Foucault sought to break thought free of the sovereign-model of power

Evidence

One of the most emblematic, and often cited, lines of the first volume of Foucault’s history of sexuality, La Volonté de savoir, published in 1976, the year of this course, is the trenchant remark “In thought and political analysis we have still not cut off the head of the king.” … In studying the historico-political discourse of war in this course, Foucault shows us one way to detach ourselves from the philosophicojuridical discourse of sovereignty and the law that has so dominated our thought and political analysis. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 250