Analysis Of Power Foucault

The Personal is Political: Foucault’s Power

Power, it is something that almost everyone wants to acquire, to monopolize and influence. According to Webster’s dictionary, power is the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.
But according to Michel Foucault, in what he calls “the analysis of power” is how various institutions exert their power on groups and individuals, and how the people affirm their own identity and resist the effects of power. Foucault thinks that it is wrong to consider power as something that the institutions possess and use oppressively against individuals and groups, so he tries to remove viewing power as the plain oppression of the powerless by the powerful, aiming

Usually, power is understood as the capacity of a person to impose his will over the will of the powerless, or the ability to force them to do things they do not wish to do. It means, power is understood as possession, as something owned by those in power. But in Foucault's opinion, power is not something that can be owned, but rather something that acts and manifests itself in a certain way; it is more of a strategy than a possession. Power must be analyzed as something which circulates or a cycle, or as something which only functions in the form of a chain. Power is employed and exercised through a net like organization, individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application. This way of understanding power hasa two key features: a) power is a system, a network of relations encompassing the whole society, rather than a relation between the oppressed and the oppressor; b) individuals are not just the objects of

Power requires knowledge to be effective, and knowledge, at the same time generates power. A very significant feature of the exercise of power is that those in a position of power and authority try to develop an intellectual justification for exercising that power. Even when a dictator wields a great deal of power and can, in effect, act completely autocratically, they will often, or even usually, try to persuade people that they are acting in the interests of the majority of the citizens. Even powerful dictators appear not to want to act simply by virtue of power they possess; rather they wish to be seen as virtuous