economy of power

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The economy of power

‘I would like to suggest another way to go further towards a new economy of power relations, a way which is more empirical, more directly related to our present situation, and which implies more relations between theory and practice.

Michel Foucault, 1982

Beyond the repressive hypothesis: Power as power/knowledge

Foucault never attempts any (impossible) definition of power. At best, he gives a definition of power relations in an essay published in 1982:

‘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.’ Therefore, Foucauldian definition of power is drawn in opposition with the « repressive hypothesis » (Foucault, 1971) which holds that there is a transcendental reason which can be exercised independently of any power relationship. Precisely because it is transcendental, reason is then universally compelling. It can limit the political power field and has therefore a role in opposing domination (ie when political power goes beyond its rights).

Foucault draws the genealogy of this hypothesis advocating two reasons for its appearance in history(Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982:130). On a first hand, because of what he calls the

« speaker’s benefit », the mere fact that, by advocating such a hypothesis, the speaker places himself out of power and within truth. However, this is not the main argument of Foucault as he must recognise that, not as an archaeologist but as a genealogist, he is himself in a field of power relations. On a second hand, because:

‘modern power is tolerable on the condition that it masks itself–which it has done very effectively. If truth is outside of and opposed to power, then the speaker’s benefit is merely an incidental plus. But if truth and

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power are not external to each other, as Foucault will obviously maintain, then the speaker’s benefit and associated ploys are among the essential ways in which power operates. It masks itself by producing a discourse, 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 a transcendental reason means falling again in the contradictions of modernity (see part 1).

Therefore, Foucault prefers considering rationality as « a kind of rationality » and study how several kinds of rationalities could emerge in history (see part 2). However, considering the emergence of a kind of rationality presupposes that the field of possible knowledge is tightly