Economy of Power

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The economy of power

Ð''I would like to suggest another way to go further

towards a new economy of power relations, a way

which is more empirical, more directly related to our

present situation, and which implies more relations

between theory and practice.

Michel Foucault, 1982

Beyond the repressive hypothesis: Power as power/knowledge

Foucault never attempts any (impossible) definition of power. At best, he gives a definition of

power relations in an essay published in 1982:

Ð''The exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners, individual or 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.'

Therefore, Foucauldian definition of power is drawn in opposition with the Ð'« repressive

hypothesis Ð'» (Foucault, 1971) which holds that there is a transcendental reason which can be

exercised independently of any power relationship. Precisely because it is transcendental, reason

is then universally compelling. It can limit the political power field and has therefore a role in

opposing domination (ie when political power goes beyond its rights).

Foucault draws the genealogy of this hypothesis advocating two reasons for its appearance in

history(Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982:130). On a first hand, because of what he calls the

Ð'« speaker's benefit Ð'», the mere fact that, by advocating such a hypothesis, the speaker places

himself out of power and within truth. However, this is not the main argument of Foucault as he

must recognise that, not as an archaeologist but as a genealogist, he is himself in a field of power

relations. On a second hand, because:

Ð''modern power is tolerable on the condition that it masks itselfÐ'-which it has done very effectively. If truth

is outside of and opposed to power, then the speaker's benefit is merely an incidental plus. But if truth and

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power are not external to each other, as Foucault will obviously maintain, then the speaker's benefit and

associated ploys are among the essential ways in which power operates. It masks itself by producing a

discourse, seemingly opposed to it but really part of a larger deployment of modern power.'

An additional, more technical, reason should be added, which is that talking about a

transcendental reason means falling again in the contradictions of modernity (see part 1).

Therefore, Foucault prefers considering rationality as Ð'« a kind of rationality Ð'» and study how

several kinds of rationalities could emerge in history (see part 2). However, considering the

emergence of a kind of rationality presupposes that the field of possible knowledge is tightly

linked with an empirical field:

Ð''I think we must limit the sense of the word Ð'« rationalisation Ð'» to an instrumental and relative use and to

see how forms of rationalisation become embodied in practices, or systems of practices' (Foucault, 1980:47)

If reason is reduced to an instrumental, relative reason embodied in an empirical field of

practices, then the field of reason, at a determined time in a certain place is a field of discursive

formations. Hence the two following consequences:

1) Because of its instrumentality, a form of reason as well as any form of knowledge define a set

of possible practices and is thus an instrument of power.

2) Because it is embodied in an empirical field, a form of reason (or any form of knowledge

supported by it) has ontologically no being beyond any set of practices. Therefore, because of

the former consequence, the field of knowledge defines a field of power and vice-versa.

Therefore, power is not to be considered as opposite to reason; but on the contrary as the

necessary condition for the construction of knowledge. Moreover, because power produces

knowledge, it can be, at least partially, grasped by archaeology:

Ð''These power-knowledge relations are to be analysed, therefore, not on the basis of a subject of knowledge

who is or is not free in relation to power, but, on the contrary, the subject who knows, the objects to be

known and the modalities of knowledge must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental

implications of power-knowledge and their historical transformations.' (Foucault, 1977)

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A deterministic economy of power ?

Foucault's aim is to establish a genealogy of how power is exercised in our society basing his

analysis on an archaeology of the discursive formations. Hence, his analysis is aimed toward the

Ð''modes of functioning' of power in our