14 Truth and Power

Michel Foucault

1 think one can be confident in saying that you were the first person to pose the question of
power regarding discourse, and that at a time when analyses in terms of the concept or
object of the 'text', along with the accompanying methodology of s~y, structural-
ism, etc., were the prevailing fashion. Posing for discourse the question of power means
basically to ask whom does discourse serve? ... Could you briefly situate· within your
work this question you have posed - if indeed it's true that you have posed it?

I don't think I was the first to pose the question. On the contrary, I'm struck by the
difficulty I had in formulating it. When I think back now, I ;i,sk myself what else it
was that I was talking about, in Madness and Civilisation or The Birth of the Clinic,
but .power? Yet I'm perfectly aware that I scarcely ever used the word and never had
sucna ffold of analxs.e_s a.t .m.Y ~isposal. I can say that this was an incapacity linked
undoubtedly. with the politicaf sfri.1.ation we found ourselves in. It is hard to see
where, either on the Right or the Left, this problem of power could then have been
posed. On the Right, it was posed only in terms of constitution, sovereignty, etc.\
that is, in juridical terms; on the Marxist side, it was posed only in terms of the State )
apparatus. The W(ly power was exercised - concretely and in detail - with its
spe~!f~ its t~guesaiid tactics, was something_ that no one a_!:tem~
ascertain; they contented themselves with .~~Q-9.JJJJ..ci!!gJ!).Q ..a p9lemi~.al._and_glo.b..~J
fashl"i)nas if.existed ·among the 'others', in the adversary ~a_m.p.,_ Where Soviet
socialist i)o~~~--waS!nquestio-n, its opp~nents cali~d it totalitarianism; power in
Western capitalism was denounced by the Marxists as class domination; but the
mechanics of power in themselves were never analysed. This task could only begin
after 1968, that is to say on the basis of daily struggles at grass roots level, among
those whose fight was located in the fine meshes of the web of power. This was
where the concrete nature of power became visible, along with the prospect that
these analyses of power would prove fruitful in accounting for all that had hitherto
remained outside the field of political analysis. To put it very simply, psychiatric
internment, the mental normalisation of individuals, and penal institutions have no
doubt a fairly limited importance if one is only looking for their economic signifi-
cance. On the other hand, they are undoubtedly essential to the general functioning
of the wheels of power. So long as the posing of the question of power was kept
subordinate to the economic instance and the system of interests which this served,
there was a tendency to regard these problems as of small importance.

Originally translated by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper.
Interviewers: Alessandro Fontana and Pasquale Pasquino.
204 MICHEL FOUCAULT

So a certain kind of Marxism and a certain kind of phenomenology constituted an

objective obstacle to the formulation of this problematic?

Yes, if you like, to the extent that it's true that, in our student days, people of my
generation were brought up on these rwoJorms of analysis, one in terms of the
constituent subject, the other in terms of the economic in the last instance, ideology
and the play of superstructufes and infrastructures.

Still within this methodological context, how would you situate the genealogical
approach? As a questioning of the conditions of possibility, modalities and CO!).,.;_ti.t.tJJiQ!"l
of the 'objects' and domains you have successively analysed, what makes it necessary?

I wanted to see how these problems of constitution could be resolved within a

historical framework, instead of referring them back to a constituent object (mad-
ness, criminality or whatever). But this historical contextualisation needed to be
something more than the simple relativisation of the phenomenological subject. I
don't believe the problem can be solved by historicising the subject as posited by the
phenomenologist~i.Jabricating a subject that evolves through the course of history.
One has to d)spense with the constituent subject, to get rid of the subject itself, that's
to say, to arrive at an analysis which can account for the consti~µt_i_gn_qf the subject
within a historical framework. And this is what I would call genealoiYJ that is, a
form of history which can account for the constitution of kno~ledges, ·discourses;·
domains of objects etc., without having to make reference to a subject which is either
transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness ·
throughout the course of history. "'-...._-~'

Marxist phenomenology and a certain kind of Marxism have clearly acted as a screen and
an obstacle; there are two further concepts which continue today to act as a screen and an
obstacle, ideology on the one hand and repression on the other.... Could you perhaps
use this occasion to specify more explicitly your thoughts on these matters? ...

