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The Subject and Power
Author(s): Michel Foucault
Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1982), pp. 777-795
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343197

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The Subject and Power

Michel Foucault

Why Study Power? The Question of the Subject

The ideas which I would like to discuss here represent neither a theory
nor a methodology.

I would like to say, first of all, what has been the goal of my work

during the last twenty years. It has not been to analyze the phenomena
of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an analysis.

My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the different
modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects. My
work has dealt with three modes of objectification which transform
human beings into subjects.

The first is the modes of inquiry which try to give themselves the
status of sciences; for example, the objectivizing of the speaking subject
in grammaire generale, philology, and linguistics. Or again, in this first
mode, the objectivizing of the productive subject, the subject who labors,
in the analysis of wealth and of economics. Or, a third example, the

objectivizing of the sheer fact of being alive in natural history or biology.
In the second part of my work, I have studied the objectivizing of

the subject in what I shall call “dividing practices.” The subject is either

This essay was written by Michel Foucault as an afterword to Michel Foucault: Beyond
Structuralism and Hermeneutics by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow and reprinted by
arrangement with the University of Chicago Press. “Why Study Power? The Question of
the Subject” was written in English by Foucault; “How Is Power Exercised?” was translated
from the French by Leslie Sawyer.

Critical Inqury 8 (Summer 1982)
, 1982 by The Uni ersity of Chicago. 0093-1896/82/0804-0006$01.00. All rights reserved.

777

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778 Michel Foucault The Subject and Power

divided inside himself or divided from others. This process objectivizes
him. Examples are the mad and the sane, the sick and the healthy, the
criminals and the “good boys.”

Finally, I have sought to study-it is my current work-the way a
human being turns himself into a subject. For example, I have chosen
the domain of sexuality-how men have learned to recognize themselves
as subjects of “sexuality.”

Thus, it is not power but the subject which is the general theme of

my research.
It is true that I became quite involved with the question of power. It

soon appeared to me that, while the human subject is placed in relations
of production and of signification, he is equally placed in power relations
which are very complex. Now, it seemed to me that economic history and

theory provided a good instrument for relations of production and that

linguistics and semiotics offered instruments for studying relations of

signification; but for power relations we had no tools of study. We had
recourse only to ways of thinking about power based on legal models,
that is: What legitimates power? Or, we had recourse to ways of thinking
about power based on institutional models, that is: What is the state?

It was therefore necessary to expand the dimensions of a definition
of power if one wanted to use this definition in studying the objectivizing
of the subject.

Do we need a theory of power? Since a theory assumes a prior
objectification, it cannot be asserted as a basis for analytical work. But
this analytical work cannot proceed without an ongoing conceptualiza-
tion. And this conceptualization implies critical thought-a constant

checking.
The first thing to check is what I shall call the “conceptual needs.” I

mean that the conceptualization should not be founded on a theory of
the object-the conceptualized object is not the single criterion of a good
conceptualization. We have to know the historical conditions which
motivate our conceptualization. We need a historical awareness of our
present circumstance.

The second thing to check is the type of reality with which we are
dealing.

A writer in a well-known French newspaper once expressed his
surprise: “Why is the notion of power raised by so many people today? Is

Michel Foucault has been teaching at the College de France since
1970. His works include Madness and Civilization (1961), The Birth of
the Clinic (1966), Discipline and Punish (1975), and History of Sexuality
(1976), the first volume of a projected five-volume study.

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Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 779

it such an important subject? Is it so independent that it can be discussed
without taking into account other problems?”

This writer’s surprise amazes me. I feel skeptical about the assump-
tion that this question has been raised for the first time in the twentieth
century. Anyway, for us it is not only a theoretical question but a part of
our experience. I’d like to mention only two “pathological forms”-those
two “diseases of power”-fascism and Stalinism. One of the numerous
reasons why they are, for us, so puzzling is that in spite of their historical

uniqueness they are not quite original. They used and extended mecha-
nisms already present in most other societies. More than that: in spite of
their own internal madness, they used to a large extent the ideas and the
devices of our political rationality.

What we need is a new economy of power relations-the word “econ-
omy” being used in its theoretical and practical sense. To put it in other
words: since Kant, the role of philosophy is to prevent reason from

going beyond the limits of what is given in experience; but from the
same moment-that is, since the development of the modern state and
the political management of society-the role of philosophy is also to
keep watch over the excessive powers of political rationality, which is a
rather high expectation.

Everybody is aware of such banal facts. But the fact that they’re
banal does not mean they don’t exist. What we have to do with banal
facts is to discover-or try to discover-which specific and perhaps
original problem is connected with them.

The relationship between rationalization and excesses of political
power is evident. And we should not need to wait for bureaucracy or
concentration camps to recognize the existence of such relations. But the
problem is: What to do with such an evident fact?

