Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, Second Edition

Making Subjects 7.5mentation of conclusions drawn are all modified by the acrions amongwhich they occur. A simple example is a newly hired prison psychmetristwhose assessment of inmates' test results is affiected by the practices of newcoworkers. When we mulriply this instance by a thousand, we be& to see&at Foucault tries to gather up in his talk ol power and actions constrainingactians.82One issue raised by Fotrcault's desire to capture something with his ideaof power is whether what he tries to capture has its awn history Certainlymuch of what he says in Dkcipki~e and Punz'sh and The Hktory of Sexualitysounds as if power is something fairly new It seems that power eitherhad a relatively late historical beginning or an escalation in degree tantamountto a beginning.. In one sense power must be as old as we are, since itis the dynamic totality of interactive human aaion, But it could be a misinterpretationof Foucault to understand power as coextensive with humanhistory. Dkcipki~e and Punkh has to do with the historically circumscribeddispfacement of juridico-discursive rule of law by disciplinary techniquesand regulatory norms. Foucault is ambiguous on the paint, He tells us that"from the seventeenth. and eighteenth centuries onward, there was a veritabletechnological take-off in the productivity of power." He also points outthat not only did "he monarchies of the classical period develop great stateapparatuses (the army3 police and fiscal administrationf,'"utthat "therewas established at this period . . . a new kconomybf power,""" It could bethat power was new sometime in the seventeenth century; it could be thatat that time there was a significant increase or change, Again, it could bethat there was a new economy of yower or that power itself was newConstruing the apparent historical emergence of power as only a matterof degree initially may look at odds with what seem to have enabled Foucauldianpower relations, These are such things as increases in population,greater complexity of social interaction, more: complicated societal structuring,increasingly sophisticated manipulative techniques, and refinementsin enculturacian, It might seem more pfausibfe to think that power is relativelynew in human history and has a history of its own. If so, it seems thatat some point the number of people interacting, and the ecornplexitny of theirinteracrians, reached a "critical mass"?resulting in new constraints on action.However, on reflection it seems fruitless, if not impossible, to distinguishthis sort of novelty ham a change of degree. Power's apparent historicalbegnning is best construed as bow actions constraining actions becamesignificant only when management techniques became useful to deal effectivelywith substantial populations. The deployment of penality requircslarge numbers of lawbreakers who pose a considerable eotlecrive problemfor authorities and society at large, More important, the number of lawbrealtersmmt be large enough to enable and call for categorization of individualsas ""delinquents," """recidivists," and so forth, and the production of