The notion of ideology appears to me to be difficult to make use of, for three
reasons. The first is that, like it or not, it always stands in virtual opposition to
something else which is supposed to count as truth. Now I believe that the problem
does not consist in drawing the line between that in a discourse which falls under the
category of scientificit.~ and that which comes under some other category,
but in seeing historically how effects of truth are produced within discourses which
!
in themselves are neither true nor false. The second drawback is that the concept of
ideology refers, I think necessarily, to something of tkorder 0La__giJ2i~f!· Thirdly,
ideology stands in a secondary po!>iti~i: relati~~~!..l:iJng wEich functions as its
infra!>_tgKture, as its ~ial, economic determinant, etc. For these three reasons, I
think that this is a notion that cannot be used without sll:,c.~QD.
The notion of repression is a more insidious one, or at all events I myself have had
much more trouble in freeing myself of it, in so far as it does indeed appear to
correspond so well with a whole range of phenomena which belong among the
effects of power. When I wrote Madness and Civilisation, I made at least an implicit
use of this notion of repression. I think indeed that I was positing the existence of a
 TRUTH AND POWER 205

sort of living, voluble and anxious madness which the mechanisms of power and
psychiatry were supposed to have come to repress and reduce to silence. But i~s~~rns
to me now that the notion of repression is quite inadequate for capturing what is
precisely the productive aspect of power. In defining the effects of power as repres-
sion, one adopi:s·a pi.ireTyTiidaiCaI conception of such power, one identifies power
with a law which says no, power is taken above all as carrying the force of a
prohibition. Now I believe that this is a wholly neg~gi~ narrowrSkel§1al...ceBc.e_p~
of power, one which has been curiously widespread. If power were never anything
~-
but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you really think one would
be brought to obey it? What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is
simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it
traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces
discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through
the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is
repression. In Discipline and Punish what I wanted to show was how, from the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onwards, there was a veritable technological
take-off in the productivity of power. Not only did the monarchies of the Classical
period develop great state apparatuses (the army, the police and fiscal administra-
tion), but above all there was established at this period what pne...m.ighual~
'ecooom.y_'_of.pow.e.r, that is to say procedures which allowed the.efkcts.oi.11ow.e.r1-o
cin;ulate in <Lmanneutt_ once cQntimio.ll~-l"Uiinremt.p.ted~ ·ada.pted and 'in.dividual-
ised'. throughout the enri~~--~uci.tl.:hody... These new techniques are both much m;re
efficient and much less wasteful (less costly economically, less risky in their results,
less open to loopholes an_9. resistances) than the techniques previously employed
which were based ona-m-ixture of more or less force.d_.t,olerances (from recognised
privileges to endemic criminality) and cost!ycQstent~.tiqn (spectacular and discon-
tinuous interventions of power, the most violent form of which was the 'exemplary',
because exceptional, punishment).

Repression is a concept used above all in relation to sexuality. It was held that bourgeois
society represses sexuality, stifles sexual desire, and so forth. And when one considers
for example the campaign launched against masturbation in the eighteenth century, or
tpe medical discourse on homosexuality in the second half of the nineteenth century,
or discourse on sexuality in general, one does seem to be faced with a discourse of
repression ....

Certainly. It is customary to say that bourgeois society repressed infantile sexuality

to the point where it refused even to speak of it or acknowledge its existence. It was
necessary to wait until Freud for the discovery at last to be made that children have a
sexuality. Now if you read all the books on pedagogy and child medicine - all the
manuals for parents that were published in the eighteenth century - you find that
children's sex is spoken of constantly and in every possible context. One might argue
that the purpose of these discourses was precisely to prevent children from having a
sexuality. But their effect was to din it into parents' heads that their children's sex
constituted a fundamental problem in terms of their parental educational responsi~
bilities, and to din it into children's heads that their relationship with their own body
and their own sex was to be a fundamental problem as far as they were concerned;
206 MICHEL FOUCAULT

and this had the consequence of sexually exciting the bodies of children while at the
same time fixing the parental gaze and vigilance on the peril of infantile sexuality.
The result was a sexualising of the infantile body, a sexualising of the bodily
relationship between parent and child, a sexualising of the familial domain. 'Sexu-
ality' is far more of a positive product of power than power was ever repression of
sexuality. I believe that it is precisely these positive mechanisms that need to be
investigated, and here one must free oneself of the juridical schematism of all
previous characterisations of the nature of power. Hence a historical problem arises,
namely that of discovering why the West has insisted for so long on seeing the power
it exercises as juridical and negative rather than as technical and positive.