Shall we try reason? To my mind, nothing would be more sterile.
First, because the field has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Second,
because it is senseless to refer to reason as the contrary entity to non-
reason. Last, because such a trial would trap us into playing the arbi-

trary and boring part of either the rationalist or the irrationalist.
Shall we investigate this kind of rationalism which seems to be

specific to our modern culture and which originates in Aufkldrung? I
think that was the approach of some of the members of the Frankfurt
School. My purpose, however, is not to start a discussion of their works,
although they are most important and valuable. Rather, I would suggest
another way of investigating the links between rationalization and
power.

It may be wise not to take as a whole the rationalization of society or
of culture but to analyze such a process in several fields, each with refer-
ence to a fundamental experience: madness, illness, death, crime, sexu-
ality, and so forth.

I think that the word “rationalization” is dangerous. What we have

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780 Michel Foucault The Subject and Power

to do is analyze specific rationalities rather than always invoke the prog-
ress of rationalization in general.

Even if the Aufkliirung has been a very important phase in our his-

tory and in the development of political technology, I think we have to
refer to much more remote processes if we want to understand how we
have been trapped in our own history.

I would like to suggest another way to go further toward a new

economy of power relations, a way which is more empirical, more di-

rectly related to our present situation, and which implies more relations
between theory and practice. It consists of taking the forms of resistance

against different forms of power as a starting point. To use another

metaphor, it consists of using this resistance as a chemical catalyst so as to

bring to light power relations, locate their position, and find out their

point of application and the methods used. Rather than analyzing power
from the point of view of its internal rationality, it consists of analyzing
power relations through the antagonism of strategies.

For example, to find out what our society means by sanity, perhaps
we should investigate what is happening in the field of insanity.

And what we mean by legality in the field of illegality.
And, in order to understand what power relations are about,

perhaps we should investigate the forms of resistance and attempts
made to dissociate these relations.

As a starting point, let us take a series of oppositions which have

developed over the last few years: opposition to the power of men over
women, of parents over children, of psychiatry over the mentally ill, of
medicine over the population, of administration over the ways people
live.

It is not enough to say that these are anti-authority struggles; we
must try to define more precisely what they have in common.

1. They are “transversal” struggles; that is, they are not limited to
one country. Of course, they develop more easily and to a greater extent
in certain countries, but they are not confined to a particular political or
economic form of government.

2. The aim of these struggles is the power effects as such. For exam-
ple, the medical profession is not criticized primarily because it is a
profit-making concern but because it exercises an uncontrolled power
over people’s bodies, their health, and their life and death.

3. These are “immediate” struggles for two reasons. In such strug-
gles people criticize instances of power which are the closest to them,
those which exercise their action on individuals. They do not look for the
“chief enemy” but for the immediate enemy. Nor do they expect to find
a solution to their problem at a future date (that is, liberations, revolu-
tions, end of class struggle). In comparison with a theoretical scale of
explanations or a revolutionary order which polarizes the historian, they
are anarchistic struggles.

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Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 781

But these are not their most original points. The following seem to
me to be more specific.

4. They are struggles which question the status of the individual: on
the one hand, they assert the right to be different, and they underline
everything which makes individuals truly individual. On the other hand,
they attack everything which separates the individual, breaks his links
with others, splits up community life, forces the individual back on him-
self, and ties him to his own identity in a constraining way.

These struggles are not exactly for or against the “individual” but
rather they are struggles against the “government of individualization.”

5. They are an opposition to the effects of power which are linked
with knowledge, competence, and qualification: struggles against the
privileges of knowledge. But they are also an opposition against secrecy,
deformation, and mystifying representations imposed on people.

There is nothing “scientistic” in this (that is, a dogmatic belief in the
value of scientific knowledge), but neither is it a skeptical or relativistic
refusal of all verified truth. What is questioned is the way in which
knowledge circulates and functions, its relations to power. In short, the

regime du savoir.
6. Finally, all these present struggles revolve around the question:

Who are we? They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and
ideological state violence, which ignore who we are individually, and also
a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines
who one is.

To sum up, the main objective of these struggles is to attack not so
much “such or such” an institution of power, or group, or elite, or class
but rather a technique, a form of power.

This form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life which
categorizes the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches
him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must
recognize and which others have to recognize in him. It is a form of
power which makes individuals subjects. There are two meanings of the
word “subject”: subject to someone else by control and dependence; and
tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both mean-
ings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to.

Generally, it can be said that there are three types of struggles:
either against forms of domination (ethnic, social, and religious); against
forms of exploitation which separate individuals from what they pro-
duce; or against that which ties the individual to himself and submits him
to others in this way (struggles against subjection, against forms of sub-
jectivity and submission).

I think that in history you can find a lot of examples of these three
kinds of social struggles, either isolated from each other or mixed to-
gether. But even when they are mixed, one of them, most of the time,
prevails. For instance, in the feudal societies, the struggles against the

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782 Michel Foucault The Subject and Power

forms of ethnic or social domination were prevalent, even though eco-
nomic exploitation could have been very important among the revolt’s
causes.

In the nineteenth century, the struggle against exploitation came
into the foreground.

