Is Power Everywhere? A Critique of Two Justifications of Foucauldian Prevalence of Power Thesis

Abstract

Michel Foucault is one of t hose authors who significantly impacted upon broadening the meaning of the term “power,” including realms in which one is to look for its symptoms. Foucault’s contribution to the developmental tendency within the studies of power is especially striking. In the History of Sexuality, Foucault was to openly claim that power was plainly everywhere. For years Foucault had been elaborating two ways of legitimizing this view, which is named here “a prevalence of power” thesis. For the sake of the below analysis, the first justification is going to be called historiosophical, and the second—social differentiation justification. The article aims at criticizing both of them and, although indirectly, the very thesis they support. Since the boundaries of all Foucauldian analytics of power are outlined by these two justifications, their reconstruction and critical consideration are of crucial importance for the post-Foucauldian current in social sciences.