chapter 3
...................................................................................................................................................POWERAFTER
FOUCAULT
...................................................................................................................................................wendy brown
TheEnglish noun, power, derives from the Latin,potere, which stresses
potentiality and means ‘‘to be able.’’ However, origins may be as disorient-
ing as they are helpful in this case, especially in understanding how power
has been reconceptualized by French critical thought in recent decades. In
its emphasis on concerted agency, the Latin root obscures the signiWcance
of power’s dispersion, circulation, and microphysical mechanics, its often
automatic rather than intentional workings, and its detailed imbrication
with knowledge, language, and thought. Moreover, the etymological origin
of power suggests the importance of power as a quality (an ability) which,
however important, diverts appreciation of power as a relation and one
that induces eVects, especially in the making of human subjects and social
orders. It is from power’s eVects, including unintended ones, that many
recent theories of power have insisted the presence of power be read, an
insistence that underscores an incommensurability between what the puta-
tively powerful desire or intend and what power does. The contemporary
thesis that subjects are socially constructed by power comes hand in glove
with the decoupling of power from familiar notions of agency as sover-
eignty: not only does the social construction of subjects constitute a limit