The Microscopic Power Study Of Discourse Mechanisms

Scholars of later ages have attached much importance to and echoed Michel Foucault’s critical study of modern society.Yet,The History of Sexuality that is the crystallization of his thought has received little attention.Sex itself,as the boundary between the discipline of the body and the reproduction of the population,has always been the area where legislators must strengthen their control.The focus of Foucault’s research is not sex in the biological sense,but the construction of human historical experience.Relying on discourse theory,he is actually analyzing the power mechanism of discourse,rather than the study of the nature itself.Except the introduction and conclusion,it has four parts.The first part puts forward the question,clarifies Foucault’s reflection on the Enlightenment and his critique of the mode of law.Foucault questioned the Enlightenment’s “will to knowledge” and pointed out the connotation monistic mode of "power" and its disadvantages.The second part expounds Foucault’s view of law.According to Foucault’s legal thought,the traditional “triangular mode” is inevitably doomed to failure.In the volume one of his The History of Sexuality he refutes the Victorian mode of oppression and reveals how the sexual discourse in the power strategy is produced.The third part explains the micro-power under Foucault’s social power model.As the core of Foucault’s power theory,micro-power is divided into right to life and disciplinary power.Foucault uses the unique method of perspectival analysis instead of traditional linear historical view of will to knowledge,which is to replace the macro-discourses of modern society with concrete narratives so as to avoid the historicity and limitations of truth.The fourth part expounds Foucault’s discourse analysis method.First of all,it introduces the research methods of genealogy and archaeology,both of which have thoroughly informed all his texts.Secondly,it demonstrates his conceptual analysis of the word "discourse," and finally the formation process of the discourse order.The conclusion part firstly confirms the epoch-making significance of foucault’s micro-power mode,which makes people wary of the meaning behind the "truth" discourse;But the limitation of foucault’s thought is that he tries to get rid of the micro power network by criticizing the relation of knowledge and power,but the result is futile.Therefore,foucault failed to persuade us to give up modern enlightenment rationality and abandon the goal of pursuing truth and a better society.