economy of power :: essays research papers

15The economy of powerI would like to suggest other way to go furthertowards a new economy of power relations, a waywhich is much empirical, more directly related to ourpresent situation, and which implies more relations amongst theory and practice.Michel Foucault, 1982Beyond the repressive 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 collective it is a way inwhich certain actions modify others. Which is to say, of course, that something called Power, with orwithout a capital letter, which is assumed to exist universally in a concentrated 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 nonnatural land which can beexercised independently of any p ower relationship. Precisely because it is transcendental, reasonis then universally compelling. It can limit the political power theme and has therefore a role inopposing domination (ie when political power goes beyond its rights).Foucault draws the genealogy of this hypothesis advocating two reasons for its appearance inhistory(Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982130). On a first hand, because of what he calls the speakers benefit , the mere fact that, by advocating such a hypothesis, the speaker placeshimself out of power and inwardly 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 condition that it masks itselfwhich it has done very effectively. If truthis distant of and opposed to power, then the speakers benefit is merely an incidental plus. But if truth and16power are not external to separately other, as Foucault will obviously maintain, then the speakers benefit andassociated ploys are among the essential ways in which power operates. It masks itself by producing adiscourse, plain 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 rationality as a kind of rationality and study howseveral kinds of rationalities could emerge in history (see part 2). However, considering theemergence of a kind of rationality presupposes that the field of possible knowledge is tightly