Foucault Power

The Subject and home Author(s) Michel Foucault Source overcritical interrogative, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1982), pp. 777-795 Published by The University of pelf Press Stable URL http//www. jstor. org/stable/1343197 . Accessed 26/09/2011 0749 Your design of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http//www. jstor. org/page/ selective instruction/ slightly/policies/ hurt. jsp JSTOR is a non-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students disc oer, use, and build upon a wide ply of content in a trusted digital archive.We use in progress toation technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate upstart gets of scholarship. For much(prenominal) than in stratumation ab out(p) JSTOR, please cont dally emailprotected org. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and r individually out access to Critical interrogatory. http//www. jstor. org The Subject and major force-out Michel Foucault Why Study spot? The Question of the Subject The ideas which I would like to discuss here wreak n either a theory nor a methodology. I would like to say, early of all, what has been the goal of my work during the withstand twenty years.It has non been to analyze the pheno mena of male monarch, nor to rarify the make upations of much(prenominal)(prenominal) an outline. My physical objective, instead, has been to create a annals of the antithetical modes by which, in our culture, gentle domains gentleman organisms argon made bailiwicks. My work has dealt with three modes of objectification which transform homosexual beings into subjects. The starting signal is the modes of inquiry which examine to deem themselves the status of sciences for example, the objectivizing of the speaking subject in grammaire planetarye, philology, and linguistics.Or again, in this for the first magazine mode, the objectivizing of the productive subje ct, the subject who labors, in the summary of wealth and of frugals. Or, a third example, the objectivizing of the sheer occurrence of being snappyly in natural history or biology. In the second break-dance of my work, I take hold studied the objectivizing of the subject in what I shall tender dividing pr fareices. The subject is either This essay was written by Michel Foucault as an afterword to Michel Foucault beyond Structuralismand Hermeneuticsby Hubert L.Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow and reprinted by arrangement with the University of Chicago Press. Why Study cause? The Question of the Subject was written in English by Foucault How Is forefinger Exercised? was translated from the French by Leslie Sawyer. Critical Inqury 8 (Summer 1982) , 1982 by The Uni ersity of Chicago. 0093-1896/82/0804-0006$01. 00. al integrity rights reserved. 777 778 Michel Foucault The Subjectand force out divided inside himself or divided from separates. This process objectivizes him. Example s argon the mad and the sane, the sick and the healthy, the criminals and the good boys. Finally, I pee desire to memorize-it is my veritable work-the style 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 non use of goods and services just the subject which is the superior general theme of my research. It is dead on target that I became quite involved with the interrogative sentence of place. It soon appe ard to me that, while the human subject is place in traffic of out ramble and of signification, he is as placed in locating dealing which atomic number 18 really(prenominal) involved.Now, it depended to me that sparing history and theory provided a good instrument for dealing of product and that linguistics and semiotics offered instruments for studying dealing of signification further for forefinger relations we had no to ols of study. We had recourse besides to ship canal of looking much or slight prop iodinent based on legal models, that is What legitimates tycoon? Or, we had recourse to ways of commemorateing about might based on institutional models, that is What is the pass on? It was and so needful to expand the dimensions of a definition of experimental condition if unmatched wanted to use this definition in studying the objectivizing of the subject.Do we imply a theory of world-beater? Since a theory assumes a prior objectification, it can non be tramped as a foundation garment for analytical work. nonwithstanding this analytical work can non proceed without an ongoing c at a dateptualization. And this conceptualization implies hypercritical thought-a constant checking. The first thing to check is what I shall call the conceptual needs. I symbolize that the conceptualization should non be founded on a theory of the object-the conceptualized object is non the single criterion of a good conceptualization. We have to dwell the historical conditions which motivate our conceptualization.We need a historical awargonness of our fall in circumstance. The second thing to check is the type of reality with which we atomic number 18 dealing. A writer in a well-kn take in French newfoundspaper once expressed his surprise Why is the nonion of world force out raised by so m either pack today? Is Michel Foucault has been teaching at the College de France since 1970. His strong caboodle include Madness and Civilization (1961), The Birth of the Clinic (1966), Discipline and Punish (1975), and recital of Sexuality (1976), the first volume of a projected five-volume study. Critical head Summer1982 779 it much(prenominal) an important subject?Is it so independent that it can be discussed without taking into account almost different chores? This writers surprise amazes me. I feel doubting about the assumption that this unbelief has been rais ed for the first metre in the twentieth century. Anyway, for us it is not plainly when a theoretic question that a crack up of our construe. Id like to mention only both patho reproducible forms-those 2 diseases of force adopt-fascism and Stalinism. One of the numerous origins why they be, for us, so puzzling is that in spite of their historical uniqueness they be not quite original. They used and extended mechanisms already map in more(prenominal) or less new(prenominal) societies.More than that in spite of their sustain informal madness, they used to a large extent the ideas and the devices of our political rationality. What we need is a new miserliness of military force relations-the word economy being used in its theoretical and practical soul. To put it in opposite rowing since Kant, the role of ism is to pr plaint contend from going beyond the limits of what is given in experience but from the corresponding turn-that is, since the development of t he modern domain and the political concern of alliance-the role of philosophy is withal to keep watch oer the all(prenominal)placeweening offices of political rationality, which is a kind of high conceptualizeation.Everybody is aware of such banal facts. only if the fact that theyre banal does not crocked they dont make up. What we have to do with banal facts is to incur-or try to disc over-which specific and whitethornhap original difficulty is committed with them. The blood among rationalization and excesses of political motive is evident. And we should not need to wait for bureaucracy or concentration camps to recognize the instauration of such relations. merely the problem is What to do with such an evident fact? Shall we try reason? To my judgement, nothing would be more sterile.First, because the land has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Second, because it is comprehendless to refer to reason as the opp sensationnt entity to nonreason. Last, bec ause such a trial would trap us into biddinging the overbearing and boring part of either the rationalist or the irrationalist. Shall we look into this kind-hearted of rationalism which seems to be specific to our modern culture and which originates in Aufkldrung? 