And nowadays, the struggle against the forms of subjection-
against the submission of subjectivity-is becoming more and more im-

portant, even though the struggles against forms of domination and

exploitation have not disappeared. Quite the contrary.
I suspect that it is not the first time that our society has been con-

fronted with this kind of struggle. All those movements which took place
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and which had the Reformation
as their main expression and result should be analyzed as a great crisis of
the Western experience of subjectivity and a revolt against the kind of

religious and moral power which gave form, during the Middle Ages, to
this subjectivity. The need to take a direct part in spiritual life, in the
work of salvation, in the truth which lies in the Book-all that was a

struggle for a new subjectivity.
I know what objections can be made. We can say that all types of

subjection are derived phenomena, that they are merely the conse-

quences of other economic and social processes: forces of production,
class struggle, and ideological structures which determine the form of

subjectivity.
It is certain that the mechanisms of subjection cannot be studied

outside their relation to the mechanisms of exploitation and domination.
But they do not merely constitute the “terminal” of more fundamental
mechanisms. They entertain complex and circular relations with other
forms.

The reason this kind of struggle tends to prevail in our society is due
to the fact that, since the sixteenth century, a new political form of power
has been continuously developing. This new political structure, as every-
body knows, is the state. But most of the time, the state is envisioned as a
kind of political power which ignores individuals, looking only at the
interests of the totality or, I should say, of a class or a group among the
citizens.

That’s quite true. But I’d like to underline the fact that the state’s

power (and that’s one of the reasons for its strength) is both an individu-

alizing and a totalizing form of power. Never, I think, in the history of
human societies–even in the old Chinese society-has there been such a

tricky combination in the same political structures of individualization

techniques and of totalization procedures.
This is due to the fact that the modern Western state has integrated

in a new political shape an old power technique which originated in
Christian institutions. We can call this power technique the pastoral
power.

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Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 783

First of all, a few words about this pastoral power.
It has often been said that Christianity brought into being a code of

ethics fundamentally different from that of the ancient world. Less em-

phasis is usually placed on the fact that it proposed and spread new

power relations throughout the ancient world.

Christianity is the only religion which has organized itself as a
church. And as such, it postulates in principle that certain individuals
can, by their religious quality, serve others not as princes, magistrates,
prophets, fortune-tellers, benefactors, educationalists, and so on but as

pastors. However, this word designates a very special form of power.
1. It is a form of power whose ultimate aim is to assure individual

salvation in the next world.
2. Pastoral power is not merely a form of power which commands; it

must also be prepared to sacrifice itself for the life and salvation of the
flock. Therefore, it is different from royal power, which demands a
sacrifice from its subjects to save the throne.

3. It is a form of power which does not look after just the whole

community but each individual in particular, during his entire life.
4. Finally, this form of power cannot be exercised without knowing

the inside of people’s minds, without exploring their souls, without

making them reveal their innermost secrets. It implies a knowledge of
the conscience and an ability to direct it.

This form of power is salvation oriented (as opposed to political
power). It is oblative (as opposed to the principle of sovereignty); it is

individualizing (as opposed to legal power); it is coextensive and con-
tinuous with life; it is linked with a production of truth-the truth of the
individual himself.

But all this is part of history, you will say; the pastorate has, if not

disappeared, at least lost the main part of its efficiency.
This is true, but I think we should distinguish between two aspects

of pastoral power-between the ecclesiastical institutionalization, which
has ceased or at least lost its vitality since the eighteenth century, and its
function, which has spread and multiplied outside the ecclesiastical in-
stitution.

An important phenomenon took place around the eighteenth
century-it was a new distribution, a new organization of this kind of

individualizing power.
I don’t think that we should consider the “modern state” as an entity

which was developed above individuals, ignoring what they are and even
their very existence, but, on the contrary, as a very sophisticated struc-
ture, in which individuals can be integrated, under one condition: that
this individuality would be shaped in a new form and submitted to a set
of very specific patterns.

In a way, we can see the state as a modern matrix of individualiza-
tion or a new form of pastoral power.

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784 Michel Foucault The Subject and Power

A few more words about this new pastoral power.
1. We may observe a change in its objective. It was no longer a

question of leading people to their salvation in the next world but rather

ensuring it in this world. And in this context, the word “salvation” takes
on different meanings: health, well-being (that is, sufficient wealth,
standard of living), security, protection against accidents. A series of

“worldly” aims took the place of the religious aims of the traditional

pastorate, all the more easily because the latter, for various reasons, had
followed in an accessory way a certain number of these aims; we only
have to think of the role of medicine and its welfare function assured for
a long time by the Catholic and Protestant churches.

2. Concurrently the officials of pastoral power increased. Sometimes
this form of power was exerted by state apparatus or, in any case, by a

public institution such as the police. (We should not forget that in the

eighteenth century the police force was not invented only for maintain-

ing law and order, nor for assisting governments in their struggle against
their enemies, but for assuring urban supplies, hygiene, health, and
standards considered necessary for handicrafts and commerce.) Some-
times the power was exercised by private ventures, welfare societies,
benefactors, and generally by philanthropists. But ancient institutions,
for example the family, were also mobilized at this time to take on

pastoral functions. It was also exercised by complex structures such as
medicine, which included private initiatives with the sale of services on
market economy principles, but which also included public institutions
such as hospitals.

