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Foucault's Definition Of Power

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There is communication everywhere people are. These communications are generally written, spoken or only thoughts. In a nutshell, they can be called as discourses which should not be underestimated by indiviuals because their effects may be powerful on people’s lives. Even though it can be claimed as there are free wills and free thoughts, it is not hundred percent true because people’s ideas have been shaped by discourses since they were born. Media helps to spread discourses too much knowingly or unknownly. Especially, young generation was exposed more to these discourses since Media has been in every part of their lives for as long as they have known themselves. Hence, it occupies more place and it became almost inevitable. Before the media became that important, these discourses were spreaded only by society itself. However, nowadays, it is impossible not to get affected from discourses because of media. To undertsand how powerful these discourses are, firstly, power should be defined. Foucault’s definition of power is not the first thing that …show more content…

Giddens called this theory as ‘lifestyle’ and Foucault called this theory as ‘mode of life’ (Gauntlett, 2008, p.142). For heterosexual people, building lifestyle is easier since they have more examples to copy or inspirate. However, gay lifestyle has been shaped recently. Discourses on sexuality spreaded by media makes gay people’s lives harder since it creates hatred on them. For instance, in the episode of The Simpsons, Homer hates gay people and his only reason is because they are unusual. Through the episode, Homer talks about stereotypes of gay people such as drinking diet coke, wearing shirts with flower,etc. Homer shows his hatred by saying that being gay is shameful. Also, in Lion King, Scar is shown as a gay character and when he is in power, the nature of the kingdom was ruined because of him since he is not

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Content Response 1 For centuries, power has been a way of establishing hierarchy and social pyramids that have helped us create the society we live in today. However, we have become more aware of the constant influence that power has in human lives thanks to the perspective of critical theory, which has showed us that power is something that constitutes all of human interactions and relationships. Michel Foucault defines power as a behavior or process that permeates all human interaction (Allen, 2011). He states that power resides in every human encounter for the purpose of transforming structures of communication and meaning. Power is not limited to only a person in a power position, but it is present in any reciprocal relationship.

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The Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines power as possession of control, authority, or influence over others. Having the ability or capacity to change the future has been around longer than we can admit to imagine. Power comes in different shapes and forms , anything or anyone can have it. Even just having things can show and have power like how the Firefighters in Fahrenheit 451 carried these intimidating flamethrowers with immense heat. The people feared these firefighters and manipulated them into thinking books were evil because books had knowledge and creativity which held an even greater power.

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In this world the media is used to control people and overpopulation and censorship have become the new normal. While a common resource such as technology, phones, computers, tvs, etc are just abused. Media is seen as a resource to the government to shape you into

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Countless works of literature have mused on the complex struggle between the human characteristics of greed, selfishness and treachery and the edifice of morality and reason on which human society is built. Often times this struggle is characterized as a battle between the forces of good and evil, good being the desire to help mankind and evil the desire to do the opposite. George MacDonald’s poem “Evil Influence” follows this trend in its title and subject matter, describing the terrible nature of evil that precedes violent deeds. While William Golding’s Lord of the Flies primarily explores the natural state of man contained by the walls of society, the presence of its titular being ~Raw Writing~ ...brings up the idea of something sinister influencing the boys’ actions on the island.

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However, it is a tragedy, and draws to identity politics, in which people of a particular social background form and celebrate their own exclusive political viewpoints or cultures; and consequently, they are alienated from the standard culture. The identity politics is a dominated tool to generalize all the people’s views and indirectly force them to return to a hideaway, in the homosexual community, it is called homophobia. From Liu’s explanation, as a reader, I strongly disagree with the idea of identity politics in the gay culture. I am not saying that the homosexual need to take pride in themselves in public, but to receive respect from other people. Opinion oppression is even crueler than discrimination; it suppresses the natural development of personality, behavior, and psychology.

