Forms of Power in Michel Foucault’s Thought

Abstract

This study offers an in-depth political–theoretical analysis of the forms of power in the thought of Michel Foucault, tracing the transformation he introduced in the understanding of power as a network of relations and practices embedded within the social fabric, rather than merely a legal institution or a repressive apparatus. The research problem arises from the structural tension generated by his theses on power within contemporary philosophical and political discourse, and revolves around the central question: How did Michel Foucault reconceptualize power through his archaeological–genealogical approach, and what are the mechanisms through which different forms of power—discourse, biopower, power/knowledge, and technologies of the self—operate within modern social relations?

The study argues that Foucault redefined power beyond traditional legal and institutional models, advancing an alternative conception grounded in subtle and diffuse practices. Through his archaeological–genealogical method, he deconstructs the conditions of discourse production and reveals the microphysical mechanisms of power that organize knowledge and shape everyday life.

The analysis demonstrates that discursive power reshapes the conditions of truth through mechanisms of regulation and exclusion, while disciplinary power produces docile bodies within institutions such as prisons, schools, and hospitals. It further examines the development of biopower, which regulates populations through policies of health, the body, and life, culminating in technologies of the self that render the individual an active participant in the production of obedience through practices of self-care and self-surveillance.

The study concludes that Foucault reconceptualizes power as a productive process intertwined with knowledge, emerging within everyday relations and simultaneously generating possibilities for resistance. In this sense, Foucault offers a dynamic framework for understanding modern governance, linking the body, discourse, and the self, and revealing the underlying structures that shape contemporary society.