3. Finally, the multiplication of the aims and agents of pastoral
power focused the development of knowledge of man around two roles:
one, globalizing and quantitative, concerning the population; the other,
analytical, concerning the individual.

And this implies that power of a pastoral type, which over cen-
turies-for more than a millennium-had been linked to a defined reli-

gious institution, suddenly spread out into the whole social body; it
found support in a multitude of institutions. And, instead of a pastoral
power and a political power, more or less linked to each other, more or
less rival, there was an individualizing “tactic” which characterized a
series of powers: those of the family, medicine, psychiatry, education,
and employers.

At the end of’ the eighteenth century, Kant wrote, in a German

newspaper-the Berliner Monatschrift-a short text. The title was “Was
heisst Aufklairung?” It was for a long time, and it is still, considered a
work of relatively small importance.

But I can’t help finding it very interesting and puzzling because it
was the first time a philosopher proposed as a philosophical task to
investigate not only the metaphysical system or the foundations of sci-

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Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 785

entific knowledge but a historical event-a recent, even a contemporary
event.

When in 1784 Kant asked, Was heisst Aufklirung?, he meant,
What’s going on just now? What’s happening to us? What is this world,
this period, this precise moment in which we are living?

Or in other words: What are we? as Aufklidrer, as part of the En-

lightenment? Compare this with the Cartesian question: Who am I? I, as
a unique but universal and unhistorical subject? I, for Descartes, is

everyone, anywhere at any moment?
But Kant asks something else: What are we? in a very precise mo-

ment of history. Kant’s question appears as an analysis of both us and
our present.

I think that this aspect of philosophy took on more and more im-

portance. Hegel, Nietzsche …
The other aspect of “universal philosophy” didn’t disappear. But

the task of philosophy as a critical analysis of our world is something
which is more and more important. Maybe the most certain of all philo-
sophical problems is the problem of the present time and of what we are
in this very moment.

Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to
refuse what we are. We have to imagine and to build up what we could
be to get rid of this kind of political “double bind,” which is the simul-
taneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures.

The conclusion would be that the political, ethical, social, philo-
sophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from
the state and from the state’s institutions but to liberate us both from the
state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state.
We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this
kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.

How Is Power Exercised?

For some people, asking questions about the “how” of power would
limit them to describing its effects without ever relating those effects
either to causes or to a basic nature. It would make this power a mysteri-
ous substance which they might hesitate to interrogate in itself, no doubt
because they would prefer not to call it into question. By proceeding this

way, which is never explicitly justified, they seem to suspect the presence
of a kind of fatalism. But does not their very distrust indicate a pre-
supposition that power is something which exists with three distinct

qualities: its origin, its basic nature, and its manifestations?
If, for the time being, I grant a certain privileged position to the

question of “how,” it is not because I would wish to eliminate the ques-

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786 Michel Foucault The Subject and Power

tions of “what” and “why.” Rather, it is that I wish to present these

questions in a different way: better still, to know if it is legitimate to

imagine a power which unites in itself a what, a why, and a how. To put it

bluntly, I would say that to begin the analysis with a “how” is to suggest
that power as such does not exist. At the very least it is to ask oneself
what contents one has in mind when using this all-embracing and reify-
ing term; it is to suspect that an extremely complex configuration of
realities is allowed to escape when one treads endlessly in the double

question: What is power? and Where does power come from? The little

question, What happens?, although flat and empirical, once scrutinized is
seen to avoid accusing a metaphysics or an ontology of power of being
fraudulent; rather, it attempts a critical investigation into the thematics
of power.

“How,” not in the sense oJ “How does it manifest itself?” but “By what
means is it exercised?” and “What happens when individuals exert (as they say)
power over others?”

As far as this power is concerned, it is first necessary to distinguish
that which is exerted over things and gives the ability to modify, use,
consume, or destroy them-a power which stems from aptitudes directly
inherent in the body or relayed by external instruments. Let us say that
here it is a question of “capacity.” On the other hand, what characterizes
the power we are analyzing is that it brings into play relations between
individuals (or between groups). For let us not deceive ourselves; if we

speak of the structures or the mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as
we suppose that certain persons exercise power over others. The term

“power” designates relationships between partners (and by that I am not

thinking of a zero-sum game but simply, and for the moment staying in
the most general terms, of an ensemble of actions which induce others
and follow from one another).

