Michel Foucault

Born:15-Oct-1926
Birthplace: Poitiers, France
Died: 26-Jun-1984
Location of Death: Paris, France
Cause of Death: Aids

Major Books
Disciple and punishment 1975
The history of sexuality 1976
The order of things 1966
Madness and civilization 1964
The archaeology of knowledge 1969

Discipline and Punishment: the birthplace of

prison
Power is the major theme of the book as

Foucault calls his study a micro-physics of

power. He is looking at how power operates in
our society. The prison, court, school, hospital
are all just the technical implements for the
exercise of power.

Power
He states: For the definition of power, I do not
have in mind a general system of domination
exerted by one group over another (class
oppression), a system whose effects, through
successive derivations, pervades the entire
social body.

The analysis made in terms of power, must

not assume that the sovereignty of the astute,
the form of the law, or the overall unity of
domination are not fundamental forms, rather
these are the terminal forms or shapes that
power takes.

So each of these forms of power (sovereignty,

law, domination) may in fact be present in
certain contexts as terminal forms, but none
are fundamental. And Foucault's first task in
understanding power is therefore to develop a
new method based on a richer theory that
begins with the basic molecules of power
relations and then builds to more complex
forms.

These ideologies (sovereignty, law,..) have

functioned by which most of the actual meaning

of power is obscured.
Panopticon: seeing all, or the idea of control
over people and their actions by very few
people.

Birth of Panopticon: some people say it has a

utilitarian purpose

The Panopticon is a type of institutional

building designed by the English

philosopher and social theorist
Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century.
The concept of the design is to allow a
single watchman to observe (-opticon) all
(pan-) inmates of an institution without
them being able to tell whether they are
being watched or not. Although it is
physically impossible for the single
watchman to observe all cells at once, the
fact that the inmates cannot know when
they are being watched means that all
inmates must act as though they are

The name is also a reference to Argus

Panoptes from Greek mythology; he was a

giant creature with a hundred eyes and thus
was known to be a very effective watchman.

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In this form of power domination, the ideal city is

where peace and love are sovereign. Everybody

likes to try to put everything in order to guarantee
their own peace and love., esp. those in power.
They rule, they are selfish. The whole city is made
up of multiple circles controlled by three
commanders:
Power: surveillance
Knowledge: control everything based on
information, it controls arts, science, schools
, you are constantly controlled
Love: Limits peoples productions of thought,
creates selfishness

Bentham says this is a new mode of obtaining

power of mind over mind.

Panopticon: It aimed to be a tool for
distributing individuals in space, for ordering
them in a visible way. He is seen, but does not
see. He is the object of information.

Normalization/Panopticon
Foucault however points to an additional

rationality built into the project of panopticon.

It offered a logic of efficiency but also of
normalization.
By normalization Foucault means a system of
finely gradated and measurable intervals in
which individuals can be distributed around a
norm a norm which both organizes and is
the result of this controlled distribution.

How does normalization take place?

Normalization needs the following elements:
A - a new legitimized rationality
B - a new social epistemology

They lead to new transformation known as new

normative laws

 A system of normalization is opposed to be a

system of law or a system of personal power.

There are no fixed pivot points from which to
make judgments, to impose will. Normative,
serialized (to use the Sartrean term) order is
an essential component of the regime of the
bio-power, for a power whose task is to take
charge of life needs continuous regulatory and
corrective mechanisms.

Why are these powers important?

What is important about these concepts? Why

do we care?
How can they help us to understand the world
around us?

Power and repression?

Does power repress?

Does power manage to repress our needs,

desires, resistance?

Michel Foucault believes that power doesnt

not repress so much as it incites.

So what is the advantage of carrying such a
false power, which does not lead to
repression?

Classical liberalism 18th century

In regard to power in one main way it is called

Right to Death or Juridical Power

It is an unfair excuse of power
Judricial Power is exercised by monarchs
Enlightenment theorists like john lock,
Thomas Hobbes, and Rousseau inherit this
idea from monarch
They believe that monarchs use the power
illegitimately

According to Foucault:
The sovereign exercised his right of life only

by exercising his right to kill, or by refraining

from killing; he evidenced his power over life
only through the death he was capable of
requiring. The right which was formulated as
the power of life and death was in reality
the right to kill or let live. Its symbol, after all,
was sword.

The common features of juridical

power
Prohibitions
Punishment

Foucault comments:
This juridical form must be referred to a historical type
of society in which power was exercised mainly as a
means of deduction, a subtraction mechanism, a
right to appropriate a portion of the wealth, a tax of
products, goods and services, labor and blood,
levied on the subjects. Power in this instance was
essentially a right of seizure; of things, time, bodies,
and ultimately life itself. It culminated in the
privilege to seize hold of life in order to suppress it.

