Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, Second Edition

Making Subjects 69achieve a given objective may have unexpected results because what is doneis modified by other actions. And whatever is done in turn modifies stillother actions.The common conception is that power is attributable to and exercised byagents and is exercised on agents. bents possessed of power coerce agentswho lack gowGf Against this, Foucault insists on ""re strictly relationalcharacter of power relationships,""" He insists that we must be "nominalistic"abut power because "power is not an institution, and not a structure;neither is it a certain strength,"sVoawer is a ""set of actions upon other actions,"not actions on individuals like persuading and coercing,sV~ocauldianpower "is a way in which certain actions modi+ others," Power"is a anlode of action which does not act directly and immediately on others,Instead it acts upon their actions," Pom is "'a total strucrure of actionsbrought to bear upon possible actions" in the sense that power enables orenhances some actions and inhibits or precludes others." And becausepower is actions upon other actions, it is impersonal or, as Faucault puts it," nonsubjective. "j6Unfortunately3 the negative things Foucault says about powr-that it isnot domination, that it is nor anyone's power-seem inconsistent withpower's subject-defining rule. The inclination then is to think that powrmust he something more than relations among actions if it can manufactureswbjects. Power mug be a determinant of some sort, and most likely it ishidden coercive persuasion, indoctrination, or domination. Foucault isaware of this inclitlation and remarks that just as it is wrong ta believe historyis "the ruse of reason," it is equally wrong to believe that ""power isthe ruse of historyw-5" What this rather obscure comment amounts to is thatthose wha conceive history as discerning ahistclric determinants of events,like class struggle, see power as conspiratorial manipulation that servesthose determinants.Misinterpretation of Foucauidian power is worth pursuing because doingso facilitates better understanding, Construing power as ctllnspiramrial determinantsof behavior, as covert domination, goes like this: Power orpower relations are reificd as Capital-P Power; that is, power is taken asforce or "a certain strength." Application of Capital-P hwer-whetherknowing or atherwise-is seen as serving historical inevitability or classstruggle or The Divine Plan, or so on, and so as what makes people thinkand behave as they do. Usually another and particularly un-Foucauldianidea is grafted onto this misinterpretation. That is the idea that if we getclear enough on the role of Capital-P Power and how it is exerted on us, wecan liberate ourselves from it." Unfortunately, distortion of Foucauldianpower as covert domination is supported by his own method. Foucadt ex-plicates power by catsrloging behavior-conditioning and srrbectivity-definingtechniques. That is what Discgli~e and P'unisb and I"he Nistoq of Sex-