Power produces subjects and desires rather than merely repressing them

Evidence

Power, according to Foucault, can.. not be understood solely on the model of domination as something possessed and deployed by individuals or sovereign agents over others, with a singular intentionality, structure, or location that presides over its rationality and exe.. cution. Rather, power is to be understood as a strategic relation of force that permeates life and is productive of new forms of desires, objects, relations, and discourses ( Foucault 1978, 1980 ). Secondly, the subject, argues Foucault, does not precede power relations, in the form of an individuated consciousness, but is produced through these relations, which form the necessary conditions of its possibility. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 131

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Foucault’s conception of power as productive strategic relations rather than sovereign domination.
• XREF: connects to: Selfhood itself is constituted by the acknowledgment of dominating power — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 36; Romanticized nature and desire directly translate rather than oppose capital — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 460; Emancipation from society weakens rather than empowers the individual — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 169 (+11 more)