Who is Michel Foucault? The Subject and Power explained! Quixotic Questions

Explore Michel Foucault's essay 'The Subject and Power' to understand how power shapes identity and the dynamic between power and freedom.

Key Takeaways

Power is not just held but exercised through shaping identities and influencing choices.
Individuals are both subjects of power and agents who participate in their own subjectification.
Modern power blends broad societal control with intimate knowledge of individuals.
Freedom and power coexist, enabling resistance within power relations.
Ethical resistance requires rejecting imposed identities and questioning how much of the self is chosen.

What the video covers

Foucault shifts focus from power as a top-down force to how individuals become subjects shaped by power.
He introduces three modes of objectification: scientific classification, dividing practices, and self-subjection.
Scientific fields categorize individuals, defining identities like workers or organisms.
Dividing practices create binary oppositions such as sane/mad or legal/illegal to define social roles.
Individuals actively participate in their own subjectification, exemplified by concepts like sexuality.
Modern power derives from 'pastoral power' rooted in Christian shepherding, emphasizing intimate care and control.
The modern state combines totalizing population management with individualized attention to health, education, and security.
Power and freedom are interdependent; power shapes choices rather than simply oppresses.
Power relationships inherently contain potential for resistance, described by Foucault as agonism—a constant push and pull.
True political and ethical resistance involves challenging imposed identities rather than seeking a fixed 'true self'.

Chapters

What does Michel Foucault mean by 'the subject'?

Foucault uses 'the subject' to describe individuals who are both controlled by power and possess their own identity and conscience, highlighting how power shapes who we become.

How does Foucault describe the relationship between power and freedom?

Foucault argues that power and freedom are interdependent; power influences choices within a range of options, and freedom is necessary for power to operate, making resistance possible.

What is 'pastoral power' and how does it relate to modern power?

Pastoral power originates from Christian shepherding focused on individual care and salvation. Modern states adapted this intimate form of power to manage populations through detailed knowledge and control of individuals' lives.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

So, today we're going to dive into a really important essay by the philosopher Michel Foucault called The Subject and Power. And trust me, it's one of those pieces that'll completely change how you think about how power actually works in our world.

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You know, when you think about power, what comes to mind? Probably a king or a law, right? Some big force from on high that tells you no. But Foucault wants us to take a step back. He suggests that

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maybe we've been asking the wrong questions all along. All right, off the bat, here's the first big twist.

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Foucault basically says, "Look, for the last 20 years, my main goal hasn't been to analyze power at all. It was something else entirely. Something a lot more personal for every single one of us." And he says it himself right here. He

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wasn't chasing some abstract idea of power. He was obsessed with us. Specifically, with how we get shaped, defined, and turned into what he calls subjects. And that word, subject, is super clever. Think about it. You are subject to someone else's control, but

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you're also a subject with your own identity, your own conscience. So, once you make that little switch in your brain, the whole game changes. We stop asking who has the power, and we start asking how. How are we being turned into

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who we are? How do we get attached to these specific identities? Okay, so how does this actually happen? Foucault argues that our culture has these three main techniques. He calls them modes of objectification for turning us into subjects. Let's break them down.

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So, you've got these three main ways. First, how science puts us into boxes. Second, how we draw lines between ourselves and others. And third, and this is the really sneaky one, how we actively help do it to ourselves.

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All right, first up, scientific classification. Just think about it. Fields like economics don't just study the economy in a vacuum. They define us as productive subjects, as workers.

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Biology defines us as living subjects, you know, organisms with certain traits. These fields literally create the categories that we end up living inside.

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Next, there are what he calls dividing practices. And our society does this constantly. It's all about creating these pairs of opposites.

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The second you define what's sane, you automatically create the idea of what's mad. Same thing with legal versus illegal.

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We get defined by which side of that line we fall on. And number three, this one is maybe the most subtle of all. We turn ourselves into subjects. We participate in it.

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Foucault's famous example is sexuality. He argued that we've learned to understand ourselves through this concept of sexuality. It's an idea that defines our desires and our identity, and then we adopt it as our own personal truth.

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Okay, so where did this modern kind of power even come from? Well, Foucault traces its roots back to a really old technique. One that the modern state basically borrowed and gave a complete makeover.

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He calls it pastoral power. This idea came from the Christian church. Think of a pastor or a shepherd and their flock.

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The goal wasn't to rule a territory, it was about the salvation of every single soul, one by one. It was deeply personal, and in a way, it was a form of care.

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And the difference between this and old school kingly power is just huge. Royal power was distant. A king demanded that you sacrifice for the throne.

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Pastoral power was intimate. The pastor was supposed to be willing to sacrifice for you. It was concerned with you for your entire life, and to work, it needed to know your innermost thoughts.

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So, what does this have to do with today? Well, Foucault argues that the modern state adopted the methods of this pastoral power, but it totally changed the goal. It's no longer about salvation in the next life, it's about salvation

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right here in this world. We're talking about things like your health, your wealth, and your security.

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And this creates a really strange paradox. The state's power becomes totalizing. It manages the entire population using things like statistics and broad policies. But at the exact same time, it's individualizing. It cares about the details of your health

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records, your education, your job. It's this bizarre combination of macro and micro control. This brings us to what might be Foucault's most radical, most mind-bending idea. We tend to think that power and freedom are opposites, right?

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Like one goes up, the other goes down. Foucault says, "Nope. They absolutely depend on each other." See, for Foucault, power isn't a thing you can hold. It's an action that influences another person's actions. It doesn't just crush you, it guides you. It

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structures the field of what's possible, making some choices seem easy and others seem really hard or even unthinkable.

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And this is the core of it. If someone is literally in chains, that's not a power relationship. That's just physical force. Real power in Foucault's sense can only exist when the other person has options, a range of choices they can

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make. Power works by influencing that choice. So, if power needs freedom and choice to even exist, what does that mean? It means that wherever you find a power relationship, you are always going to find the potential for resistance.

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They're two sides of the exact same coin. Foucault even has a word for this: agonism.

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Don't think of it like some big final battle where one side wins. It's more like a permanent wrestling match, a constant push and pull between power trying to guide us and our freedom pushing back. It's a never-ending struggle.

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And you can see this agonism playing out everywhere. Foucault points to modern struggles against all sorts of power, not just fighting the government, but fighting against the power that categorizes us in medicine, in the family, in society. These are all

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examples of that constant pushback in action. All of this leads to Foucault's really powerful final thought about what it means to be political or ethical in our world. If modern power works by making us into certain kinds of subjects, then

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the most powerful form of resistance is to challenge those very identities. And this quote just hits the nail on the head. The struggle isn't necessarily to discover our true self because that so-called true self might just be another category someone else created

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for us. Instead, Foucault suggests the real liberating work is to refuse the identities that have been imposed on us.

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To break free from the ways we've been defined. So in the end, Foucault's work leaves us with a really tough challenge. It forces us to ask ourselves, how much of who I am is a product of these subtle forces?

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What part of my identity did I really choose? And what part has been chosen for me? It's a difficult question for sure, but maybe just asking it is the first real step toward freedom.

Topics:Michel FoucaultThe Subject and Powerpower dynamicssubjectivitymodes of objectificationpastoral powermodern statefreedom and poweragonismidentity formation

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