Comment on Foucault’s concept of power.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Route 1 Dominant view = sovereign, top-down, repressive → Foucault overturns it
Route 2 Foucault’s core claim = power dispersed, productive, capillary → “comes from everywhere”
Break from sovereign/juridico-legal power → not from one centre → capillary / micro-physics → productive, not repressive → produces subjects, identity, norms, knowledge → power/knowledge → truth shaped by power → regimes of truth → works via discourse, discipline, surveillance → Discipline and Punish: torture → disciplinary power (schools, prisons, hospitals) → Panopticon → self-surveillance → normalisation replaces force → power presupposes freedom → resistance internal to power
Habermas: no normative ground to judge injustice → Lukes: neglects class and economic structures
Route 1 Power moves from a thing possessed to a relation that produces us
Route 2 Despite the critiques, Foucault reset how power is studied — knowledge, surveillance, identity
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
Also asked on this head
Power, Authority & Legitimacy — 10 questions in the Vault.
- Legitimacy is always a ‘social construct’. (150 words)
- Do you think that legitimacy acquired by consent or manufactured by indoctrination is an essential element in maintenance of political rule? Justify your answer with relevant...
- Explain Macpherson’s view on power.
How this is taught
The same flow snapshot, built for every head of the syllabus, with the answer written in class.
The first session of Foundation 2027 is published in full.
Six programmes across three levels.