ISBN : 9782296545458
JURIDICAL RIGHTS IN THE ERA OF DISCIPLINARY POWER AND BIOPOWER : FOUCAULT'S PARADOX
The question of juridical rights is often considered to be a weak point in Michel Foucault's conception of power. Michel Foucault constructed his theory of power in opposition to the juridical and political theory of "sovereignty", an opposition which, for some commentators, can be interpreted as a criticism of rights in general (Zarka 2002, 266). According to Foucault's theory, law and rights do not provide a good description of how power is actually exercised in modern societies. When we talk about power, we are always referring to political power and to the State. But political power only functions on a base of preexisting power relations. There is a whole hidden world lurking behind the golden splendour of our political rights: for Foucault, new extra-legal types of power appear throughout the 19th century, in particular what he calls disciplinary power and...