Page 39 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

Changing Definitions of Politics and Power 25

develops it further, arguing that power necessarily works on what he calls
“ free subjects. ” It is only where there is the possibility of resistance, where
subjects are not fully determined but may realize different possibilities
from the range with which they are faced, that it is meaningful to think
in terms of power. Slavery does not involve a relationship of power where
the slave is in chains, but rather a relation of violence. Apparently in
opposition to his previous assertions that “ power is everywhere ” and that
subjects are discursively constructed, Foucault is here committing himself
to the view that the “ free subject ” necessarily exists prior to discourse.
However, he retains the view that subjects are constructed in practices of
power insofar as he maintains that subjects are subjected where they are
controlled by others, and also insofar as they are tied to their own identity
by conscience or self - knowledge (Foucault, 1982 ).
Foucault links his analyses of power directly with the antagonistic
struggles of social movements, arguing that one of the most important
aspects of these struggles in contemporary society is the way in which

they challenge subjectification. To some extent, social movements are
based on the assertion of existing identities, and so on the acceptance of
categorizations of normal/not normal produced in discourses and prac-
tices of power. On the other hand, however, they sometimes involve the
refusal of existing identities:

on the one hand, they assert the right to be different and they underline
everything which makes individuals truly individual. On the other hand,
they attack everything which separates the individual, breaks his links with
others, splits up his community life, forces the individual back on himself
and ties him to his own identity in a constraining way. (Foucault, 1982 :
211 – 12)

The examples he gives are struggles against the power of men over
women, of parents over children, of psychiatry over the mentally ill, of
medicine over the population, and of administration over the ways in
which people live. Foucault makes the point that it is in part a result of
the way in which social movements resist power that it is possible to

analyze it as such. Resistance is necessary to the definition of power, and
it is also methodologically important to the study of power in that it
brings power relations and the methods by which it is exercised into view.

Foucault also refines his analytics of power with the concepts of domi-
nation and government in his later work. In fact, according to Barry
Hindess (1996) , he increasingly uses domination as a term to analyze what
is more commonly thought of as power, replacing the term power with