Foucault

In attempting to uncover the deepest strata of Western culture, I am restoring to our silent and apparently immobile soil its rifts, its instability, its flaws, and it is this same ground that is once more stirring under our feet. 

Michel Foucault

One may also speak of a strategy proper to

power relations insofar as they constitute modes of action upon possible

action, the action of others. One can therefore interpret the mechanisms

brought into play in power relations in terms of strategies. 

Michel Foucault

I was interested in [the subjects of his archaeologies] because I saw in them ways of thinking and behaving that are still with us. I try to show, based upon their historical establishment and formation, those systems that are still ours today, and within which we are trapped. It is a question, basically, of presenting a critique of our own time, based upon retrospective analyses.

Michel Foucault

What is questioned is the way in which knowledge circulates and functions, in relations to power.

Michel Foucault

That is to say, power relations are rooted deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted “above” society as a supplementary structure whose radical effacement one could perhaps dream of. In any case, to live in society is to live in such a way that action upon other actions is possible – and in fact ongoing. A society without power relations can only be an abstraction.

Michel Foucault

What I’m trying to pick out with this term [dispositif] is a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus. The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements.

Michel Foucault