Power systems produce the very subjects they claim merely to represent.

Evidence

Foucault insists that “juridical systems of power produce the subjects they subsequently come to represent” since, by virtue of being subjected to such structures, the subjects become “formed, defined, and reproduced in accordance with the requirements of those structures.” The “juridical formation of language and politics … is itself a discursive formation and effect,” where the subject is “discursively constituted” by the very system that is “supposed to facilitate its emancipation.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 126

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that emancipatory systems discursively constitute the subjects they claim to free is a dense, paradigm-shifting insight in political and postcolonial theory — it reframes the entire logic of representation.
• ADDENDUM: The productive power-governmentality insight parallels the ‘trees as infrastructure’ article’s framing of systems shaping the world they appear to merely describe.