Foucault and the Theories of Power and Identity Essay example -- Fouca

Foucault and the Theories of Power and Identity Foucault believed that agency is never in both one person?s hands, it does non show itself in either obvious manner but rather as something that whole kit and boodle its room into our imaginations and serves to constrain how we act. For example in the setting of a workplace the precedent does not pass from the cryst exclusivelyise down instead it circulates through and through their organisational practices. Such practices act like a grid, provoking and inciting certain courses of bodily process and denying others. Foucault considers this as no straightforward matter and believes that it rests on how far individuals provide what is being laid down as obvious or self evident, institutional cater works best when all parties accept it willingly. Foucaults notion of military force is a difficult notion to grasp principally because it is never entirely turn over on who has the office staff in the first place, once the idea is bow out away that power must be vested in someone at the top of the ladder e.g. the company director, it becomes much(prenominal) more difficult to identify what power is or where and whom it lies with. Foucault believes that we ar so used to thinking about power as an identifiable and overt force and that this view is simply not the case, because it is taken for granted that the above statement is true then it is much more confused to comprehend power as a channelize force that does not show itself in an obvious manner. According to Foucault we take it upon ourselves to regulate our own conduct, even though we are free to do and say as we please we choose to constrain our behaviour and the modestness for us doing so it that we know what is expected of us, we do not expect someone in a position of ?authority? to do this for us, we all take responsibility for our own expects. It is in this sense that power works as an anonymous force, provoking free agents to act in ways that make it difficult for them to do otherwise. Foucault?s theory of power ?revolves somewhat indirect techniques of self-regulation which induce appropriate forms of behaviour.?1, we are free to govern ourselves. In the absence of an authority figure we will automatically restrain our behaviour, in that respect is no ?hand? of power that pushes us all into line, only an citation that we all work within a framework of choices, that are in the long run subjected to influence and direction, but that we ourselves have the fina... ...ogist Kathy Woodward, she also points out that our identity would motif to change depending on whom it is we were interacting with and the situation that we were in, ? astute and not so subtle variations of identity may well be called upon for each of these roles.?8 pantryman describes modern notions of identity as ?being made up of regulative ideals?9, these regulatory ideals provide ?idealised and reified norms which people are expected to live up to .?10 These types of regulatory ideals are sustained or undermined through performance. Performativity is not a singular act, ?it is always the reiteration of a norm or a set of norms, and to the extent that it acquires an act like position in the present, it conceals or dissimulates the conventions of which it is a repitition.?11It is through this repeated action that that these norms are created and lived up to. This idea can also be related to handling Butler argues that performative acts are statements that also produce that which they say. Discourse promotes specific kinds of power relations, in other words to know is to participate in complicated webs of power. Thus perfomative acts are a domain in which discourse acts as power.