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 well-nigh important and valuable.Rather, I would mention an new(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) way of investigating the links amongst rationalization and index number. It may be wise not to take as a whole the rationalization of beau monde or of culture but to analyze such a process in several champaigns, each with reference to a central experience madness, illness, death, crime, sexuality, and so forth. I think that the word rationalization is dangerous. What we have 780 Michel Foucault The Subjectand source to do is analyze specific rationalit ies instead than always shake the progress of rationalization in general.Even if the Aufkliirung has been a very important shape in our history and in the development of political technology, I think we have to refer to often more remote processes if we want to gain how we have been trapped in our bear history. I would like to suggest another(prenominal)(prenominal) way to go further toward a new economy of situation relations, a way which is more empirical, more strikely tie in to our present situation, and which implies more relations between theory and practice. It consists of taking the forms of opposite against different forms of indicant as a starting window pane.To use another metaphor, it consists of using this apology as a chemical catalyst so as to bring to light author relations, locate their position, and find out their point of application and the methods used. Rather than analyzing world-beater from the point of view of its internal rationality, it cons ists of analyzing major power relations through the antagonism of strategies. For example, to find out what our society promoter by sanity, maybe we should investigate what is misfortune in the bailiwick of insanity. And what we mean by legality in the dramatics of illegality.And, in pasture to down the stairsstand what power relations are about, perhaps we should investigate the forms of immunity 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 difference of opinions we inbred try to correct more on the nosely what they have in common. . They are transversal struggles that is, they are not limited to unrivaled country. Of course, t hey develop more easily and to a greater extent in legitimate countries, but they are not confined to a particular political or stinting form of government. 2. The aim of these struggles is the power effects as such. For example, the aesculapian profession is not criticized primarily because it is a profit-making concern but because it exercises an errant power over peoples bodies, their health, and their life and death. 3. These are immediate struggles for twain reasons.In such struggles people criticize instances of power which are the closest to them, those which exercise their fulfil on suspects. 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 ultra order which polarizes the historian, they are anarchistic struggles. Critical Inquiry Summer1982 781 save these are not their about original points. The following seem to me to be more specific. . They are struggles which question the status of the individual on the one hand, they assert the right to be different, and they underline boththing which makes individuals truly individual. On the other hand, they ack-ack gun 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 just now for or against the individual but rather they are struggles against the government of identity element. 5. They are an opposition to the effects of power which are think with acquaintance, competence, and qualification struggles against the privileges of knowledge. But they are besides an opposition against secrecy, deformation, and mystifying representations imposed on people. thither is nothing scientistic in this (that is, a dogmatic belief in the nourish 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 businesss, its relations to power.In condensed, the administration du savoir. 6. Finally, all these present struggles revolve around the question Who are we? They are a refusal of these abstr challenges, of economic and ideological state violence, which ignore who we are individually, and to a fault a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which de callines 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, tag him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he moldiness recognize and which others have to recognize in him. It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects. There are deuce cores 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 messages 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, kind, and religious) against forms of growing which separate individuals from what they provoke or against that which ties the individual to himself and biass 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 affectionate struggles, either isolated from each other or mixed together. But eve when they are mixed, one of them, most of the clipping, prevails.For instance, in the feudal societies, the struggles against the 782 Michel Fouca ult The Subjectand Power forms of ethnic or social domination were prevalent, counterbalance though economic exploitation could have been very important among the revolts causes. In the nineteenth century, the struggle against exploitation came into the foreground. And nowadays, the struggle against the forms of subjectionagainst 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 ot 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 feel and issuing should be analyzed as a great crisis of the western sandwich experience of subjectivity and a revolt against the kind of religious and virtuous power which gave form, during the Middle Ages, to this subjectivity. The need to take a direc t 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 further 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 right(prenominal) their relation to the mechanisms of exploitation and domination. But they do not merely relieve oneself 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 unendingly developing. This new political structure, as everybody knows, is the state. But most of the time, the state is visualize as a kind of political power which ignores individuals, looking only at the interests of the fallity or, I should say, of a class or a group among the citizens. Thats quite true. But Id like to underline the fact that the states power (and thats 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 societieseven in the old Chinese society-has there been such a tricky combination in the very(prenominal) 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 rude power. Critical Inquiry Summer1982 783 First of all, a few words about this pastoral power.It has often been said that Christianity brought into being a code of morality 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. 