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W H E R E T H E R E I S
P O W E R T H E R E
I S R E S I S T A N C E
MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926–1984)
T
he power to maintain
social order, or to bring
about social change,
has conventionally been seen in
political or economic terms. Until
the 1960s, theories of power usually
fell into two types: ideas of the
power of government or state over
citizens; or the Marxist idea of
a power struggle between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
However, these theories tended
to concentrate on power at the
macro level, either ignoring the
exercise of power at lower levels
of social relations, or seeing it
as a consequence of the primary
exercise of power (or only of
secondary importance).IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Power/resistanceKEY DATES
1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels describe the oppression
of the proletariat by the
bourgeoisie in their book
The Communist Manifesto.1883 Friedrich Nietzsche
introduces the concept of
the “Will to Power” in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra.1997 Judith Butler’s Excitable
Speech: A Politics of the
Performative develops
Foucault’s idea of power/
knowledge in relation to
censorship and hate speech.2000 In Empire, Italian
Marxist sociologist Antonio
Negri and US scholar Michael
Hardt describe the evolution
of a “total” imperialist power,
against which the only
resistance is negation.