Explain Foucault’s conception of power, with reference to one or more of his historical studies.

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Explain Foucault's conception of power, with reference to one or more of his historical studies.

Foucault has become somewhat of a radical figure within sociology, radical in the sense that he has raised subjects regarding the 'human sciences' collectively and in the process has questioned the full intentions of sociology as a discipline. Foucault has a unique style of studying society and because of this tends to approach the more mainstream theories of history, power and knowledge from a 180-degree angle. It can be seen that throughout his works Foucault has tried to improve upon some of his ideas, moving from his archaeological approach to knowledge to genealogies of power and knowledge. Further shifts within his work occurred in his later volumes of The History of Sexuality where he concedes his argument regarding 'subjects as constructs' was perhaps a little one-sided. What makes Foucault's conception of power so distinct is the way in which he confronts the past theories of power and knowledge, wanting to go beyond structuralism and interpretive approaches like phenomenology (McHoul & Grace, 1993), he draws upon an anti-enlightenment tradition when rejecting modernity and as such rejects both reason and progress (Best & Kellner, 1991). Foucault discards the Marxist formula of power and knowledge as totalizing and restrictive and as such his conception of power is positive and non - totalizing (Sarup, 1993). To explain Foucault's conception of power this essay will describe Foucault's idea of discourse and later discuss the importance of discourse within his conception of power by drawing on The History of Sexuality. It will provide a brief overview of his main shift in thought from 'Archaeology' to 'Genealogy', and will discuss the importance of his use of 'the subject' within his later works. By discussing techniques of power the essay will draw on Foucault's theories regarding confession and the unearthing of ones true sexual identity. By looking at the role of knowledge within power and discourse, a cycle of regulation will be discussed. Finally some criticism of Foucault's conception will be noted especially toward the lack of attention paid to structure and agency.

Discourse is a crucial notion within Foucault's conception of power and is indispensable to understand power in the production of knowledge (McHoul & Grace, 1993). Although a discourse is a way of talking and conversing (Cuff, Sharrock & Francis, 2001) Foucault moves away from this idea and favours the concept of discipline when discussing discourse (McHoul & Grace, 1993). In this sense Foucault describes a discourse in terms of a body of knowledge, rather like disciplines such as medicine, sociology and psychiatry. They are well-bounded areas of social knowledge and can be identified by having a number of defined components of which are (i) objects which are the things that are studied within the discourse, (ii) study operations which constitute the methods used to study the objects, (iii) concepts that are the ideas and terms used within the discourse and (iv) theoretical approaches which are the assumptions and theories which form the base of the discourse (McHoul & Grace, 1993). Foucault concentrates on discussing discourses of marginal groups for example in Discipline and Punish he looks at criminals and the judicial system and in The History of Sexuality he focuses on psychoanalysis and different forms of sexuality (Best & Kellner, 1991). It is in this way that Foucault's conception of discourse is a critical one (McHoul & Grace, 1993), because he approaches them at different levels and with different methods, unlike more formally structured frameworks like Marxism, he believes that modern society can be analyzed from the realms of these discourses and suggests that they overlap (Best & Kellner, 1991). Through investigating discourse Foucault wanted to analyze in more depth forms of power within discourse and wider society.
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Foucault's work in the 1960's concerned 'archaeologies of knowledge' and he wanted to differentiate his work from historical theories and it is at this point that his theory of power can be distinguished from more structuralist approaches (Best & Kellner, 1991) like Marxism and Functionalism. He also rejects the idealist and humanist writings that trace history. He believed that these structuralist approaches had decisively decentred the subject and Foucault wanted to find out how one could study the history of ideas without the subject (Cuff, Sharrock & Francis, 2001). In order to do this he looked at structures ...

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