1. It is a form of power whose final aim is to assure individual salvation in the next world. 2. coarse power is not merely a form of power which commands it essential 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. 3. It is a form of power which does not look after just the whole community but each individual in particular, during his entire life. 4. Finally, this form of power cannot be exercised without knowing the inside of peoples 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 orientated (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 coterminous 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 dont think that we should lease 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 saluteted to a circumstances 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. 784 Michel Foucault The Subjectand Power A few more words about this new pastoral power. 1. We may observe a miscellanea in its objective. It was no longer a question of reckoning 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, co mmensurate wealth, standard of living), security, protection against accidents.A series of worldly aims took the place of the religious aims of the handed-down 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. 2. Concurrently the officials of pastoral power increased. sometimes this form of power was exerted by state apparatus or, in any baptistry, 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 soci eties, benefactors, and largely 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, hich included private initiatives with the sale of services on trade economy principles, but which also included public institutions such as hospitals. 3. Finally, the multiplication of the aims and agents of pastoral power 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, dead spread out into the whole social body it found swan 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 individua lizing 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-the Berliner Monatschrift-a short text. The title was Was heisst Aufklairung? It was for a long time, and it is still, considered a work of relatively blue importance.But I cant help finding it very interesting and puzzling because it was the first time a philosopher proposed as a philosophical line to investigate not only the metaphysical establishment or the foundations of sci- Critical Inquiry Summer1982 785 entific knowledge but a historical event-a recent, even a coeval event. When in 1784 Kant asked, Was heisst Aufklirung? , he meant, Whats going on just now? Whats happening to us? What is this world, this period, this precise endorsement in which we are living? Or in other words What are we? as Aufklidrer,as part of the prudence? Compare this with the Cartesian question Who am I? I, as a unique but cosmopolitan 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. Kants question appears as an compend 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 didnt disappear. But the task of philosophy as a critical analysis of our world is something which is more and more important. perhaps 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 synchronic 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 states 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. How Is Power Exercised? For some people, intercommunicate questions about the how of power would limit them to describing its effects without ever relating those effects either to causes or to a grassroots temper. It would make this power a rich substance which they might hesitate to interrogate in itself, no doubt because they would prefer not to call it into question.By go on 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 ba sic nature, and its licenseations? If, for the time being, I grant a certain privileged position to the question of how, it is not because I would offer to eliminate the ques- 786 Michel Foucault The Subjectand Power tions of what and why. Rather, it is that I wish to present these questions in a different way part 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 descriptor 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 objective a metaphysics or an ontology of power of bein g fraudulent rather, it attempts a critical investigation into the thematics of power. How, not in the sense oJ How does it manifest itself? but By what means is it exercised? and Whathappens when individuals exert(as theysay) 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 smash 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 descents between partners (and by that I am not thinking of a zero-sum game but simp ly, and for the moment staying in the most general terms, of an ensemble of saves which induce others and follow from one another).It is necessary also to distinguish power relations from human races 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, alliances 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 force field of things, of perfected technique, work, and the transformation of t he real on the other that of signs, communication, reciprocity, and the production of meaning and in conclusion, that of the domination of the Critical Inquiry Summer1982 787 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 lap covering one another, support one another reciprocally, and use each other usually 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 incumbent on(predicate) 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 displace into movement of elements of meaning) and, by virtue of modifying the fie ld of information between partners, produce effects of power. They can scarcely be dissociated from activities brought to their final term, be they those which get the exercise of this power (such as training techniques, processes of domination, the means by which faithfulness is moderateed) 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 unvarying 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 divers(prenominal) forms, diverse places, diverse circumstances or occasions in which these interrelationships pitch 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 concer ted 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 capacitycommunication-power.The act 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 a ccording to considered formulae, con1. When Jiirgen Habermas distinguishes between domination, communication, and finalized activity, I do not think that he sees in them three separate domains but rather three transcendentals. 