Therefore judricial power is a power that

prevents you from doing something.

The law of speed control: if you cross the
speed limit, you will be fined. Here we see
prohibition and punishment in a form of
subtraction.

Hence, this model of subtraction encourages

us to think that power is exercised over us as

a loss on our parts; the exercise of power
takes away something from us. So it prohibits
and then punishes.

The agent of this prohibition and punishment is

official institution.
Laws
Government
Police
Legislative branch
This is usually what we think of political or
governmental organization. So juridical power is
housed and used by the official institutions the
power owned by these institutions is exercised
on individuals.

In juridical power, power is quantifiable, tangible:

you have it or you dont. if you exercise it by

subtraction(taking away s.th from you), then
you must be able to measure the subtraction.
When something is taken away from you, so it
is tangible, which means you have it but you
dont have it right now, and you dont know
how much you had or that you dont have that
part right now.

We think of power in terms of more or less,

like I had power and now I dont have, or my

gaining of power maybe somebody elses loss
of power- it is a zero-sum game; my gain is
your loss.

The summary of Judricial Power

Means: prohibition (subtract possibility of

action) and punishment ( subtract a fee for

transgression --- imprisonment or capital
punishment)
Location: official institutions
Individuals as both subjects and objects of
power: they exercise power and power is
exercised upon them

Why is termed juridico-discursive

representation of power?
It is juridical because it is modeled upon law,

upon prohibition: it is a power [more

precisely a representation of power] whose
model is essentially juridical, centered on
nothing more than the statement of the law
and the operation of taboos.

But as Foucault makes clear, the actual

operation of power cannot be reduced to one

model the law, the state, the domination
but instead functions in a variety of forms and
with varying means and techniques.

Second, according to this view, power is

discursive (can be found in various forms), its

prohibitions are tied together with what one
can say as much as what one can do; in this
way restrictions on language should also
function as restrictions upon reality and
actions. This is the heart of the logic of
censorship.

While this view emphasizes discourse as a

primary arena in which powers effects

manifest, Foucault notes that discourses are
related to power in much more complicated
ways than this view could suggest:
discourses are not once and for all
subservient to power or raised up against it
discourse can both be an instrument and an
effect of power, but also a hindrance, a
stumbling-block, a point of resistance, and an
starting point for an strategy;

According to this Juridio-discursive theory,

power has five principal characteristics:

First, power always operates negatively: that
is by means of prohibition.
Second, power always takes the form of a rule
or law. This entails a binary system of
permitted and forbidden, legal and illegal.

These two characteristics together constitute

the third:
3.power operates through a cycle of
prohibition, a law of interdiction (exclusion).
4. Hence, this power manifests in three forms
of prohibition: A)affirming that such a thing is
not permitted, B) preventing it from being said
C)denying that it exits which reveal a logic of
censorship

Fifth and finally, the apparatus of this power is

universal and uniform in its mode of

operation: From top to bottom, in its overall
decisions and its capillary interventions alike
whatever the devices or institutions it relies, it
acts in a uniform and comprehensive manner,
it operates in a simple and endlessly
reproduced mechanism of law, taboo, and
censorship.

Foucault's own theory of power is meant to

replace all these juridico-discursive account:
It is this image that we must break free of,

that is of the theoretical privilege of law and

sovereignty, if we wish to analyze power
within the concrete and historical framework
of its operation. We must construct an
analytics of power that no longer takes law as
a model and a code.

A Foculdian view of power

It must be understood as: 1) the multiplicity of

the forced relations immanent (present

everywhere) in the sphere (the area) in which
they operate and constitute their own
organization;

2) the process which through ceaseless

struggles and confrontations, transforms,

strengthens, or reverses them (force relations)
3)the support which these force relations find
in one another, thus forming a chain or a
system, or on the contrary the disjunctions,
differences and contradictions which isolate
them from one another.

The strategies in which they take effect whose

general design or institutional crystallization is

embodied (included) in the state apparatus, in
the formulation of the law, in the various
social hegemonies (controlling system).

