{"id":112,"date":"2015-09-24T10:14:19","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T10:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/testing.elotroalex.com\/foucault\/?p=112"},"modified":"2015-09-24T10:14:19","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T10:14:19","slug":"francois-ewald-on-state-versus-power-michel-foucault-and-political-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2015\/09\/24\/francois-ewald-on-state-versus-power-michel-foucault-and-political-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Fran\u00e7ois Ewald on \u201cState versus Power: Michel Foucault and political philosophy\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Fran\u00e7ois Ewald<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by Rapha\u00eblle Jean Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is true that the State interests me, but it interests me only differentially. I do not think that all the powers which are exercised within\u00a0a society\u2014and that ensure the hegemony of a class, an elite, or a caste in that society\u2014can be entirely reduced to the system of the State. The State, with its grand judicial, military and other apparatuses, represents only the guarantee, the armature of a whole network of powers which passes through other channels, that differ from these main avenues. My task is to produce a differential analysis of the different levels of power in society. As a result, the State occupies an important place in this, but not a preeminent one.\u201d (Dits et \u00c9crits<\/em>\u00a0no. 163, II, p.812)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    \n
  1. With\u00a0Penal Theories and Institutions<\/em>, Michel Foucault sets the stage for his philosophy on political grounds. He reconfigures the game of traditional political philosophy by distinguishing the question of \u201cpower\u201d (that he will reformulate from A to Z) from that of the State.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The thesis that I wish to put forward is somewhat paradoxical:<\/span><\/p>\n

      \n
    • On the one hand, to grasp the question of \u201cpower,\u201d to isolate its reality as it emerges in these lectures, one must cease to focus on the State and its apparatuses (terms drawn from the Marxist language available at the time, but one should say more generally from all the discourses on the \u201chistory of institutions\u201d that make power a matter of State).<\/li>\n
    • On the other hand, Foucault\u2019s first take on \u201cpower\u201d is precisely formed by way of an analysis of the exercise of State power, of a vast operation of repression against a popular rebellion, by means of a study of the constitution of an apparatus of State (the judicial and police apparatus), or better still, of a procedure (\u201carmed justice\u201d) through which the State manifests itself as a \u201cbody\u201d distinct from the person of the king: the birth of the administrative State, with its \u201capparatuses;\u201d the appropriation\/expropriation of offices until then distributed between the nobility and the person of the king.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      In fact, this is far from paradoxical: the State, its apparatuses and its institutions, are a screen that is always out of step, always late with respect to the realities of \u201cpower\u201d (i.e. of power struggles). If one starts with the State, one misses power. If one starts with power, one understands the State (but also that it is not as essential as it may seem).<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. In\u00a0Penal Theories and Institutions<\/em>, \u201cpower\u201d (that is to say \u201cpower relations\u201d) is grasped on three levels:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        First, a\u00a0political\u00a0<\/em>level: the rituals of a very particular and decisive \u201cpolitical ceremony,\u201d the repression of a popular rebellion, that of the\u00a0Nu-pieds<\/em>, the moment of a singular battle in which the power of the State almost definitively annihilates its competitors.<\/p>\n

        Through an extremely precise description of this seizure of power, Foucault studies a specific form of power relation that he calls \u201csystem of repression\u201d (at the time of these lectures, he had not yet elaborated all the vocabulary that he would go on to use to analyze power relations). \u201cSystem of repression,\u201d \u201crepression\u201d: the modern State (administration, justice, police) is established in function of a logic of repression of popular rebellions. It is a complete form of power relation (no doubt different from that of \u201csequestration\u201d \u2013\u00a0The Punitive Society<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 which is not specific to the State). I say \u201ccomplete form,\u201d to emphasize that these lectures do not present the preliminary, still clumsy, outline of what we later find in\u00a0Discipline and Punish\u00a0<\/em>for example. In\u00a0Penal Theories and Institutions<\/em>\u00a0Foucault analyzes a specific regime of power \u2013 \u201crepression\u201d (a regime of State power) \u2013 that does not take the form of surveillance or of discipline, not even of control. It is a form to which he does not return in his later work.<\/p>\n

        Given Foucault\u2019s critique of those who see repression as the very operation of power (see\u00a0The Will to Knowledge<\/em>) \u2013 deemed too narrowly juridical a view of the State and of power \u2013 it may seem surprising that I should assert the consistency of this figure of power. But there is no contradiction here. The power of the State can very well be repressive, without us having to reduce the multiplicity of power relations to this repression. Precisely, it can be said that the study of power relations at the State level, that is to say of power as \u201crepressive,\u201d concerns itself with the mechanisms that exist only at its own level, that of \u201cpolitical ceremonies,\u201d that Foucault isolates, systematizes and theorizes (he discusses the \u201cdynastic\u201d) in\u00a0Penal Theories and Institutions<\/em>, but does not pursue further.<\/p>\n

        Second, the level of\u00a0judicial institutions and practices<\/u><\/em>\u00a0is a micro level, a genealogical level. It is another level, another form of power relations, in no way related to the State. This form is rather that of dispersed micro-powers, relations between agents that are likely to be in conflict, or making claims against each other. The relation of justice is a relation of power: \u201cThe rule and the struggle, the rule in the struggle, that is the juridical.\u201d (p.115).<\/p>\n

        Foucault puts into practice a very original philosophy of law in which the following elements can be distinguished:<\/p>\n