Power’s proliferation stems from its congenital impotence, not omnipotence

Evidence

Where there is power, there is always resistance, and the two things are coextensive: “As soon as there is a power relation, there is a possibility of resistance. We can never be ensnared by power: we can always modify its grip in determinate conditions and according to a precise strategy.” … The characteristic feature of power, its aims and its maneuvers, is therefore not so much its boundless might as a sort of congenital inefficacy: “Power ts not omnipotent or omniscient; on the contrary,” Foucault remarked in 1978 of the analyses made in The History of Sexuality. “The reason power relations have produced ways of investigating and analyzing models of knowledge is precisely that,” he went on, “power is not omniscient, that power is blind, that it finds itself in an impasse. The reason why we have seen the development of so many power relations, so many systems of control, and so many forms of surveillance is prectsely that power has always been impotent.” — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 295

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive claim that surveillance systems multiply because power is blind, not all-seeing, reframes how to read state control as reactive rather than total.
• XREF: connects to: Power conceals itself through intense effort, not through passivity — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 651; Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy; Power can be increased only when its own overthrow is institutionalized — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 251

Related

• Power grows stronger the less visible it is (similarity 0.83)
• Resistance is internal to power relations, which never totalize (similarity 0.80)
• Power should be studied at its effects, not its intentions (similarity 0.78)
• Micro-powers are reversible and never overthrown once and for all (similarity 0.78)
• Power identifies itself by the effort spent effacing itself. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy #corroborates (0.80)
• Power can be increased only when its own overthrow is institutionalized #expands (0.78) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 251
• Power conceals itself through intense effort, not through passivity #complicates (0.72) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 651