It is necessary also to distinguish power relations from relationships
of communication which transmit information by means of a language, a

system of signs, or any other symbolic medium. No doubt communicat-

ing is always a certain way of acting upon another person or persons. But
the production and circulation of elements of meaning can have as their

objective or as their consequence certain results in the realm of power;
the latter are not simply an aspect of the former. Whether or not they
pass through systems of communication, power relations have a specific
nature. Power relations, relationships of communication, and objective
capacities should not therefore be confused. This is not to say that there
is a question of three separate domains. Nor that there is on one hand
the field of things, of perfected technique, work, and the transformation
of the real; on the other that of signs, communication, reciprocity, and
the production of meaning; and finally, that of the domination of the

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Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 787

means of constraint, of inequality, and the action of men upon other
men.’ It is a question of three types of relationships which in fact always
overlap one another, support one another reciprocally, and use each
other mutually as means to an end. The application of objective
capacities in their most elementary forms implies relationships of com-
munication (whether in the form of previously acquired information or
of shared work); it is tied also to power relations (whether they consist of

obligatory tasks, of gestures imposed by tradition or apprenticeship, of
subdivisions and the more or less obligatory distribution of labor). Re-
lationships of communication imply finalized activities (even if only the
correct putting into operation of elements of meaning) and, by virtue of
modifying the field of information between partners, produce effects of
power. They can scarcely be dissociated from activities brought to their
final term, be they those which permit the exercise of this power (such as
training techniques, processes of domination, the means by which obedi-
ence is obtained) or those, which in order to develop their potential, call
upon relations of power (the division of labor and the hierarchy of
tasks).

Of course, the coordination between these three types of re-

lationships is neither uniform nor constant. In a given society there is no

general type of equilibrium between finalized activities, systems of com-
munication, and power relations. Rather, there are diverse forms, di-
verse places, diverse circumstances or occasions in which these inter-
relationships establish themselves according to a specific model. But
there are also “blocks” in which the adjustment of abilities, the resources
of communication, and power relations constitute regulated and con-
certed systems. Take, for example, an educational institution: the dis-
posal of its space, the meticulous regulations which govern its internal
life, the different activities which are organized there, the diverse per-
sons who live there or meet one another, each with his own function, his
well-defined character-all these things constitute a block of capacity-
communication-power. The activity which ensures apprenticeship and
the acquisition of aptitudes or types of behavior is developed there by
means of a whole ensemble of regulated communications (lessons, ques-
tions and answers, orders, exhortations, coded signs of obedience, dif-
ferentiation marks of the “value” of each person and of the levels of
knowledge) and by the means of a whole series of power processes (en-
closure, surveillance, reward and punishment, the pyramidal hierarchy).

These blocks, in which the putting into operation of technical
capacities, the game of communications, and the relationships of power
are adjusted to one another according to considered formulae, con-

1. When Jiirgen Habermas distinguishes between domination, communication, and
finalized activity, I do not think that he sees in them three separate domains but rather
three “transcendentals.”

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788 Michel Foucault The Subject and Power

stitute what one might call, enlarging a little the sense of the word,
“disciplines.” The empirical analysis of certain disciplines as they have
been historically constituted presents for this very reason a certain inter-
est. This is so because the disciplines show, first, according to artificially
clear and decanted systems, the manner in which systems of objective
finality and systems of communication and power can be welded to-

gether. They also display different models of articulation, sometimes

giving preeminence to power relations and obedience (as in those disci-

plines of a monastic or penitential type), sometimes to finalize activities
(as in the disciplines of workshops or hospitals), sometimes to re-

lationships of communication (as in the disciplines of apprenticeship),
sometimes also to a saturation of the three types of relationship (as
perhaps in military discipline, where a plethora of signs indicates, to the

point of redundancy, tightly knit power relations calculated with care to

produce a certain number of technical effects).
What is to be understood by the disciplining of societies in Europe

since the eighteenth century is not, of course, that the individuals who
are part of them become more and more obedient, nor that they set
about assembling in barracks, schools, or prisons; rather, that an in-

creasingly better invigilated process of adjustment has been sought
after-more and more rational and economic-between productive ac-
tivities, resources of communication, and the play of power relations.

To approach the theme of power by an analysis of “how” is there-
fore to introduce several critical shifts in relation to the supposition of a
fundamental power. It is to give oneself as the object of analysis power
relations and not power itself-power relations which are distinct from

objective abilities as well as from relations of communication. This is as
much as saying that power relations can be grasped in the diversity of
their logical sequence, their abilities, and their interrelationships.

What constitutes the specific nature of power?

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. Power exists only when it is put into action,
even if, of course, it is integrated into a disparate field of possibilities
brought to bear upon permanent structures. This also means that power
is not a function of consent. In itself it is not a renunciation of freedom, a
transference of rights, the power of each and all delegated to a few
(which does not prevent the possibility that consent may be a condition
for the existence or the maintenance of power); the relationship of
power can be the result of a prior or permanent consent, but it is not by
nature the manifestation of a consensus.