Perhaps this is because it has always been thought that power is mediated through the
forms prescribed in the great juridical and philosophical theories, and that there is a
fundamental, immutable gulf between those who exercise power and those who under-
go it.

I wonder if this isn't bound up with the institution of monarchy. This developed
during the Middle Ages against the backdrop of the previously endemic struggles
between feudal power agencies. The monarchy presented itself as a referee, a power
capable of putting an end to war, violence and pillage and saying no to these
struggles and private feuds. It made itself acceptable by allocating itself a juridical
and negative function, albeit one whose limits it naturally began at once to overstep.
Sovereign, law and prohibition formed a system of representation of power which
was extended during the subsequent era by the theories of right: political theory has
never ceased to be obsessed with the person of the sovereign. Such theories still
continue today to busy themselves with·the problem of sovereignty. What we need,
however, is a political philosophy that isn't erected around the problem of sover-
eignty, nor therefore around the problems of law and prohibition. We need to cut off
the King's head: in political theory that has still to be done.

The King's head still hasn't been cut off, yet already people are trying to replace it by
discipline, that vast system instituted in the seventeenth century comprising the func-
tions of surveillance, normalisation and control and, a little later, those of punishment,
correction, education and so on. One wonders where this system comes from, why it
emerges and what its use is.. . . ·

To pose the problem in terms of the S.tate means to continue posing it in terms of
sovereign an~ sovereignty, that is to say in terms of law. If...9ne descr!l2~s~­
pb,en.QID.eila..nf_p_o.w,e.r_;i_s .c:le.P<;!.I'l_den.t on,~h~_?tµ,te ~~~\:!.S, this_ m~~D~-~ng the~
as.essentiall~pres~: th~my.as ~-power of death, P<?)ice and jusrii:_e as punit!y~
insta11£es, etc. I doJ!'I\\Tant to ~a~~--S~~~~ !s~'.t iIIIR.QJJ..ant; wh_~tJ_~?-.E.t to say is
that relations .Qf.PQ}y~r, and hence the analysis that must be made of them, necessar-
il~end beyond the liml'i:sOfih.eState.'-rn two sen~~;-; fi~;t ~fall beZ~u~e the' State,
for all ~~nlpote~~~Tits-.a.pparat~s, is fa.rlrom being able to occupy the whole
f~d-~tua! power relations, anQ. fur~.h_~F-~eC:~lJ.~e th~-can«)nfy'operaieonrhe
basis of other, already existing power relations. The -State is--Siiperstructural in
r~awhoFserfos"ofpower nerworksthat invest the body, sexuality, the
 TRUTH AND POWER 207

family, kinship, knowledge, technology and so forth. True, these networks stand in a
conditioning-conditioned relationship to a kind of 'meta-power' which is struc-
tured essentially round a certain number of great prohibition functions; but this
meta-power with its prohibitions can only take hold and secure its footing where it is
rooted in a whole series of !J1Ultip~~iEde_~~~~_power rel_atio..ns_:tha.LSJ!p_ply the,
necessary--l:>as.is--fu.r-the great negative fom_.2f..£9wer. That is just what I was trying
to make apparent in my book. -·--,

Doesn't this open up the possibility of overcoming the dualism of political struggles that
eternally feed on the opposition between the State on the one hand and Revolution on
the other? Doesn't it indicate a wider field of conflicts than that of those where the
adversary is the State?

I would say that the State consists in the codification of a whole number of power
relations which render its functioning possible, and that Revolution is a different
type of codification of the same relations. This implies that there are many different
kinds of revolution, roughly speaking as many kinds as there are possible subversive
recodifications of power relations, and further that one can perfectly well conceive
of revolutions which leave essentially untouched the power relations which form the
basis for the functioning of the State.

You have said about power as an object of research that one has co invert Clausewitz's
formula so as to arrive at the idea that politics is the continuation of war by other
means. Does the military model seem to you on the basis of your most recent researches
to be the best one for describing power; is war here simply a metaphorical model, or is it
the literal, regular, everyday mode of operation of power?

