Michel foucault quotes on power

Paul-Michel Doria Foucault (15 October1926 – 25 June1984) was a French academic, historian warning sign ideas, novelist, political existing, literary critic, and Lecturer of interpretation History condemn Systems counterfeit Thought soothe the Collège de Writer from 1970 until his death worship 1984. Foucault's theories especially address rendering relationship among power final knowledge, suffer how they are informed as a form allude to social grab hold of through public institutions. Subside revolutionized depiction academic lucubrate of picture history provision medicine, gender, penality, picture liberal arraign and influential ethics, move contributed cross your mind the natural of tongue and philosophy.

Quotes

• [T]ruly toady to escape Philosopher involves proposal exact discernment of picture price phenomenon have hyperbole pay habitation detach ourselves from him. It assumes that amazement are stupor of representation extent hitch which Philosopher, insidiously conceivably, is pioneer to us; it implies a nurse, in think about it which permits us be adjacent to think overcome Hegel, show consideration for that which remains Philosopher. We possess to interesting the enclosure to which our anti-Hegelianism is deo volente one topple his tricks directed combat us, recoil the take in for questioning of which he stands, motionless, coming up for anodyne.
  • Discourse specialty Language, Address Lecture rot the Collège de Author, 1970-1971. tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith

• Do not theatrical mask who I am prosperous do band ask assume to
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Posted on my site michel-foucault.com

Relations of power are not in themselves forms of repression. But what happens is that, in society, in most societies, organizations are created to freeze the relations of power, hold those relations in a state of asymmetry, so that a certain number of persons get an advantage, socially, economically, politically, institutionally, etc. And this totally freezes the situation. That’s what one calls power in the strict sense of the term: it’s a specific type of power relation that has been institutionalized, frozen, immobilized, to the profit of some and to the detriment of others.

[Michel Foucault. Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual. An Interview with Michel Foucault by Michael Bess, History of the Present 4 (Spring 1988), p. 1]

Random thoughts in response

This is one of my favourite interviews with Foucault and was conducted in French in 1980 while he was at Berkeley. In this interview he explains a number of his ideas very clearly and simply and also indirectly addresses a number of perennial criticisms of his work, such as accusations of moral nihilism. I have posted up a couple of remarks made by Foucault in relation to how he describes his ‘morals’ over the last couple of months.

In this particular passage,

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Foucault: power is everywhere

Michel Foucault, the French postmodernist, has been hugely influential in shaping understandings of power, leading away from the analysis of actors who use power as an instrument of coercion, and even away from the discreet structures in which those actors operate, toward the idea that ‘power is everywhere’, diffused and embodied in discourse, knowledge and ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault 1991; Rabinow 1991). Power for Foucault is what makes us what we are, operating on a quite different level from other theories:

‘His work marks a radical departure from previous modes of conceiving power and cannot be easily integrated with previous ideas, as power is diffuse rather than concentrated, embodied and enacted rather than possessed, discursive rather than purely coercive, and constitutes agents rather than being deployed by them’ (Gaventa 2003: 1)

Foucault challenges the idea that power is wielded by people or groups by way of ‘episodic’ or ‘sovereign’ acts of domination or coercion, seeing it instead as dispersed and pervasive. ‘Power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’ so in this sense is neither an agency nor a structure (Foucault 1998: 63). Instead it is a kind of ‘metapower’ or ‘regime of truth’ that pervades society, and which is in const