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Introduction In our current society, the media is a very powerful medium which cultivates the way the society thinks and behaves. At this stage of the political economy, the intellectual mode of production is largely made through the media industry. Aspects such as Hollywood, television and movies, they frame and direct our thinkings and values towards the direction as they desire.

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Thomas Wartenberg’s analysis that power is employed in a complex network of mutual interaction also helped elucidate more on Foucault’s conception of dynamic power. ‘A situated power relationship between [the performances of] two social agents is thus constituted by the presence of peripheral social agents in the form of a social alignment. A field of social agents can constitute an alignment in regard to [the performances of] a social agent if and only if, first of all, their actions in regard to that agent are coordinated. . . comprehensive[ly] enough that the social agent facing the alignment encounters that alignment as having control over certain things that she might either need or desire’ (Wartenberg,

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Moreover, power is a relationship and network. Traditional theory of power supposed power is an ability or resource which can be competed, transferred. Foucault claims that it is a relationship, this power can be seen in the flow of the process cycle, especially hierarchical observation mentioned in the book. Power is produced in the relation network.

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Any analysis or understanding of any aspect of Western culture is incomplete and degraded if it does not incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition (Sedgwick 2008,

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The answer lies in the relationship that sex has with knowledge and power. Focusing on how power controls sex by laying down rules and regulations to follow, he said that power insisted domination and submission. He said power hides its true intentions by calling it beneficial. Foucault argued that we need to develop analytics of power in order to understand sex. He said that westerners think of power as emanating from the law.

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Foucault’s (1975) conception of power is a common part of this subject. Essentially, power is a relationship between people in which one affects another 's actions. Power differs from force or violence, which affect the body physically. It involves making a free subject do something that he would not have done otherwise: power therefore involves restricting or altering someone 's will.

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This leads the concepts of power to shift away from theories that associate power with just the economy and the state. It thus moves towards an ideal beneath which power functions at the most micro level of social relations (Gaventa, 2003). This is a pro because instead of ignoring the power hierarchies between individuals and the various power dynamics within society, Foucault essentially focuses on them. Other critiques have failed to mention historical contextualisation and have been inclined to occur in isolation from questions that regard the broader production of knowledge (Hook, 2004). This helps us to understand power relations and hierarchies better within society.

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This is because the content of mass media is very powerful and it has become a agent of socialization which can shape people’s behavior or even influence the ways of how people think. There are many agents of socialization that can influence an individual lifestyle and one of the agent is mass media, which means that mass media can affect an individual self-concept, attitudes, or other orientations toward life especially the adolescents. The fact that there was a time when the internet, television and cell phones were considered a necessity but now the mass media seems to be more of a commodity to teenagers, because we can see that most of the adolescents tend to spend more time on the electronic devices rather than going for outdoor activities. Based on the researched, we found out that every people in the society

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735 Words | 3 Pages

All human beings communicate either with intention or without intention every single day. According to Barth (2014), Palo Alto Team stated “ one cannot not communicate” in one of their axioms of communication. Communication can be defined as “a social process in which individuals employ symbols to establish and interpret meaning in their environment” (Went & Turner, 2014, p. 5). It can be divided into three models in order to enhance our understanding towards the function of communication, which are mainly linear model, interactional model and transcactional model (Wood, 2009). According to Went & Turner, 2014, there are also different traditions and contexts in communication where it helps us to break down difficulty when we attempt to understand communication theory and their process.

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Media are platforms of mass communication that can be categorized as either new of traditional media, with new media being forms of communication that make use of technologies such as the Internet, and traditional media being more conventional forms of media such as newspapers. Media, primarily new media, is getting more popular and influential, especially in today’s day and age since we are exposed to it a lot more than in the past and also since media is more easily accessible now. The media can shape our behaviours, perceptions and opinions, and it is important to know how people are influenced and impacted by it. The media can influence someone’s perception of social reality, or perceptions of beauty or even influence people’s behaviours and habits and therefore, the media does shape who we are. One way that the media can shape who we are is by influencing our perception of social reality.

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