Michael Foucault's Different Forms of Power Essay

For example in the setting of a workplace the power does not pass from the top down; instead it circulates through their organizational practices. Such practices act like a grid, provoking and inciting certain courses of action and denying others. Foucault considers this as no straightforward matter and believes that it rests on how far individuals interpret what is being laid down as "obvious" or "self evident", institutional power works best when all parties accept it willingly. Foucault's notion of power is a difficult notion to grasp principally because it is never entirely clear on who has the power in the first place, once the idea is removed that power must be vested in someone at the top of the ladder, it becomes much more difficult to identify what power is or where and whom it lies with. Foucault believes that we are used to thinking about power as an identifiable and overt force and that this view is simply not the case, because it is taken for granted that the above statement is true then it is much more complicated to comprehend power as a guiding force that does not show itself in an obvious manner.

The Conscious Discipline program was designed to help adults change the way behaviors are addressed in the classroom. Instead of looking at a difficult behavioral situation as a negative experience, Conscious Discipline trains adults to address the situation as a learning experience for the children. In turn, children learn how to self-regulate the

Michel Foucault wrote a book called History of Sexuality. In Part five of the book Right of Death and Power over Life, he discusses about the historical “Sovereign Power” where one is allowed to decide who has the right to live and who has the right to die. The sovereign uses his power over life through the deaths that he can command and uses his authority to announce death by the lives he can spare. Foucault then moves on to Disciplinary Power where he came up with the “Panopticon” where one is to believe they were under surveillance at all times. Such surveillance is still used in our everyday life such as schools, prisons, offices, hospitals, and mental institutes. Later in his life, Foucault discovered Bio-power. This bio-power

Chapter eight of Competent to Counsel by Jay E. Adams, presents a powerful concept regarding the importance of being disciplined as a Christian (or walking a disciplined life); however, after further reading it seems there are two kinds of discipline. One is a noun, it seems; it is the discipline from the Lord that we receive from him, his training, correction, reproof. The other is the self-imposed discipline of the Christian’s daily walk; it is the act of having controlled behavior and choosing to obey his commandments, so it is then more of an adjective to describe who or what we are.

I believe proper discipline takes place when a teacher has a systematic approach and students are aware of the teacher’s expectations. Good discipline and positive reinforcement will help reward students for good behaviors. I focus on the use of proper words to resolve conflicts that may arise. Continuing education is essential in the education field. The education world is endlessly changing.

Michel Foucault’s work within philosophy has made important impacts when it comes to understanding how power affects a capitalist state. Believed that history of a country should how the past created a better future for society but in most cases through history, that was not the case. One of the examples that Foucault uses is how the mentally ill were treated in the Renaissance compared to the 18th century. During the Renaissance period, the mental ill people were allowed to seen within society and were seen as useful and gave wisdom into their society rather than in the 18th century. People with mental illness were put away and see as a burden to society and seen as needed to being cured by sinister people. Another example that Foucault discuss

dealing simply with subjects, or even with a “people,” but with a “population,” with its specific phenomena and its peculiar variables." (298/25) This is where we begin to see Foucault's concept of Biopower come into play. One of the central themes of Foucault's writing, he defines biopower as "[T]he forms of power, the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates in order to reach the most tenuous and individual modes of behavior, the paths that give it access to the rare or scarcely perceivable forms of desire, how it penetrates and controls everyday pleasure—all this entailing effects that may be those of refusal, blockage, and invalidation, but also incitement and intensification: in short, the 'polymorphous techniques of power.'” (292/11 For Foucault, Biopower relates to the government's concern with fostering the life of the population, but is also a form of complete control of that population through surveillance or perceived surveillance. Foucault believed that Biopower permeates through the

In Foucault’s writing of Panopticon, he defines Panopticon as a mechanism of power used in regulating the society and the community which people are living in . Foucault discusses how rules, policies and laws are applied towards the society and how existence of hierarchy in the society has assigned individuals to play each of their own roles. Power is a natural constructed element embedded into the society. Moreover, Panopticon serves as a homogenous mixture between the process of the power and power schema, in addition , anyone from the outside world has the accessible passage towards this integrated disciplined model. The mechanisms or forces behind Panopticon is that “it aims to strengthen the social forces,” such as raising the whole

institutions that aims to use power to extract the fruitful results, the organization of power within

Thus, the effectiveness of governmental action cannot be measured by simply evaluating the long-term results of each intervention and, however, it must be monitored step by step along the interdependency of governmental interventions and the manifold ways their target  defined as the population as a whole or a specific set of individuals  reacts to them. In conformity with his more general pattern of analysis of power relations, Foucault bestows that governmentality cannot be understood simply as a practice, tough it must be considered as a dispositive that encompasses a set of practices and theoretical devices.

Michel Foucault saw history as a collection of innovative ideas, it wasn’t about the accuracy of the past, but rather exploring what was done. He was one of the first philosophers to acknowledge social features like self-identity or expression as “cultural constructions that vary throughout time and space, and thus they are worthy of historical exploration.” For example, women, prisoners, disabled individuals and homosexuals face stipulated power, constraints and control exerted over them during the nineteenth century and even now. Foucault’s power/knowledge concept is both productive and restrictive. It limits what individuals can do, while also opening new ways of acting and thinking about ourselves. By what means is power implemented, and is the role of power more extensive in the 21st

Foucault sees “power” everywhere. He does not mean actual strength, or even force over another person. He feels power is more in the form of control, knowledge, the discipline that is exert to other people. We see politics are a form of power and laws as a way to shape our society. However every day task, that becomes habits can be also a form of power. For example, Foucault sees the teachings on universities a way to guide their students into a certain way of thinking. It may be for or against an issue. Universities seem to be “neutral” to any political party; however by shaping their students into certain ways of thinking, it guides students into the candidate, issue, or side of the issue they have been taught from the “neutral” institution.

According to Michel Foucault, the change in how criminals were being punished was too hastily viewed as a progressive humanization in the punishment system by the public. Foucault theorized that the transition to discipline from torture was simply a change in strategy to punish better and longer. In this claim, he saw better punishment through the introduction of governmentality, and longer punishment through the increasing disciplinary powers. With governmentality, the state could better exercise their control with the three basic instruments of hierarchal observation, normalizing judgements and examinations. Through the increasing disciplinary powers, people would discipline themselves for longer periods of time because they know that they

Marxists ignored Foucault’s work and dominated intellectual life in mid-20th century France. Both Marxists and Foucault restricted their interest to central fields such as mathematics, physics and economics. They were concerned with power only with respect to the apparatus of the state.

“In this task of adjustment, discipline had to solve a number of problems for which the old economy of power was not sufficiently equipped. It could reduce the inefficiency of mass phenomena: reduce what, in a multiplicity, make it much less manageable than unity; reduce what is opposed to the use of each of its elements and of their sum; reduce everything that may counter the advantages.” (Foucault 208). This is an example of Logos, he talks about the prison and how “With all the corrective technology at its disposal is to be resituated at the point where the codified power to punish turns into a disciplinary power to observe” (Foucault 213).