Manzo, Lidia (2015) And their struggle becomes visible. For a radical revaluation of Foucault's conception of resistance to power. In: Culture and Visual Forms of Power. Experiencing Contemporary Spaces of Resistance. Common Ground Publishing, Champaign, Illinois. ISBN 978-1-61229-641-8

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Abstract

Michel Foucault’s construction of power offers a revaluation of the modern “perpetual battle” (1995, 26) and, in particu lar, of the biopolitical and neoliberal forms of governance that characterize our pr esent. The Foucaldian idea of power is that it is not a thing, but a relation (1971). Power is not simply repressive (like the use of violent control in the pre-modern era), but is also productive and is an everyday disciplinary practice. “It is not the ‘privilege’, acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions- an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the positions of those who are dominated” (1995, 26-27). In short, Foucault conceives power as “exclusively social, multiple, variable in character” (Sluga 2005, 231) and, more importantly, exercised on a small scale by political acts taken up by the supposedly powerless. In order to understand what power relations are about, rather than analyze distinctive forms of power, perhaps “we should investigate the forms of resistance and attempts made to dissociate these relations” (1983, 211).

Item Type:	Book Section
Keywords:	struggle; visible; radical revaluation; Foucault's conception of resistance to power;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography
Item ID:	7890
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.18848/978-1-61229-641-8/CGP
Depositing User:	Lidia Manzo
Date Deposited:	10 Feb 2017 10:59
Journal or Publication Title:	Culture and Visual Forms of Power. Experiencing Contemporary Spaces of Resistance
Publisher:	Common Ground Publishing
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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