The Powers That Be
This week’s reading was definitely heavy with concepts. I keep on restarting this posting and then chucking it because I decide to change what to focus on… Strangely enough, I found the second part of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality easier to digest (probably due to the way he was structuring the text). A major theme of part four, “The Deployment of Sexuality,” would undoubtedly be power. At this moment, I am a sociology major and “power” is a term that gets thrown around quite often. From my introduction to sociology course last term, the definition of power has been presented via Charles Lemert’s “The Mysterious Power of Social Structures.” For my purposes, power has been the means by social structures sort people or create differences between people to ultimately create hegemony via strategies of prestige, authority, and class. It was interesting to read about Foucault’s take of what power is.
Most of my notes for this section start with “power is not…” as Foucault was very thorough in negating many common definitions of “power,” including an offshoot of Lemert’s definition (“a general system of domination exerted by one group over another, a system whose effects, through successive derivations, pervade the entire social body”) (92). According to Foucault, power is not connected to the sovereign, state, law, or dominating group and is therefore, not an institution, structure, strength (92). Foucault offers the definition that power is a “multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which they constitute organization” (92). From my understanding/ interpretation of this definition and the accompanying propositions, Foucault’s definition of power is more abstract, but encompassing as well. Power is everywhere and ever changing and come from infinite sources, not necessarily the top/ dominant only. Power is not a separate from the relations in which it operates within and power relations are effects of the differences and inequalities within the relation as opposed to the other way around. Interestingly, the resistance to the power is (usually) not outside that power’s realm of operation. An aspect that I tend to overlook when thinking about power and which Foucault spells out is that power is always intentional and tactical.
In terms of sexuality and discourse, Foucault considers them as instruments of power relations and therefore sexuality and the discourses are produced, not a given (97). Though I think I have a grasp of the main points, it is still taking time to digest. Following the description of this course in which we follow Foucault’s model, I look forward to seeing how this definition/ framework pans out (or show its shortcomings such as Norton’s piece started to) in all the forms of documents and media.
February 14th, 2012 at 9:55 am
Hi Vita,
I think you’ve digested this section from Foucault quite well, especially in your discussion of how his view differs from the traditional ones (often used in sociology). For today’s class, we will discuss these differences but for now I’ll just point out that his concept of power is not so abstract when applied, since he sees it operating through “local centers” and penetrating bodies. Our task as analysts is to trace those formations. At the same time, it is “everywhere,” as you note, rather than something used by one person or group to control another. For him, power produces and generates. It is intentional, but that is different from consciously employed, as by a class to control another class. Please bring this up in class so that we can think through what that means.