Foculdian Panopticon (discipline) and its

extension
Synopticon: the control of minority by

majority. This concept was introduced in 1987

by Thomas Matheisen (like a president who is
constantly under close watch by a country)
Monopticon: the control of individual by
individual and individual by himself

In the subject and Power Foucault states his

aim: he wanted to study the how of power not

how does it manifest itself, but by what means
is it exercised?
Power in a given society is unspoken warfare.
It is a silent, secret civil war that reinscribes
conflict in various social institutions in economic
inequalities, in language, in every one of us
The self is seen chiefly as a tool of power ;
selfhood was normalized subjectivity; the self
remains a prey to power

Subjectification/Objectification
Foucault developed the concept of power as

able to take the form of subjectification, I

the self as a tool of power, a product of
domination, rather than as a tool of personal
freedom. This became Foucault's main theme.
His aim has not been to analyze the
phenomenon of power nor to elaborate the
foundation of such an analysis; its been to
create a history of different modes by which in
our culture, human beings are made subjects.

Three modes of Objectification

1. dividing practices: the most famous is

isolation of lepers during the middle ages.

The confinement of the poor, the insane and
the vagabond; e.g. the rise of modern
psychiatry and its entry into hospitals and
prisons in the 19th century and finally the
mediclization, stigmatization. Society decides
the social abnormalities

In different fashions the subject is objectified

by a process of division either within himself

or from others. In this way human beings are
given both a social and personal identity.
Those dividing practices are modes of
manipulation that combine the mediation of
science or pseudo-science

2. Scientific classification

Those modes of inquiry that give themselves

the status of science
3. Subjectification
The way a human being turns him or herself
into a subject. e.g. Foucault says it is a selfformation in which the person is active. Not
power, but the subject has been the main
theme of Foucaults research

Foucault is primarily concerned with isolating

those techniques through which the person

initiates an active self-formation. This selfformation has a long and complicated
genealogy; it takes place through a variety of
operations on [peoples] own bodies, on their
own souls, on their own thoughts, on their
own conducts.

These operations characteristically entail a

process of self-understanding but one which is

mediated by an external authority figure, be he
confessor (priest) or psychoanalyst. Foucault
encourages us to reflect critically upon why it is
that we desire someone else to tell us what to
think and what to do , why we must believe that
we have absolute and universal norms that
dictate our thoughts and actions as well as the
effects upon the effects of that desire (1982:8).
The subject and Power in Michel Foucault beyond
structuralism and hermeneutics

What is good? Foucault tells us that comes

through innovation. The good does not exist

in an atemporal sky, with people who be like
the astrologers of the Good, whose job is to
determine what is the favorable nature of the
stars. The good is invented by us, it is
practiced, it is invented. And this is a
collaborative, joint work.

Foucault states: each new work profoundly

changes the terms of thinking which I had

reached with previous work. In this sense I
consider myself more of an experimenter than
a theorist; I dont develop deductive systems
to apply uniformly in different felids of
research. When I write I do it above all to
change myself and not to think the same
thing before. (1991, 27) how an experience
book is born. In Remarks on Marx

During most of the 1960s, Foucault sought in

a variety of ways, to analyze and isolate the

structures of the human sciences treated as
discursive systems. It is important to stress
that Foucault did not see himself as a
practitioner of these human sciences. They
were his objects of study.

Neo-Liberalism: Power over life

It exercises power over life beyond the

juridical. It is the reform of the soul,

rather than the punishment of the body.
It talks about norms like body size, gender
presentation, and Statistics like IQ rates,
mortality rates
The power over life wants us to have a better
life and more life through micromanaging it.
You try to manage your life by micromanaging
its details.

Bio-power contains two disciplines that are like

two poles that move forward side by side in a

cmp0lemenary mode. The first one as Foucault
says is: an anatomo-politics of the human body.
The second, formed somewhat later, focused
on the species body, the body imbued with the
mechanics of life and serving as the basis of
the biological processes, propagation, birth,
and mortality, the level of health, life
expectancy, and longevity, with all the
conditions that can cause these to vary.

The power over life channels through

unofficial channels, like opinion or social

norms. It functions through production not
deduction. It enforces itself through positive
and negative reinforcement. It can be direct or
indirect reinforcement.
Upbringing of children can be along the
positive and negative reinforcements.
Kinds of dressing in a private party.

 Bio-power has two poles; discipline and

governmentality. Discipline operates on particular

individuals in a particular space. It collects
information about an individual and acts
according to that information. In the Classical Age
it occurs in schools and workshops. In the Modem
Age it spreads to families and hospitals and
begins to be exercised by marginal religious
groups, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social
workers. Governmentality, on the other hand,
operates on particular groups of individuals. It
receives information through statistical analyses,
financial reports and population registers. Its
techniques of power are directed to making
adjustments in the population and their economic
condition. Legislation is one technique which is
used to make these adjustments. It works

There are some parts of the society that are

appropriate for law to regulate and some parts

for the opinion to regulate. By opinion it
means the accepted social norms, which are
accepted through regular repetition by the
individuals.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Philosopher and political economist

Mill says opinion can regulate individuals

social relationships. He believes that people

cannot remain indifferent to one another. He
believes:
it
would
be
a
great
misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose
that it is one of selfish indifference, which
pretends that human beings have no business
with each others conduct in life and they
should not concern themselves about the welldoing or well-being of one another unless their
own interest is involved.