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Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 789

Is this to say that one must seek the character proper to power
relations in the violence which must have been its primitive form, its
permanent secret, and its last resource, that which in the final analysis
appears as its real nature when it is forced to throw aside its mask and to
show itself as it really is? In effect, what defines a relationship of power is
that it is a mode of action which does not act directly and immediately on
others. Instead, it acts upon their actions: an action upon an action, on
existing actions or on those which may arise in the present or the future.
A relationship of violence acts upon a body or upon things; it forces, it
bends, it breaks on the wheel, it destroys, or it closes the door on all
possibilities. Its opposite pole can only be passivity, and if it comes up
against any resistance, it has no other option but to try to minimize it. On
the other hand, a power relationship can only be articulated on the basis
of two elements which are each indispensable if it is really to be a power
relationship: that “the other” (the one over whom power is exercised) be

thoroughly recognized and maintained to the very end as a person who
acts; and that, faced with a relationship of power, a whole field of re-

sponses, reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up.
Obviously the bringing into play of power relations does not exclude

the use of violence any more than it does the obtaining of consent; no
doubt the exercise of power can never do without one or the other, often
both at the same time. But even though consensus and violence are the
instruments or the results, they do not constitute the principle or the
basic nature of power. The exercise of power can produce as much

acceptance as may be wished for: it can pile up the dead and shelter itself
behind whatever threats it can imagine. In itself the exercise of power is
not violence; nor is it a consent which, implicitly, is renewable. It is a total
structure of actions brought to bear upon possible actions; it incites, it
induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more difficult; in the extreme it
constrains or forbids absolutely; it is nevertheless always a way of acting
upon an acting subject or acting subjects by virtue of their acting or

being capable of action. A set of actions upon other actions.

Perhaps the equivocal nature of the term “conduct” is one of the
best aids for coming to terms with the specificity of power relations. For
to “conduct” is at the same time to “lead” others (according to mecha-
nisms of coercion which are, to varying degrees, strict) and a way of

behaving within a more or less open field of possibilities.* The exercise
of power consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in
order the possible outcome. Basically power is less a confrontation be-
tween two adversaries or the linking of one to the other than a question
of government. This word must be allowed the very broad meaning

*Foucault is playing on the double meaning in French of the verb conduire, “to lead”
or “to drive,” and se conduire, “to behave” or “to conduct oneself”; whence la conduite,
“conduct” or “behavior.”-Translator’s note.

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790 Michel Foucault The Subject and Power

which it had in the sixteenth century. “Government” did not refer only
to political structures or to the management of states; rather, it desig-
nated the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be
directed: the government of children, of souls, of communities, of
families, of the sick. It did not only cover the legitimately constituted
forms of political or economic subjection but also modes of action, more
or less considered or calculated, which were destined to act upon the

possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to
structure the possible field of action of others. The relationship proper
to power would not, therefore, be sought on the side of violence or of

struggle, nor on that of voluntary linking (all of which can, at best, only
be the instruments of power), but rather in the area of the singular mode
of action, neither warlike nor juridical, which is government.

When one defines the exercise of power as a mode of action upon
the actions of others, when one characterizes these actions by the gov-
ernment of men by other men-in the broadest sense of the term-one
includes an important element: freedom. Power is exercised only over
free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individ-
ual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in
which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comport-
ments, may be realized. Where the determining factors saturate the
whole, there is no relationship of power; slavery is not a power re-
lationship when man is in chains. (In this case it is a question of a physical
relationship of constraint.) Consequently, there is no face-to-face con-
frontation of power and freedom, which are mutually exclusive (freedom
disappears everywhere power is exercised), but a much more compli-
cated interplay. In this game freedom may well appear as the condition
for the exercise of power (at the same time its precondition, since free-
dom must exist for power to be exerted, and also its permanent support,
since without the possibility of recalcitrance, power would be equivalent
to a physical determination).

The relationship between power and freedom’s refusal to submit
cannot, therefore, be separated. The crucial problem of power is not
that of voluntary servitude (how could we seek to be slaves?). At the very
heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the
recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. Rather than
speaking of an essential freedom, it would be better to speak of an

“agonism”*–of a relationship which is at the same time reciprocal in-
citation and struggle, less of a face-to-face confrontation which paralyzes
both sides than a permanent provocation.

*Foucault’s neologism is based on the Greek &ycvro-ota meaning “a combat.” The
term would hence imply a physical contest in which the opponents develop a strategy of
reaction and

of•
mutual taunting, as in a wrestling match.-Translator’s note.

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Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 791

How is one to analyze the power relationship?

One can analyze such relationships, or rather I should say that it is

perfectly legitimate to do so, by focusing on carefully defined in-
stitutions. The latter constitute a privileged point of observation, di-
versified, concentrated, put in order, and carried through to the highest
point of their efficacity. It is here that, as a first approximation, one

might expect to see the appearance of the form and logic of their

elementary mechanisms. However, the analysis of power relations as one
finds them in certain circumscribed institutions presents a certain
number of problems. First, the fact that an important part of the mecha-
nisms put into operation by an institution are designed to ensure its own

preservation brings with it the risk of deciphering functions which are
essentially reproductive, especially in power relations between in-
stitutions. Second, in analyzing power relations from the standpoint of
institutions, one lays oneself open to seeking the explanation and the

origin of the former in the latter, that is to say, finally, to explain power to

power. Finally, insofar as institutions act essentially by bringing into play
two elements, explicit or tacit regulations and an apparatus, one risks

giving to one or the other an exaggerated privilege in the relations of

power and hence to see in the latter only modulations of the law and of
coercion.

This does not deny the importance of institutions on the establish-
ment of power relations. Instead, I wish to suggest that one must analyze
institutions from the standpoint of power relations, rather than vice
versa, and that the fundamental point of anchorage of the relationships,
even if they are embodied and crystallized in an institution, is to be
found outside the institution.

