Fletcher (On Foucault)

"This individualising form of power, despite the decline in the pastorate, has become diffuse through the social body through its adoption by the state. Whereas once pastoral power came from individual salvation, the meaning of salvation acquired new meanings including wealth, well-being, prosperity, and security. Concurrently the number of officials charged with providing pastoral care increased and included police, welfare agencies, agencies of the state, and the field of medicine. Additionally those in positions of power began to collect and develop knowledge; knowledge that was both globalising and quantitative concerning the population as a totality and analytical knowledge concerning the individual. As a result this pastoral power came to be an individualising mechanism pervading every aspect of the social body, from the family to medicine to politics and all the places in between".

"In summary it could be said that all struggle is a struggle against a “form of power” that “categorises the individual, marks him by his individuality, [and] attaches him to his own identity”. In short this form of power is one that “makes individuals subjects”, subjects who come under the control and dependence of another, or who are tied to their own identity through “conscience or self-knowledge” (Foucault does not elaborate on the concept of conscience and how conscience may be affected by self-knowledge privileging conscience with an almost mystical quality that creates subjectivity).

Having outlined the commonality that can be found in the various forms of resistance Foucault proceeds to outline three types of struggle: against domination on religious, ethnic, and religious grounds, against exploitation that separates individuals from that which they produce, and subjection caused by tying an individual to themselves and submitting them thus to others. He points out that state power tends (or tended) to be totalising, ignoring the individual but a new form of power – pastoral power that is at once both individualising and totalising – has come to dominate...