Mill says there are things which do not

necessarily affect other people, but do effect that

individual, for instance ones body size, ones
gender presentation, do not necessarily affect
other people, but do affect that individual. If
there is a distrustful opinion that law cannot
regulate it like your body size, gender
presentation, which do not negatively impact
anyone in a sense that law can regulate they
certainly effect the society. Hence in such a
situation opinion can regulate them. (social
power)

There are lots of acts which are important for

social organizations that are not codified in

the law but defiantly need to be regulated in
order to have a stabilized society.

Bio-Political Adminstration
Society is interested in regulating it, but according

to liberal-political theory, it is unjust for law to

regulate it. So here opinion takes action.
Another consequence of the development of this
bio-power was the growing importance assumed
by the action of the norm at the expense of the
juridical system of the law. Law cannot help but be
armed and its norm, par excellence is death, to
those who transgress it ,it replies with absolute
menace. The law always refers to the sword. But
power whose task is to take charge of life needs
continuous regulatory and corrective mechanisms.

It is no longer a matter of bringing death into

play in the field of sovereignty, but of

distributing the living in the domain of value
and utility. Such a power has to qualify,
measure, evaluate, and hierarchize, rather
than display itself in its murderous splendor. It
does not have to draw the line that separates
the enemies of the sovereign from his
obedient subjects. It effects distributions
around the norm.

Foucault further says that I dont mean that the law

fades into the background or that the institutions of

justice tend to disappear, but rather the law
operates more and more as a norm and that the
juridical institution sis increasingly incorporated into
a continuum of apparatuses (medical administrative
and so on) whose functions are for the most part
regulatory. A normalizing society is the historical
outcome of the technology of power centered on
life. We have entered a phase of juridical regressing
in comparison with pre-seventeenth century
societies we are acquainted with.

Foucault gives the following remarks on power over

life: A power that exerts a positive influence on life

that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it.
Subjecting it to precise control and comprehensive
regulations . We are no longer waged in the name of
the sovereign who must be defended; they are waged
on the behalf of the existence of everyone; entire
population is mobilized for the purpose of wholesale
slaughter in the name of the life necessity; massacres
have become vital. It is as managers of life and
survival, of bodies and the race that so many
regimes have been able to wage so many wars ,
causing so many men to be killed.

By the time the right of life and death was framed by

the classical theoreticians, it was in a considerably

diminished form. It was no longer considered that this
power of the sovereign over his subjects could be
exercised in an absolute and unconditional way. But in
cases where the sovereign's very existence was in
jeopardy; a sort of right of rejoinder. If he were
threatened by external enemies who sought to
overthrow him or contest his rights, he could then
legitimately wage war, and require his subjects to
take part in the defense of the state, without directly
proposing their death. He was empowered to expose
their life.

In this sense, he wielded an indirect power

over them of life and death. But if someone

dared to rise up against him and transgress
his laws , then he could exercise a direct
power over the offenders life. As punishment
the latter would be to death. In this sense, this
power was in fact for the survival of the
sovereign.

Bio-Power
Discipline
Anatomo-politics of Bodies
Disciplinary power deals with normalization of

individual bodies = birth of normative law. (each

normalization leads to internalizing gaze).
It is a kind of taming body and making it docile. It
is how you make your body work efficiently. You
micromanage it. Some other common examples
can be as follows:
Diet: you either want to appear more normal or
feel more healthy
Beauty Regiment
Learning a New language

A comparative glance at Bio-power of

individual bodies and species bodies:

Individual bodies is the discipline in small
scale, while species bodies is the discipline in
large scale. Individual bodies is about social
norms . Species bodies is about statistical
average

Bio-power of individual bodies: it intends to

optimize the individual power as individual

bodies does It makes sure that the population
life is most optimized. It believes that society
must be defended
In terms of surveillance:
A) Individual Bodies: between the literal
surveillance of then gaze
B) Species Bodies: then surveillance is so
abstract. The bell curve is well monitored. It is
more metaphorical kind of surveillance

Foucault says in the 20th century Racism

became institutionalized as a form of the Biopolitical administration. Race did not remain
as a natural representative of a group or a
community, but it became part of the
institutionalized apparatus in the welfare safe.
Race was used as a means of differentiating
between who was invested with life, whose
was optimized, and who was left to die.