Let us come back to the definition of the exercise of power as a way
in which certain actions may structure the field of other possible actions.
What, therefore, would be proper to a relationship of power is that it be
a mode of action upon actions. That is to say, power relations are rooted
deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted “above” society as a supple-
mentary structure whose radical effacement one could perhaps dream
of. In any case, to live in society is to live in such a way that action upon
other actions is possible-and in fact ongoing. A society without power
relations can only be an abstraction. Which, be it said in passing, makes
all the more politically necessary the analysis of power relations in a
given society, their historical formation, the source of their strength or
fragility, the conditions which are necessary to transform some or to
abolish others. For to say that there cannot be a society without power
relations is not to say either that those which are established are neces-
sary or, in any case, that power constitutes a fatality at the heart of
societies, such that it cannot be undermined. Instead, I would say that
the analysis, elaboration, and bringing into question of power relations

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792 Michel Foucault The Subject and Power

and the “agonism” between power relations and the intransitivity of
freedom is a permanent political task inherent in all social existence.

The analysis of power relations demands that a certain number of
points be established concretely:

1. The system of differentiations which permits one to act upon the
actions of others: differentiations determined by the law or by traditions
of status and privilege; economic differences in the appropriation of
riches and goods, shifts in the processes of production, linguistic or
cultural differences, differences in know-how and competence, and so
forth. Every relationship of power puts into operation differentiations
which are at the same time its conditions and its results.

2. The types of objectives pursued by those who act upon the actions of
others: the maintenance of privileges, the accumulation of profits, the
bringing into operation of statutary authority, the exercise of a function
or of a trade.

3. The means of bringing power relations into being: according to
whether power is exercised by the threat of arms, by the effects of the
word, by means of economic disparities, by more or less complex means
of control, by systems of surveillance, with or without archives, according
to rules which are or are not explicit, fixed or modifiable, with or without
the technological means to put all these things into action.

4. Forms of institutionalization: these may mix traditional pre-
dispositions, legal structures, phenomena relating to custom or to fash-
ion (such as one sees in the institution of the family); they can also take
the form of an apparatus closed in upon itself, with its specific loci, its
own regulations, its hierarchical structures which are carefully defined, a
relative autonomy in its functioning (such as scholastic or military in-
stitutions); they can also form very complex systems endowed with mul-
tiple apparatuses, as in the case of the state, whose function is the taking
of everything under its wing, the bringing into being of general surveil-
lance, the principle of regulation, and, to a certain extent also, the dis-
tribution of all power relations in a given social ensemble.

5. The degrees of rationalization: the bringing into play of power re-
lations as action in a field of possibilities may be more or less elaborate in
relation to the effectiveness of the instruments and the certainty of the
results (greater or lesser technological refinements employed in the
exercise of power) or again in proportion to the possible cost (be it the
economic cost of the means brought into operation or the cost in terms
of reaction constituted by the resistance which is encountered). The
exercise of power is not a naked fact, an institutional right, nor is it a
structure which holds out or is smashed: it is elaborated, transformed,
organized; it endows itself with processes which are more or less ad-
justed to the situation.

One sees why the analysis of power relations within a society cannot
be reduced to the study of a series of institutions, not even to the study of

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Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 793

all those institutions which would merit the name “political.” Power re-
lations are rooted in the system of social networks. This is not to say,
however, that there is a primary and fundamental principle of power
which dominates society down to the smallest detail; but, taking as point
of departure the possibility of action upon the action of others (which is
coextensive with every social relationship), multiple forms of individual

disparity, of objectives, of the given application of power over ourselves
or others, of, in varying degrees, partial or universal institutionalization,
of more or less deliberate organization, one can define different forms
of power. The forms and the specific situations of the government of
men by one another in a given society are multiple; they are superim-
posed, they cross, impose their own limits, sometimes cancel one another
out, sometimes reinforce one another. It is certain that in contemporary
societies the state is not simply one of the forms or specific situations of
the exercise of power–even if it is the most important-but that in a
certain way all other forms of power relation must refer to it. But this is
not because they are derived from it; it is rather because power relations
have come more and more under state control (although this state con-
trol has not taken the same form in pedagogical, judicial, economic, or

family systems). In referring here to the restricted sense of the word

“government,” one could say that power relations have been progres-
sively governmentalized, that is to say, elaborated, rationalized, and
centralized in the form of, or under the auspices of, state institutions.

Relations of power and relations of strategy.

The word “strategy” is currently employed in three ways. First, to

designate the means employed to attain a certain end; it is a question of

rationality functioning to arrive at an objective. Second, to designate the
manner in which a partner in a certain game acts with regard to what he
thinks should be the action of the others and what he considers the
others think to be his own; it is the way in which one seeks to have the
advantage over others. Third, to designate the procedures used in a
situation of confrontation to deprive the opponent of his means of com-
bat and to reduce him to giving up the struggle; it is a question, there-
fore, of the means destined to obtain victory. These three meanings
come together in situations of confrontation-war or games-where the
objective is to act upon an adversary in such a manner as to render the
struggle impossible for him. So strategy is defined by the choice of win-
ning solutions. But it must be borne in mind that this is a very special
type of situation and that there are others in which the distinctions
between the different senses of the word “strategy” must be maintained.

