I should say, of a class or a group among the
citizens. That’s quite true. But I’d like to underline the fact that the
state’s power (and that’s one of the reasons for its strength) is both
an individualizing and a totalizing form of power. Never, I think, in
the history of human societies —even in the old Chinese society— has
there been such a tricky combination in the same political structures of
individualization techniques and of totalization procedures. This is due
to the fact that the modern Western state has integrated in a new
political shape an old power technique which originated in Christian
institutions. We can call this power technique the pastoral power. First
of all, a few words about this pastoral power. It has often been said
that Christianity brought into being a code of ethics fundamentally
different from that of the ancient world. Less emphasis is usually
placed on the fact that it proposed and spread new power relations
throughout the ancient world. Christianity is the only religion which
has organized itself as a church. And as such, it postulates in
principle that certain individuals can, by their religious quality,
serve others not as princes, magistrates, prophets, fortune-tellers,
benefactors, educationalists, and so on but as pastors. However, this
word designates a very special form of power.
salvation in the next world.
also be prepared to sacrifice itself for the life and salvation of the
flock. Therefore, it is different from royal power, which demands a
sacrifice from its subjects to save the throne.
community but each individual in particular, during his entire life.
inside of people’s minds, without exploring their souls, without making
them reveal their innermost secrets. It implies a knowledge of the
conscience and an ability to direct it.
This form of power is salvation oriented (as opposed to political
power). It is oblative (as opposed to the principle of sovereignty); it
is individualizing (as opposed to legal power); it is coextensive and
continuous with life; it is linked with a production of truth —the truth
of the individual himself. But all this is part of history, you will
say; the pastorate has, if not disappeared, at least lost the main part
of its efficiency. This is true, but I think we should distinguish
between two aspects of pastoral power —between the ecclesiastical
institutionalization, which has ceased or at least lost its vitality
since the eighteenth century, and its function, which has spread and
multiplied outside the ecclesiastical institution. An important
phenomenon took place around the eighteenth century —it was a new
distribution, a new organization of this kind of individualizing power.
I don’t think that we should consider the “modern state” as an entity
which was developed above individuals, ignoring what they are and even
their very existence, but, on the contrary, as a very sophisticated
structure, in which individuals can be integrated, under one condition:
that this individuality would be shaped in a new form and submitted to a
set of very specific patterns. In a way, we can see the state as a
modern matrix of individualization or a new form of pastoral power. A
few more words about this new pastoral power.
of leading people to their salvation in the next world but rather
ensuring it in this world. And in this context, the word “salvation”
takes on different meanings: health, well-being (that is, sufficient
wealth, standard of living), security, protection against accidents. A
series of “worldly” aims took the place of the religious aims of the
traditional pastorate, all the more easily because the latter, for
various reasons, had followed in an accessory way a certain number of
these aims; we only have to think of the role of medicine and its
welfare function assured for a long time by the Catholic and Protestant
churches.
form of power was exerted by state apparatus or, in any case, by a
public institution such as the police. (We should not forget that in the
eighteenth century the police force was not invented only for
maintaining law and order, nor for assisting governments in their
struggle against their enemies, but for assuring urban supplies,
hygiene, health, and standards considered necessary for handicrafts and
commerce.) Sometimes the power was exercised by private ventures,
welfare societies, benefactors, and generally by philanthropists. But
ancient institutions, for example the family, were also mobilized at
this time to take on pastoral functions. It was also exercised by
complex structures such as medicine, which included private initiatives
with the sale of services on market economy principles, but which also
included public institutions such as hospitals.
focused the development of knowledge of man around two roles: one,
globalizing and quantitative, concerning the population; the other,
analytical, concerning the individual.
And this implies that power of a pastoral type, which over centuries
—for more than a millennium— had been linked to a defined religious
institution, suddenly spread out into the whole social body; it found
support in a multitude of institutions. And, instead of a pastoral power
and a political power, more or less linked to each other, more or less
rival, there was an individualizing “tactic” which characterized a
series of powers: those of the family, medicine, psychiatry, education,
and employers.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Kant wrote, in a German newspaper
—theBerliner Monatschrift— a short text. The title was “Was heisst
Aufklärung?” It was for a long time, and it is still, considered a work
of relatively small importance. But I can’t help finding it very
interesting and puzzling because it was the first time a philosopher
proposed as a philosophical task to investigate not only the
metaphysical system or the foundations of scientific knowledge but a
historical event —a recent, even a contemporary event. When in 1784 Kant
asked, “Was heisst Aufklärung?”, he meant, What’s going on just now?
