[Power/Knowledge, Joseph Rouse, p.92-114]
p.105 So the question that needs to be posed is how Foucault thought his
account [of power] might successfully go beyond sovereignty.
To this end, I will argue that Foucault accomplished this aim by conceiving of power dynamically.
Although once again he did not discuss this explicitly, I believe that his account also requires a dynamical understanding
of knowledge.
p.106 Power is not possessed by a dominant agent, nor located in
that agent's relations to those dominated, but is instead distributed throughout complex social networks. The actions
of the peripheral agents in these networks are often what establish or enforce the connections between what a dominant agent
does and the fulfillment or frustration of a subordinate agent's desires.
p.107 Power can thus never be simply present, as one action forcibly constraining or modifying
another. Its constitution as a power relation depends upon its reenactment or reproduction over time as a
sustained power relationship.
p.109-110 We now have a picture of Foucault's dynamics of power: power is dispersed across complicated
and heterogeneous social networks marked by ongoing struggle. Power is not something present at specific locations
within those networks, but is instead always at issue in ongoing attempts to (re)produce effective
social alignments, and conversely to avoid or erode their effects, often by producing various counteralignments.
p.110 Taken by itself, a statement, a technique or skill, a practice, or a machine cannot
count as knowledge. Only in the ways it is used, and thereby increasingly connected to other elements over time, does
it become (and remain) epistemically significant. But these uses and alignments encounter snags and generate conflicts
with other emerging epistemic practices... Conflict thus becomes the locus for the continuing development and reorganization
of knowledge.
p.111 Foucault used the term "strategies" for the multiple ways in which heterogeneous elements align or
conflict with one another to constitute power relations.
p.112 My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, then we always have something
to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism.
