Foucault Must Defend Society, "the Power Problem

Power is a very important concept in Foucault's latter works. In these works, Foucault gave concise but unique analysis to power in a genealogical way. The present author tends to interpret some questions on power proposed by Foucault in II Faut Defendre La Societe, which was based on his speech draft made in College de France in 1976. In the speech, Foucault criticized the traditional theory of privilege which explained power from the standpoint of economism by means of a macroscopic analysis from top. to bottom. On the contrary, he interpreted power from the perspective of non-economism, using a microscopic analysis from bottom to top. What's more, he proposed the classification of the three kinds of power existing till now. In the prologue of the speech, Foucault firstly drew the outline of "discipline power", which is a kind of power and organization that was exerted individually to body through the surveillance technology of exemplary departments and standardized sanction. At the end of the speech, Foucault then sketched the outline of "biopower", which was a kind of power that was exercised generally to population, life and quick. In this way, Foucault cursorily drew an outline of genealogy of modern power through this course, summarizing the preterit work and unsealing the research way for the future. The two kinds of new-style "power" and their corresponding particularity were the main content of this course. Specifically speaking, Il Faut Defendre La Societe was the repulsion to the theory of classical privilege and the traditional politics. Because in Foucault's point of view, they couldn't see clearly the relationship between power and the various kinds of forces in the conflicts of knowledge and the struggle inreality. It is the reinterpretation to the illuminative times. Although the illuminative movement boosted the development of logos, it, at the same time, accelerated the centralization, standardization and disciplinization of the regnant knowledge thus debasing the minor and non-mainstream knowledge. The tragedy of Btuno would probably re-act. Foucault adhered to "history—war" discourse, propagated the history of subjugation and dominance. This discourse was established on the opposite of natural power—racial warfare. In the end, Foucault put forward in his course that racism and fascism were nothing more than the collusion of knowledge and power and the further development of biopower.