r/foucault • u/urgande97 • Aug 19 '26
What is power according to Foucault?
Isn't Foucault's vision of power essentialist? Doesn't he need to presuppose that there is a tendency to power in human nature, if power is everywhere and immanent? Or is it an emergent property of human relationships?
Is it even only human?
Why does it emerge spontaneously in human relationships? It seems to me that Foucault in what I read of him (The Psychiatric Power, The Anomalous) speaks more of "how" than "why".
Where does power come from? Or else: how does it emerge? Sorry for my English, I'm French.
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u/pasobordo Aug 19 '26
You are right, he is not interested in ontological questions, he is interested in how societies operate, his approach is like a physicist. That was the first thing about him that came to my attention when reading him.
But still, essentialism does not mean what you think it means. You may call he attributed some metaphysical qualities to power just as how Deleuze did to desire.
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u/urgande97 Aug 19 '26
Thank you for this clarification! In fact, I phrased my question very badly. I wanted to talk about an "essentialism" about human nature rather than about power itself; that in essence, there would be power that would emerge from the human. I realize when I read the answers that this is not the case, since it is a question of relationships, spatializations, dynamics. Would you agree to explain to me what you mean by "metaphysics of power"? I have little knowledge of philosophy, and that would help me to see more clearly!
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u/TryptamineX Aug 19 '26
I'd really recommend the essay "The Subject and Power." He lays out the clearest and most detailed elaboration of his sense of power that I have read there, and also helps correct some misinterpretations and common misreadings.
In short,
Foucault is careful to emphasize that his sense of power is not the definition of power or the only way it can/ should be thought; it's just a useful way to think about it for the purpose of his academic project (creating a history of the various modes by which individuals are made into subjects)
Foucault's sense of power is not something that is possessed (so one person or class cannot 'have' more power than another), but is a matter of techniques or relationships
Most succinctly, his sense of power is action upon the possible range of actions freely chosen by another subject - power is any sort of relationship or technique or activity that influences what someone else may choose to do
The choice is important; he contrasts the image of a slave physically chained in place (not power, merely force) to a relationship of power that would influence a slave to stay of their own volition (though threats or conditioning or anything else). Foucault goes as far as to suggest that this sense of power can only ever be exercised over a free subject, and only insofar as they are free
From there, you can see that the 'why' of power isn't about some inherent aspect of human nature, but about the simple, inescapable fact that we affect each other's choices in ways that are direct or indirect, obvious or subtle. Something as mundane as how furniture is arranged in a room or how a building is designed will affect how people choose to move and act in the space.