What’s happening to us? What is this world, this period, this precise
moment in which we are living? Or in other words: What are we? as
Aufklärer, as part of the Enlightenment? Compare this with the Cartesian
question: Who am I? I, as a unique but universal and unhistorical
subject? I, for Descartes, is everyone, anywhere at any moment. But Kant
asks something else: What are we? in a very precise moment of history.
Kant’s question appears as an analysis of both us and our present. I
think that this aspect of philosophy took on more and more importance.
Hegel, Nietzsche… The other aspect of “universal philosophy” didn’t
disappear. But the task of philosophy as a critical analysis of our
world is something which is more and more important. Maybe the most
certain of all philosophical problems is the problem of the present time
and of what we are in this very moment. Maybe the target nowadays is not
to discover what we are but to refuse what we are. We have to imagine
and to 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. The conclusion would be that
the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not
to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state’s
institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of
individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new
forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality
which has been imposed on us for several centuries.
For some people, asking questions about the “how” of power would limit
them to describing its effects without ever relating those effects
either to causes or to a basic nature. It would make this power a
mysterious substance which they might hesitate to interrogate in itself,
no doubt because they would prefer not to call it into question. By
proceeding this way, which is never explicitly justified, they seem to
suspect the presence of a kind of fatalism. But does not their very
distrust indicate a presupposition that power is something which exists
with three distinct qualities: its origin, its basic nature, and its
manifestations? If, for the time being, I grant a certain privileged
position to the question of “how,” it is not because I would wish to
eliminate the questions of “what” and “why.” Rather, it is that I wish
to present these questions in a different way: better still, to know if
it is legitimate to imagine a power which unites in itself a what, a
why, and a how. To put it bluntly, I would say that to begin the
analysis with a “how” is to suggest that power as such does not exist.
At the very least it is to ask oneself what contents one has in mind
when using this all-embracing and reifying term; it is to suspect that
an extremely complex configuration of realities is allowed to escape
when one treads endlessly in the double question: What is power? and
Where does power come from? The little question, What happens?, although
flat and empirical, once scrutinized is seen to avoid accusing a
metaphysics or an ontology of power of being fraudulent; rather, it
attempts a critical investigation into the thematics of power.
what means is it exercised?” and “What happens when individuals exert
(as they say) power over others?”
As far as this power is concerned, it is first necessary to distinguish
that which is exerted over things and gives the ability to modify, use,
consume, or destroy them —a power which stems from aptitudes directly
inherent in the body or relayed by external instruments. Let us say that
here it is a question of “capacity.” On the other hand, what
characterizes the power we are analyzing is that it brings into play
relations between individuals (or between groups). For let us not
deceive ourselves; if we speak of the structures or the mechanisms of
power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain persons exercise
power over others. The term “power” designates relationships between
partners (and by that I am not thinking of a zero-sum game but simply,
and for the moment staying in the most general terms, of an ensemble of
actions which induce others and follow from one another). It is
necessary also to distinguish power relations from relationships of
communication which transmit information by means of a language, a
system of signs, or any other symbolic medium. No doubt communicating is
always a certain way of acting upon another person or persons. But the
production and circulation of elements of meaning can have as their
objective or as their consequence certain results in the realm of power;
the latter are not simply an aspect of the former. Whether or not they
pass through systems of communication, power relations have a specific
nature. Power relations, relationships of communication, and objective
capacities should not therefore be confused. This is not to say that
there is a question of three separate domains. Nor that there is on one
hand the held of things, of perfected technique, work, and the
transformation of the real; on the other that of signs, communication,
reciprocity, and the production of meaning; and finally, that of the
domination of the means of constraint, of inequality, and the action of
men upon other men. It is a question of three types of relationships
which in fact always overlap one another, support one another
reciprocally, and use each other mutually as means to an end. The
application of objective capacities in their most elementary forms
implies relationships of communication (whether in the form of
previously acquired information or of shared work); it is tied also to
power relations (whether they consist of obligatory tasks, of gestures
imposed by tradition or apprenticeship, of subdivisions and the more or
less obligatory distribution of labor). Relationships of communication
imply finalized activities (even if only the correct putting into
operation of elements of meaning) and, by virtue of modifying the held
of information between partners, produce effects of power. They can
scarcely be dissociated from activities brought to their final term, be
they those which permit the exercise of this power (such as training
techniques, processes of domination, the means by which obedience is
obtained) or those, which in order to develop their potential, call upon
relations of power (the division of labor and the hierarchy of tasks).