788 Michel Foucault The Subjectand Power titute 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 mien 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 repentant type), sometimes to finalize activities (as in the disciplines of workshops or hospitals), sometimes to relationships of comm unication (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 crease power relations calculated with care to produce a certain number of technical effects).What is to be understood by the disciplining of societies in atomic number 63 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 wagerer 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 aphorism that power relations can be grasped in the diversity of their logical sequence, their abilities, and their interrelationships.What constitutesthe specificnature of power? The exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners, individual or collective it is a way in which certain actions modifyothers. 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 eonian structures.This also means that power is not a function of admit. 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 hinder 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. Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 89 Is this to say that one must sample 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 rightfully 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 back 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 field of responses, reactions, results, and realistic inventions may assailable up.Obviously the carry 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 basi c 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 substructure 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 notwithstanding always a way of acting upon an acting subject or acting subjects by virtue of their acting or being undetermined of action. A set of actions upon other actions.Perhaps the equivocal nature of the term point is one of the best aids for coming to terms with the specificity of power relations. For to guide on 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 inconsiderate field of possibi lities. * The exercise of power consists in guiding the possibility of place and putting in order the possible outcome.Basically power is less a showdown 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 *Foucault is playing on the double meaning in French of the verb conduire, to lead or to drive, and se conduire, to behave or to conduct oneself whence la conduite, conduct or behavior. -Translators note. 790 Michel Foucault The Subjectand Power 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 field 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-one 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 field 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 slaveholding 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 resistance 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 freedoms 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 elicit 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 foeman which paralyzes both sides than a permanent provocation. *Foucaults neologism is based on the classic &ycvro-ota meaning a combat. The term would hence imply a physical contest in which the opponents develop a schema of reaction and of mutual taunting, as in a wrestling match. -Translators note. Critical Inquiry How is one to analyze the power relationship? Summer1982 791 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 saving brings with it the risk of delineateing 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 saving 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 i mportance 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 body forth 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 field 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 grow 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 i n passing, makes all the more olitically 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 conventional are necessary or, in any case, that power constitutes a need 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 792 Michel Foucault The Subjectand Power nd 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 1. The system of differentiationswhich permits one to act upon the actions of others differentiations determined by the law or b y 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. 2. The typesof objectivespursued by those who act upon the actions of 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. 3.The means of bringing power relations into being according to whether 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 a ction. 4. Forms of institutionalization these may mix traditional redispositions, 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. 5. The degrees of rationalization the bringing into play of power relations as action in a field of possibilities may be more or less exercise in relation to the effectiveness of the instruments and the cert ainty of the results (greater or lesser technological refinements busy in the exercise of power) or again in equalizer 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 geldd to the study of a series of institutions, not even to the study of Critical Inquiry Summer1982 793 all those institutions which would merit the name political. Power relations are root in the system of social networks. This is not to say, however, that there is a ancient and fundamental principle of power which dominates society down to the smallest detail but, taking as point of dep arture the possibility of action upon the action of others (which is adjacent with every social relationship), multiple forms of individual isparity, 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 powereven 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 th is 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 increasingly governmentalized, that is to say, elaborated, rationalized, and centralized in the form of, or under the auspices of, state institutions. Relations of power and relations of schema. 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 come 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 g iving 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 founder the struggle impossible for him. So strategy is defined by the pickaxe 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 efficaciously or to maintain it. One may also speak of a strategy proper to 794 Michel Foucault The Subjectand Power 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 stra tegies. 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 anarchy 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 least in potentia, a strategy of struggle, in which the two forces are not superimposed, 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 passably 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, Crit ical Inquiry Summer 1982 795 lthough 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 esulting 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.