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"...in a society such as ours...there are manifold relations of power that permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse."
Michel Foucault
According Michel Foucault exist a wire of power among us. The power side changes constantly and every moment we can notice it.
Foucault decentralizes power and argues that it does not operate through class but through mechanisms and strategies. Foucault argues that power should be understood in terms of its operations, techniques, tools (“What does power do?”) rather than in terms of simply what it is. Power is not owned by the state, nor is it specific to any particular organization. It is a machinery that no one owns. Its application points are multiple, dispersed throughout all social institutions. Power, according to Foucault must be analyzed as something that circulates, or rather as something which only functions in the form of a chain. It is never localized here or there, never in anybody’s hands, never appropriated as a commodity or piece of wealth. Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organization… Individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application
Therefore, when analyzing power, one should examine the diversity of the points of applications of power rather than a deep structure. Foucault insists that power is typically present throughout the institutions of modernity, in all kinds of administrative contexts (Discipline and Punish, 227-8). Techniques and strategies of power are always present. They originally develop within institutions like armies, prisons, factories but their influence seeps into the texture of social life.
The authority project comes from an experience that I could face on the beginning of 2006. I was at an immigration department of a European country trying to figure out what should I have to do to have an especial documentation. My, first thought was talk to a policeman that was in front of the door. I think He was so stressed with people asking the most different question to him that when I went to his direction he started to yell in his mother tongue. I was astonished, because I was not able to ask anything to him. So, my reaction was start to yelling in Portuguese (my mother tongue) with him. Afterwards, He became calmer and we could talk normally.
I think this experience is deeply related with Foucault’s idea of power, and how it is spread and can be suddenly changed |