Of course, the coordination between these three types of relationships
is neither uniform nor constant. In a given society there is no general
type of equilibrium between finalized activities, systems of
communication, and power relations. Rather, there are diverse forms,
diverse places, diverse circumstances or occasions in which these
inter-relationships establish themselves according to a specific model.
But there are also “blocks” in which the adjustment of abilities, the
resources of communication, and power relations constitute regulated and
concerted systems. Take, for example, an educational institution: the
disposal of its space, the meticulous regulations which govern its
internal life, the different activities which are organized there, the
diverse persons who live there or meet one another, each with his own
function, his well-defined character —all these things constitute a
block of capacity-communication-power. The activity which ensures
apprenticeship and the acquisition of aptitudes or types of behavior is
developed there by means of a whole ensemble of regulated communications
(lessons, questions and answers, orders, exhortations, coded signs of
obedience, differentiation marks of the “value” of each person and of
the levels of knowledge) and by the means of a whole series of power
processes (enclosure, surveillance, reward and punishment, the pyramidal
hierarchy). These blocks, in which the putting into operation of
technical capacities, the game of communications, and the relationships
of power are adjusted to one another according to considered formulae,
constitute what one might call, enlarging a little the sense of the
word, “disciplines.” The empirical analysis of certain disciplines as
they have been historically constituted presents for this very reason a
certain interest. This is so because the disciplines show, first,
according to artificially clear and decanted systems, the manner in
which systems of objective finality and systems of communication and
power can be welded together. They also display different models of
articulation, sometimes giving preeminence to power relations and
obedience (as in those disciplines of a monastic or penitential type),
sometimes to finalize activities (as in the disciplines of workshops or
hospitals), sometimes to relationships of communication (as in the
disciplines of apprenticeship), sometimes also to a saturation of the
three types of relationship (as perhaps in military discipline, where a
plethora of signs indicates, to the point of redundancy, tightly knit
power relations calculated with care to produce a certain number of
technical effects). What is to be understood by the disciplining of
societies in Europe since the eighteenth century is not, of course, that
the individuals who are part of them become more and more obedient, nor
that they set about assembling in barracks, schools, or prisons; rather,
that an increasingly better invigilated process of adjustment has been
sought after —more and more rational and economic —between productive
activities, resources of communication, and the play of power relations.
To approach the theme of power by an analysis of “how” is therefore to
introduce several critical shifts in relation to the supposition of a
fundamental power. It is to give oneself as the object of analysis power
relations and not power itself —power relations which are distinct from
objective abilities as well as from relations of communication. This is
as much as saying that power relations can be grasped in the diversity
of their logical sequence, their abilities, and their
interrelationships.
The exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners,
individual or collective; it is a way in which certain actions modify
others. Which is to say, of course, that something called Power, with or
without a capital letter, which is assumed to exist universally in a
concentrated or diffused form, does not exist. Power exists only when it
is put into action, even if, of course, it is integrated into a
disparate field of possibilities brought to bear upon permanent
structures. This also means that power is not a function of consent. In
itself it is not a renunciation of freedom, a transference of rights,
the power of each and all delegated to a few (which does not prevent the
possibility that consent may be a condition for the existence or the
maintenance of power); the relationship of power can be the result of a
prior or permanent consent, but it is not by nature the manifestation of
a consensus. Is this to say that one must seek the character proper to
power relations in the violence which must have been its primitive form,
its permanent secret, and its last resource, that which in the final
analysis appears as its real nature when it is forced to throw aside its
mask and to show itself as it really is? In effect, what defines a
relationship of power is that it is a mode of action which does not act
directly and immediately on others. Instead, it acts upon their actions:
an action upon an action, on existing actions or on those which may
arise in the present or the future. A relationship of violence acts upon
a body or upon things; it forces, it bends, it breaks on the wheel, it
destroys, or it closes the door on all possibilities. Its opposite pole
can only be passivity, and if it comes up against any resistance, it has
no other option but to try to minimize it. On the other hand, a power
relationship can only be articulated on the basis of two elements which
are each indispensable if it is really to be a power relationship: that
“the other” (the one over whom power is exercised) be thoroughly
recognized and maintained to the very end as a person who acts; and
that, faced with a relationship of power, a whole held of responses,
reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up. Obviously the
bringing into play of power relations does not exclude the use of
violence any more than it does the obtaining of consent; no doubt the
exercise of power can never do without one or the other, often both at
the same time. But even though consensus and violence are the
instruments or the results, they do not constitute the principle or the
basic nature of power. The exercise of power can produce as much
acceptance as may be wished for: it can pile up the dead and shelter
itself behind whatever threats it can imagine. In itself the exercise of
power is not violence; nor is it a consent which, implicitly, is
renewable. It is a total structure of actions brought to bear upon
possible actions; it incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or
more difficult; in the extreme it constrains or forbids absolutely; it
is nevertheless always a way of acting upon an acting subject or acting
subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action. A set of
actions upon other actions. Perhaps the equivocal nature of the term
“conduct” is one of the best aids for coming to terms with the
specificity of power relations. For to “conduct” is at the same time to
“lead” others (according to mechanisms of coercion which are, to varying
degrees, strict) and a way of behaving within a more or less open held
of possibilities. The exercise of power consists in guiding the
possibility of conduct and putting in order the possible outcome.
Basically power is less a confrontation between two adversaries or the
linking of one to the other than a question of government. This word
must be allowed the very broad meaning which it had in the sixteenth
century. “Government” did not refer only to political structures or to
the management of states; rather, it designated the way in which the
conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed: the government of
children, of souls, of communities, of families, of the sick. It did not
only cover the legitimately constituted forms of political or economic
subjection but also modes of action, more or less considered or
calculated, which were destined to act upon the possibilities of action
of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible
held of action of others. The relationship proper to power would not,
therefore, be sought on the side of violence or of struggle, nor on that
of voluntary linking (all of which can, at best, only be the instruments
of power), but rather in the area of the singular mode of action,
neither warlike nor juridical, which is government. When one defines the
exercise of power as a mode of action upon the actions of others, when
one characterizes these actions by the government of men by other men
—in the broadest sense of the term— includes an important element:
freedom. Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as
they are free. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are
faced with a held of possibilities in which several ways of behaving,
several reactions and diverse comportments, may be realized. Where the
determining factors saturate the whole, there is no relationship of
power; slavery is not a power relationship when man is in chains. (In
this case it is a question of a physical relationship of constraint.)
Consequently, there is no face-to-face confrontation of power and
freedom, which are mutually exclusive (freedom disappears everywhere
power is exercised), but a much more complicated interplay. In this game
freedom may well appear as the condition for the exercise of power (at
the same time its precondition, since freedom must exist for power to be
exerted, and also its permanent support, since without the possibility
of recalcitrance, power would be equivalent to a physical
determination). The relationship between power and freedom’s refusal to
submit cannot, therefore, be separated. The crucial problem of power is
not that of voluntary servitude (how could we seek to be slaves?). At
the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it,
are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom.
Rather than speaking of an essential freedom, it would be better to
speak of an “agonism” of a relationship which is at the same time
reciprocal incitation and struggle, less of a face-to-face confrontation
which paralyzes both sides than a permanent provocation.
One can analyze such relationships, or rather I should say that it is
perfectly legitimate to do so, by focusing on carefully defined
institutions. The latter constitute a privileged point of observation,
diversified, concentrated, put in order, and carried through to the
highest point of their efficacity. It is here that, as a first
approximation, one might expect to see the appearance of the form and
logic of their elementary mechanisms. However, the analysis of power
relations as one finds them in certain circumscribed institutions
presents a certain number of problems. First, the fact that an important
part of the mechanisms put into operation by an institution are designed
to ensure its own preservation brings with it the risk of deciphering
functions which are essentially reproductive, especially in power
relations between institutions. Second, in analyzing power relations
from the standpoint of institutions, one lays oneself open to seeking
the explanation and the origin of the former in the latter , that is to
say, finally, to explain power to power. Finally, insofar as
institutions act essentially by bringing into play two elements,
explicit or tacit regulations and an apparatus, one risks giving to one
or the other an exaggerated privilege in the relations of power and
hence to see in the latter only modulations of the law and of coercion.
