Beyond power: Unbridging Foucault and Weber

Abstract This paper explores the powerful works of French philosopher, Michel Foucault and examines its implications for understanding power and cultural relations. Despite this, there has been very little Foucauldian analysis of culture and its relationship to power (Powell 2012). Hence, the article discusses the relationship between Foucault’s conceptual tools of ‘power’, the emergence of ‘the modern subject’, the individual and the important concept of ‘body’ as they apply to a methodological and epistemological understanding of culture in contemporary society. Key words: Power, Culture, Archaeology, Discourse and Theory

2014

In this dissertation, I will consider the multiple trajectories of the thought of Michel Foucault in the 1970s and 1980s, offering an approach through which his writings on power and knowledge on one hand, and ethics and the self on the other can be understood fruitfully in relation to each other without being seen as representing a radical break in his work. I will do this by, first, locating the question of the subject and its formation within Foucault’s works on disciplinary power and sexuality, paving the way for this question to be revisited through his later writings on ethics. I will then consider how the development of Foucault’s ideas on power into biopower and governmentality enable an approach through which continuity within Foucault’s works can be identified through the relations between power, conduct and modes of individualisation. This will lead to considering Foucault’s genealogy of ethics and the modern subject not as a departure from his earlier ideas, but as the culmination of his interest in analysing knowledge, power and ethics. I will consider but go beyond the notions of aesthetics of existence and care of the self in Foucault’s discussion of ancient Greek and Hellenistic ethics in order to deal with his ideas on parrhēsia and truth-telling from his final lecture courses at the Collège De France that show that his late ideas reflect his earlier concerns. Therefore, by appealing to the conceptual developments within his writings as well as his approach to philosophical analysis, Foucault’s philosophical projects need not be seen as disparate and so the issue of continuity in his work can be raised and positively viewed.

Development of the Michel Foucault's power formulations and techniques of power. First, sovereign power, Second, disciplinary power, third biopower and lastly governmentality.

Academia, 2021

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 analyse 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. (Foucault, 1982: 208). Does "Power" Exist? The exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners, individuals or a 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. (Foucault, 1982). "An Economy of Power" The elements Foucault expouses by their very nature are best suited to an economy of power. His questions are not what is power? What is the general system of power?-or even, How is power exercised in organisations? But rather: What are the main characteristics of power relations in our society today? How did they appear? On what rationality are they sustained? 2

Global Society, 2017

This article demonstrates how Foucault's notion(s) of power can be misappropriated to International Relations (IR) thought. After considering Foucault's early and late work, the article reveals the complexity of his thought, describing how he developed his notion(s) of power and their effects on subjectivity and freedom. Although a number of IR scholars have revealed the challenges of appropriating Foucaultian thought to IR, their approaches highlight the effects rather than the causes of such (mis)appropriation. By unveiling the causes, this article informs IR scholars on how to avoid this (mis)appro-priation and points their attention to the interplay among power, subjectivity and freedom, which is often neglected. Therefore, critical value is added to the Foucaultian IR debate by analysing how Foucault perceived freedom, its association with power and the effects on the subject's agency.

Cogito. Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 2010

The problem of power was of great importance in Michel Foucault's philosophical work. He parted clearly with the marxist interpretations of power relations, arguing that power is not essentially something that institutions possess and use oppressively against individuals and groups. Consequently, Foucault tries to move the analysis one step beyond viewing power as the plain oppression of the powerless by the powerful, aiming to examine how it operates in day to day interactions between people and institutions. In this sense, the power is more like something that acts and operates in a certain way, it's more a strategy than a possession Foucault sees it as co-extensive with resistance, as a productive factor, because it has positive effects such as the individual's self-making, and because, as a condition of possibility for any relation, it is ubiquitous, being found in any type of relation between the members of society.

Critical Horizons, 15 (1), 14-27., 2014

Amy Allen criticizes Foucault for having a “narrow and impoverished conception of social interaction, according to which all such interaction is strategic.” I challenge this claim, partly on the basis of comments by Foucault which explicitly acknowledge and in some cases endorse forms of non-strategic interaction, but more importantly on the basis of the significant changes in Foucault’s concept of power that he elaborated in lectures from 1978 onwards and in “The Subject and Power.” His 1975–1976 lectures embarked upon a critical re-examination of the “strategic” concept of power that he had relied upon up to this point. However, it was not until 1978 and after that he outlined an alternative concept of power as government, or more broadly as “action upon the actions of others.” After retracing this shift in Foucault’s understanding of power, I argue that the concept of power as action upon the actions of others does not commit him to a narrow conception of social interaction as always strategic. At the same time, Foucault’s concept does not answer normative questions about acceptable versus unacceptable ways of governing the actions of others.

The strength of Lukes' third face of power is the recognition that agents can be influenced by structures and ideas in ways of which they are unaware. The weakness of Lukes' position is that his consideration of the third face is underdeveloped. In this article, we argue that Bourdieu and Foucault's work offer fruitful ways of exploring this 'pre-conscious' dimension. Using Bourdieu's work, the core of any understanding of the third face is rooted in the relationship between the social field and the habitus, while, for Foucault, the focus is upon the construction of the subject and her preferences in relation to the ongoing production of power. We subsequently explore the differences between their positions.

in Manzo, L.K.C. (ed) Culture and Visual Forms of Power. Experiencing Contemporary Spaces of Resistance, 2015

Michel Foucault’s construction of power offers a revaluation of the modern “perpetual battle” (1995, 26) and, in particular, of the biopolitical and neoliberal forms of governance that characterize our present. The Foucaldian idea of power is that it is not a thing, but a relation (1971). Power is not simply repressive (like the use of violent control in the pre-modern era), but is also productive and is an everyday disciplinary practice. “It is not the ‘privilege’, acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions- an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the positions of those who are dominated” (1995, 26-27). In short, Foucault conceives power as “exclusively social, multiple, variable in character” (Sluga 2005, 231) and, more importantly, exercised on a small scale by political acts taken up by the supposedly powerless. In order to understand what power relations are about, rather than analyze distinctive forms of power, perhaps “we should investigate the forms of resistance and attempts made to dissociate these relations” (1983, 211). (in Manzo 2015: page 1).

The lack of normative and ethical standpoints provided by Michel Foucault have been a source of confusion, debate and inquiry by a wide set of scholars. Foucault explicitly refrained from providing a normative theory regarding how power cold be organized. Richard A. Lynch offers a compelling excursion on this topic and explores Foucault’s own writing more closely in order to revisit the ethical foundation in the “third shift” in Foucault’s work which concentrates more narrowly on the subject of power. It is an interesting book and my review gives further insights and some critical notes on the ethical foundations of M. Foucault writing