Referring to the first sense I have indicated, one may call power
strategy the totality of the means put into operation to implement power
effectively or to maintain it. One may also speak of a strategy proper to

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794 Michel Foucault The Subject and Power

power relations insofar as they constitute modes of action upon possible
action, the action of others. One can therefore interpret the mechanisms
brought into play in power relations in terms of strategies. But most

important is obviously the relationship between power relations and con-
frontation strategies. For, if it is true that at the heart of power relations
and as a permanent condition of their existence there is an insubordina-
tion and a certain essential obstinacy on the part of the principles of
freedom, then there is no relationship of power without the means of

escape or possible flight. Every power relationship implies, at least in

potentia, a strategy of struggle, in which the two forces are not super-
imposed, do not lose their specific nature, or do not finally become
confused. Each constitutes for the other a kind of permanent limit, a

point of possible reversal. A relationship of confrontation reaches its
term, its final moment (and the victory of one of the two adversaries),
when stable mechanisms replace the free play of antagonistic reactions.

Through such mechanisms one can direct, in a fairly constant manner
and with reasonable certainty, the conduct of others. For a relationship
of confrontation, from the moment it is not a struggle to the death, the
fixing of a power relationship becomes a target-at one and the same
time its fulfillment and its suspension. And in return, the strategy of
struggle also constitutes a frontier for the relationship of power, the line
at which, instead of manipulating and inducing actions in a calculated
manner, one must be content with reacting to them after the event. It
would not be possible for power relations to exist without points of
insubordination which, by definition, are means of escape. Accordingly,
every intensification, every extension of power relations to make the
insubordinate submit can only result in the limits of power. The latter
reaches its final term either in a type of action which reduces the other to
total impotence (in which case victory over the adversary replaces the
exercise of power) or by a confrontation with those whom one governs
and their transformation into adversaries. Which is to say that every
strategy of confrontation dreams of becoming a relationship of power,
and every relationship of power leans toward the idea that, if it follows
its own line of development and comes up against direct confrontation, it
may become the winning strategy.

In effect, between a relationship of power and a strategy of struggle
there is a reciprocal appeal, a perpetual linking and a perpetual reversal.
At every moment the relationship of power may become a confrontation
between two adversaries. Equally, the relationship between adversaries
in society may, at every moment, give place to the putting into operation
of mechanisms of power. The consequence of this instability is the ability
to decipher the same events and the same transformations either from
inside the history of struggle or from the standpoint of the power re-
lationships. The interpretations which result will not consist of the same
elements of meaning or the same links or the same types of intelligibility,

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Critical Inquiry Summer 1982 795

although they refer to the same historical fabric, and each of the two

analyses must have reference to the other. In fact, it is precisely the

disparities between the two readings which make visible those funda-
mental phenomena of “domination” which are present in a large
number of human societies.

Domination is in fact a general structure of power whose ramifica-
tions and consequences can sometimes be found descending to the most
recalcitrant fibers of society. But at the same time it is a strategic situation
more or less taken for granted and consolidated by means of a long-term
confrontation between adversaries. It can certainly happen that the fact
of domination may only be the transcription of a mechanism of power
resulting from confrontation and its consequences (a political structure
stemming from invasion); it may also be that a relationship of struggle
between two adversaries is the result of power relations with the conflicts
and cleavages which ensue. But what makes the domination of a group, a
caste, or a class, together with the resistance and revolts which that
domination comes up against, a central phenomenon in the history of
societies is that they manifest in a massive and universalizing form, at the
level of the whole social body, the locking together of power relations
with relations of strategy and the results proceeding from their interac-
tion.

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• Article Contents

p. 777
p. 778
p. 779
p. 780
p. 781
p. 782
p. 783
p. 784
p. 785
p. 786
p. 787
p. 788
p. 789
p. 790
p. 791
p. 792
p. 793
p. 794
p. 795

• Issue Table of Contents

Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1982), pp. 609-812
Volume Information
Front Matter
“Critical Inquiry” and the Ideology of Pluralism [pp. 609-618]
Painter into Painting: On Courbet’s “After Dinner at Ornans” and “Stonebreakers” [pp. 619-649]
Orson Welles and Gregg Toland: Their Collaboration on “Citizen Kane” [pp. 651-674]
The Linguistic Circle of Geneva [pp. 675-691]
With the Compliments of the Author: Reflections on Austin and Derrida [pp. 693-721]
Against Theory [pp. 723-742]
I. A. Richards in Retrospect [pp. 743-760]
Sign and Symbol in Hegel’s “Aesthetics” [pp. 761-775]
The Subject and Power [pp. 777-795]
Critical Response
“Writing and Sexual Difference”: The Difference within [pp. 797-804]
A Response to “Writing and Sexual Difference” [pp. 805-811]
Editorial Note [p. 812]
Back Matter