This does not deny the importance of institutions on the establishment
of power relations. Instead, I wish to suggest that one must analyze
institutions from the standpoint of power relations, rather than vice
versa, and that the fundamental point of anchorage of the relationships,
even if they are embodied and crystallized in an institution, is to be
found outside the institution. Let us come back to the definition of the
exercise of power as a way in which certain actions may structure the
held of other possible actions. What, therefore, would be proper to a
relationship of power is that it be a mode of action upon actions. That
is to say, power relations are rooted deep in the social nexus, not
reconstituted “above” society as a supplementary structure whose radical
effacement one could perhaps dream of. In any case, to live in society
is to live in such a way that action upon other actions is possible —and
in fact ongoing. A society without power relations can only be an
abstraction. Which, be it said in passing, makes all the more
politically necessary the analysis of power relations in a given
society, their historical formation, the source of their strength or
fragility, the conditions which are necessary to transform some or to
abolish others. For to say that there cannot be a society without power
relations is not to say either that those which are established are
necessary or, in any case, that power constitutes a fatality at the
heart of societies, such that it cannot be undermined. Instead, I would
say that the analysis, elaboration, and bringing into question of power
relations and the “agonism” between power relations and the
intransitivity of freedom is a permanent political task inherent in all
social existence. The analysis of power relations demands that a certain
number of points be established concretely:
actions of others: differentiations determined by the law or by
traditions of status and privilege; economic differences in the
appropriation of riches and goods, shifts in the processes of
production, linguistic or cultural differences, differences in know-how
and competence, and so forth. Every relationship of power puts into
operation differentiations which are at the same time its conditions and
its results.
others: the maintenance of privileges, the accumulation of profits, the
bringing into operation of statutary authority, the exercise of a
function or of a trade.
power is exercised by the threat of arms, by the effects of the word, by
means of economic disparities, by more or less complex means of control,
by systems of surveillance, with or without archives, according to rules
which are or are not explicit, fixed or modifiable, with or without the
technological means to put all these things into action.
predispositions, legal structures, phenomena relating to custom or to
fashion (such as one sees in the institution of the family); they can
also take the form of an apparatus closed in upon itself, with its
specific loci, its own regulations, its hierarchical structures which
are carefully defined, a relative autonomy in its functioning (such as
scholastic or military institutions); they can also form very complex
systems endowed with multiple apparatuses, as in the case of the state,
whose function is the taking of everything under its wing, the bringing
into being of general surveillance, the principle of regulation, and, to
a certain extent also, the distribution of all power relations in a
given social ensemble.
relations as action in a held of possibilities may be more or less
elaborate in relation to the effectiveness of the instruments and the
certainty of the results (greater or lesser technological refinements
employed in the exercise of power) or again in proportion to the
possible cost (be it the economic cost of the means brought into
operation or the cost in terms of reaction constituted by the resistance
which is encountered). The exercise of power is not a naked fact, an
institutional right, nor is it a structure which holds out or is
smashed: it is elaborated, transformed, organized; it endows itself with
processes which are more or less adjusted to the situation.
One sees why the analysis of power relations within a society cannot be
reduced to the study of a series of institutions, not even to the study
of all those institutions which would merit the name “political.” Power
relations are rooted in the system of social networks. This is not to
say, however, that there is a primary and fundamental principle of power
which dominates society down to the smallest detail; but, taking as
point of departure the possibility of action upon the action of others
(which is coextensive with every social relationship), multiple forms of
individual disparity, of objectives, of the given application of power
over ourselves or others, of, in varying degrees, partial or universal
institutionalization, of more or less deliberate organization, one can
define different forms of power. The forms and the specific situations
of the government of men by one another in a given society are multiple;
they are superimposed, they cross, impose their own limits, sometimes
cancel one another out, sometimes reinforce one another. It is certain
that in contemporary societies the state is not simply one of the forms
or specific situations of the exercise of power —even if it is the most
important— but that in a certain way all other forms of power relation
must refer to it. But this is not because they are derived from it; it
is rather because power relations have come more and more under state
control (although this state control has not taken the same form in
pedagogical, judicial, economic, or family systems). In referring here
to the restricted sense of the word “government,” one could say that
power relations have been progressively governmentalized, that is to
say, elaborated, rationalized, and centralized in the form of, or under
the auspices of, state institutions.
