PYQ Vault · Paper 1 · Power, Authority & Legitimacy
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.
Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes
R1 Dominant view = sovereign, top-down, repressive → Foucault overturns it R2 Foucault's core claim = power dispersed, productive, capillary → “comes from everywhere"
Body flow
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
Counter-view
Habermas: no normative ground to judge injustice.. Lukes: neglects class and economic structures
Conclusion routes
R1 Power moves from a thing possessed to a relation that produces us R2 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.
