MKBU Bhavnagar university Department of English. Topic :- Michal Foucault and

power/knowledge.

Group members:- Vala Asha, Jyotsna, Alpa.

Introduction. Michel Foucault was

a French philosopher and social theorist.

He is well known for his theory about power and knowledge.

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.

Type of power.

1• Sovereign power.

2• Disciplinary power.

3• Pastoral power.

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.

Concept-map of deviance and their remedies.Category Discourse Authority ‘Corrective’

Immorality Religion Priest Penitence

Vagrancy Economics Economist/Socialcommentator

Forced employment

Criminal law Police/jury Imprisonment

Insane Psychiatry Psychiatrist/Psychoanalyst

Asylum

sick Medicine Physician Hospital

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.

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.

Thank you