The word “strategy” is currently employed in three ways. First, to
designate the means employed to attain a certain end; it is a question
of rationality functioning to arrive at an objective. Second, to
designate the manner in which a partner in a certain game acts with
regard to what he thinks should be the action of the others and what he
considers the others think to be his own; it is the way in which one
seeks to have the advantage over others. Third, to designate the
procedures used in a situation of confrontation to deprive the opponent
of his means of combat and to reduce him to giving up the struggle; it
is a question, therefore, of the means destined to obtain victory. These
three meanings come together in situations of confrontation —war or
games— where the objective is to act upon an adversary in such a manner
as to render the struggle impossible for him. So strategy is defined by
the choice of winning solutions. But it must be borne in mind that this
is a very special type of situation and that there are others in which
the distinctions between the different senses of the word “strategy’~
must be maintained. Referring to the first sense I have indicated, one
may call power strategy the totality of the means put into operation to
implement power effectively or to maintain it. One may also speak of a
strategy proper to power relations insofar as they constitute modes of
action upon possible action, the action of others. One can therefore
interpret the mechanisms brought into play in power relations in terms
of strategies. But most important is obviously the relationship between
power relations and confrontation strategies. For, if it is true that at
the heart of power relations and as a permanent condition of their
existence there is an insubordination and a certain essential obstinacy
on the part of the principles of freedom, then there is no relationship
of power without the means of escape or possible flight. Every power
relationship implies, at !east in potentia, a strategy of struggle, in
which the two forces are not super-imposed, do not lose their specific
nature, or do not finally become confused. Each constitutes for the
other a kind of permanent limit, a point of possible reversal. A
relationship of confrontation reaches its term, its final moment (and
the victory of one of the two adversaries), when stable mechanisms
replace the free play of antagonistic reactions. Through such mechanisms
one can direct, in a fairly constant manner and with reasonable
certainty, the conduct of others. For a relationship of confrontation,
from the moment it is not a struggle to the death, the fixing of a power
relationship becomes a target —at one and the same time its fulfillment
and its suspension. And in return, the strategy of struggle also
constitutes a frontier for the relationship of power, the line at which,
instead of manipulating and inducing actions in a calculated manner, one
must be content with reacting to them after the event. It would not be
possible for power relations to exist without points of insubordination
which, by definition, are means of escape. Accordingly, every
intensification, every extension of power relations to make the
insubordinate submit can only result in the limits of power. The latter
reaches its final term either in a type of action which reduces the
other to total impotence (in which case victory over the adversary
replaces the exercise of power) or by a confrontation with those whom
one governs and their transformation into adversaries. Which is to say
that every strategy of confrontation dreams of becoming a relationship
of power, and every relationship of power leans toward the idea that, if
it follows its own line of development and comes up against direct
confrontation, it may become the winning strategy. In effect, between a
relationship of power and a strategy of struggle there is a reciprocal
appeal, a perpetual linking and a perpetual reversal. At every moment
the relationship of power may become a confrontation between two
adversaries. Equally, the relationship between adversaries in society
may, at every moment, give place to the putting into operation of
mechanisms of power. The consequence of this instability is the ability
to decipher the same events and the same transformations either from
inside the history of struggle or from the standpoint of the power
relationships. The interpretations which result will not consist of the
same elements of meaning or the same links or the same types of
intelligibility, although they refer to the same historical fabric, and
each of the two analyses must have reference to the other. In fact, it
is precisely the disparities between the two readings which make visible
those fundamental phenomena of “domination” which are present in a large
number of human societies. Domination is in fact a general structure of
power whose ramifications and consequences can sometimes be found
descending to the most recalcitrant fibers of society. But at the same
time it is a strategic situation more or less taken for granted and
consolidated by means of a long-term confrontation between adversaries.
It can certainly happen that the fact of domination may only be the
transcription of a mechanism of power resulting from confrontation and
its consequences (a political structure stemming from invasion); it may
also be that a relationship of struggle between two adversaries is the
result of power relations with the conflicts and cleavages which ensue.
But what makes the domination of a group, a caste, or a class, together
with the resistance and revolts which that domination comes up against,
a central phenomenon in the history of societies is that they manifest
in a massive and universalizing form, at the level of the whole social
body, the locking together of power relations with relations of strategy
and the results proceeding from their interaction.