economy of power :: essays research papers

15The miserliness of powerI would like to enkindle a nonher way to go furthertowards a new economy of power traffic, a waywhich is to a greater extent empirical, more directly think to ourpresent situation, and which implies more relationsbetween theory and practice.Michel Foucault, 1982Beyond the restrictive hypothesis Power as power/knowledgeFoucault never attempts any (impossible) definition of power. At best, he gives a definition ofpower relations in an essay published in 1982The exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners, individual or incorporated it is a way inwhich certain actions modify others. Which is to say, of course, that something called Power, with orwith break through a capital letter, which is assumed to exist universally in a operose or diffused form, does notexist.Therefore, Foucauldian definition of power is drawn in opposition with the repressivehypothesis (Foucault, 1971) which holds that there is a transcendental sympathy whic h can beexercised independently of any power relationship. Precisely because it is transcendental, apprehensionis then universally compelling. It can limit the semipolitical power topic and has therefore a role inopposing domination (ie when political power goes beyond its rights).Foucault draws the genealogy of this hypothesis advocating two intellects for its appearance inhistory(Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982130). On a first hand, because of what he calls the speaker units clear , the mere fact that, by advocating such a hypothesis, the speaker placeshimself out of power and within truth. However, this is not the main argument of Foucault as hemust recognise that, not as an archaeologist but as a genealogist, he is himself in a field of powerrelations. On a second hand, becausemodern power is tolerable on the cultivate that it masks itselfwhich it has done very effectively. If truthis outside of and distant to power, then the speakers benefit is merely an incidental plus. But if truth and16power are not external to each other, as Foucault depart obviously maintain, then the speakers benefit andassociated ploys are among the necessity ways in which power operates. It masks itself by producing adiscourse, 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 atranscendental reason means falling again in the contradictions of modernity (see part 1).Therefore, Foucault prefers considering rationalness as a kind of rationality and study howseveral kinds of rationalities could come forward in history (see part 2). However, considering theemergence of a kind of rationality presupposes that the field of possible knowledge is tightly