following, Foucault’s critique of each model of power is considered in
further detail.
1 The Sovereignty Model
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Although Foucault’s critique of sovereignty extends from the subject to the
state, the sovereign model of power is the most commonpoliticalnotion of
power; it casts the problem of power in terms of ruling and being ruled, or in
Lenin’s formulation, ‘‘who does what to whom.’’ Power in this view is thought
to be contained in sovereign individuals or institutions and to be exercised
over others by these individuals and institutions. Not only monarchical rule
but representative democracy as it appears in social contract theory from
Hobbes to Rawls is premised upon the sovereign model of power. Power is
equated with rule, and the making and enforcement of law is taken to be its
sign. We are presumed to be sovereign subjects when we are self-legislating,
which is to say that we are presumed to will and hence legislate for ourselves
when another is not legislating for us. Thus, social contractarian formulations
of popular sovereignty rely upon the mutually reinforcing conceits of indi-
vidual sovereignty and state sovereignty, each of which, paradoxically, is taken
to have the power to confer sovereignty on the other.
Foucault challenges the sovereign model of powerWrst by challenging the
a priori of sovereignty itself, insisting instead that the conditions of sover-
eignty or imagined sovereignty are themselves suVused with power. Thus,
sovereignty is revealed as an eVect or emblem of power rather than its
source, a move that recasts sovereignty from a universal wellspring of state
formation and individuality to a historically speciWc expression and dis-
simulation of power relations. At the same time, sovereignty is exposed as a
Wction, neither the origin of power nor in control of theWeld of power’s
operation to the degree that the conventional model suggests. Second,
Foucault argues, sovereign power is a small rather than governing feature
of modern political life and governance; modern political thought’s pre-
occupation with sovereign power has led it to overlook the range of sub-
jectifying and often unavowed powers that coexist with legitimate forms of
sovereignty (Foucault 1980 a). Sovereignty, which deWnes political power as a
68 wendy brown