Power should be studied at its effects, not its intentions

Evidence

My goal was not to analyze power at the level of intentions or decisions, not to try to approach it from inside, and not to ask the question ( which leads us, I think, into a labyrinth from which there is no way out): So who has power? What is going on in his head? And what is he trying to do, this man who has power? The goal was, on the contrary, to study power at the point where his intentions—if, that is, any intention is involved—are completely invested in real and effective practices; to study power by looking, as it were, at its external face, at the point where it relates directly and immediately to what we might, very provisionally, call its object, its target, its field of application, or, in other words, the places where it implants itself and produces its real ettects. So the question is not: Why do some people want to be dominant? What do they want? What is their overall strategy? The question 1s this: What happens at the moment of, at the level of the procedure of subjugation, or in the continuous and uninterrupted processes that subjugate bodies, direct gestures, and regulate forms of behavior? In other words, rather than asking ourselves what the sovereign looks like from on high, we should be trying to discover how multiple bodies, forces, energies, matters, desires, thoughts, and so on are gradually, progressively, actually and materially constituted as subjects, or as the subject. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 46

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the methodological core of Foucault’s analytics of power: study the procedure of subjugation, not the sovereign’s strategy.
• XREF: connects to: Authority is a constructed, analyzable mechanism rather than a natural given; Power analysis must begin from techniques of domination, not sovereignty — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 52; Power as damage threat cannot explain power’s order-creating function in complex societies. (+1 more)

Related

• Power analysis must begin from techniques of domination, not sovereignty (similarity 0.84)
• Power mechanisms must be analyzed from below, at their lowest concrete operators (similarity 0.82)
• Power analysis must shift from sovereignty to relations of domination. (similarity 0.81)
• Analyzing power requires abandoning the juridical-representation model entirely (similarity 0.81)
• Power produces subjects and desires rather than merely repressing them (similarity 0.80)
• Power’s proliferation stems from its congenital impotence, not omnipotence (similarity 0.78)
• Resistance to disciplinary power requires a new right, not a return to sovereignty. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Power analysis must begin from techniques of domination, not sovereignty #expands (0.90) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 52
• Power as damage threat cannot explain power’s order-creating function in complex societies. #corroborates (0.78)