Michail Foucault and power/ knowledge.

1. MKBU Bhavnagar university
Department of English.
 Topic :- Michal Foucault and
power/knowledge.
 Group members:- Vala Asha, Jyotsna,
Alpa.

2. Introduction.
 Michel Foucault was
a French
philosopher and
social theorist.
 He is well known for
his theory about
power and
knowledge.

3. Power .
 Foucault argues a number of points in
relation to power & offers definition that are
directly opposed to more traditional liberal
and Marxist theories of power.
Definition:-
1).power is not a thing but a relation.
2).Power is not simply repressive but it is
productive.
3).The exercise of power is strategic and
war like.

4. Type of power.
1
• Sovereign power.
2
• Disciplinary power.
3
• Pastoral power.

5. Power knowledge.
 Foucault was interested in the way
power structures depend upon
structures of knowledge
(arts,science,medicine,demographics)
and how, once they acquire knowledge,
create subjects to be controlled.

6. Concept-map of deviance
and their remedies.
Category Discourse Authority ‘Corrective’
Immorality Religion Priest Penitence
Vagrancy Economics Economist/Social
commentator
Forced
employment
Criminal law Police/jury Imprisonment
Insane Psychiatry Psychiatrist/Psych
oanalyst
Asylum
sick Medicine Physician Hospital

8. Ideology.
 Generally, Foucault did not find the
notion of ideology to be a particularly
useful one and when he does refer to it,
it is usually to criticize it, arguing that the
notion
 1)Presupposes a ‘truth’ to which
ideology stands in opposition,
 2)implies that it is secondary to a
maternal ‘infrastructure’,
 3)Proposes a universal subject.

9. Subject
 The subject is an entity which is self-aware
and capable of choosing how to act.
 Foucault was consistently opposed to
nineteenth century and phenomenological
notions of universal and timeless subject
which was at the source of how on made
sense of the world, and which was the
foundation of all thought and action.
 The problem with this conception of the
subject according to Foucault and other
thinkers in the 1960s, was that it fixed the
status quo and attached people to specific
identities that could never be changed.