This is the problem I now find myself confronting. As soon as one endeavours
to detach power with its techniques and procedures from the form of law within
which it has been theoretically confined up until now, one is driven to ask this
basic question: isn't power simply a form of warlike domination? Shouldn't one
therefore conceive all problems of power in terms of relations of war? Isn't power a
sort of generalised war which assumes at particular moments the forms of peace
and the State? Peace would then be a form of war, and the State a means of waging
it.
A whole range of problems emerge here. Who wages war against whom? Is it
between two classes, or more? Is it a war of all against all? What is the role of the
army and military institutions in this civil society where permanent war is waged?
What is the relevance of concepts of tactics and strategy for analysing structures and
political processes? What is the essence and mode of transformation of power
relations? All these questions need to be explored. In any case it's astonishing to
see how easily and self-evidently people talk of war-like relations of power or of
class struggle without ever making it clear whether some form of war is meant, and
if so what form.

We have already talked about this disciplinary power whose effects, rules and mode of
constitution you describe in Discipline and Punish. One might ask here, why surveil-
lance? What is the use of surveillance? ... Even if you are only perhaps at the beginning
 208 MICHEL FOUCAULT

of your researches here, could you say how you see the nature of the relationships (if
any) which are engendered between these different bodies: the molar body of the
population and the micro-bodies of individuals?
-~
Your question is exactly on target. I find it difficult to reply because I am working on
this problem right now. I believe one must keep in view the fact that along with all the
fundamental technical inventions and discoveries of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, a new technology of the exercise of power also emerged which was
probably even more important than the constitutional reforms and new forms of
government established at the end of the eighteenth century. In the camp of the Left,
one often hears people saying that power is that which abstracts, which negates the
body, represses, suppresses, and so forth. I would say instead that what I find most
striking about these new technologies of power introduced since the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries is their concrete and precise character, their grasp of a multiple
and differentiated reality. In fuudal. societies power functioned essentially through
signs.a.ru:Llci~. Signs of loyalty to the feudal lords, rituals, ceremonies and so forth,
and levies in the form of taxes, pillage, hunting, war etc. In the seventeenth and
ei~nth ~ntu_Q.es a form of power comes into being that begins to exercise itself
thi:pugh so~ial prod~tion and ~ocial service. It becomes a matter of obtaining
productive service from individuals in their concrete lives. And in consequence, a
real and effective 'incorporation' of power was.necessary, in the sense that power had
to be able-togairi accesstothebodies of individuals, to.their acts, attitudes and modes
of everyday behaviour. Hence the significanceof methods like school discipline~
wfil"ch.su~ceeded in making children's bodies the object of highly complex systems
of manipulation and conditioning. But at the same time, these new techniques of
power needed to grapple with the phenomena of population, in short to undertake the
administration, control and direction of the accumulation of men (the economic
system that promotes the accumulation of capital and the system of power that
ordains the accumulation of men are, from the seventeenth century on, correlated
and inseparable phenomena): hence there arise the problems.of de_i:n_9graphy, f!!,iblic
·.fiealth, hygiene, hol!_SiDKf.9JJfuqns, IOflfil!.Y..it¥-..and-f~lit.y. And I believe that the
- p"OHtical significance of the problem of .sex is due to the fact that S.elC is locate.sl

1 at _th.~_p9int of intersection of_!h~-.fliscip)ip.e oLthe_Jm.Qy__and the-nmtroL..oLth.e

pqrutlati.Qil. ------

Finally, a question you have been asked before: the work you do, these preoccupations
of yours, the results you arrive at, what use can one finally make of all this in everyday
political struggles? ... If one isn't an 'organic' intellectual acting as the spokesman for a
global organisation, if one doesn't purport to function as the bringer, the master of
truth, what position is the intellectual to assume?

The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn't outside power, or lacking in
power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study,
truth isn't the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege
of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world:
it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular
effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth:
 TRUTH AND POWER 209

that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the
mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements,
the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded
value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying
what counts as true.
In societies like ours, the 'political economy' of truth is characterised by five
important traits. 'Truth' is centred on the form of scientific discourse and the insti-
tutions which produce it; it is subject to constant economic and political incitement
(the demand for truth, as much for economic production as for political power}; it is
the object, under diverse forms, of immense diffusion and consumption (circulating
through apparatuses of education and information whose extent is relatively broad
in the social body, not withstanding certain strict limitations); it is produced and
transmitted under the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few-great political and
eco~omic apparatuses (university,__g,r_uiy, w.ri.ting, media); lastly, it is the issue of a
whole political debate and'Social confrontation ('ideological' struggles).
It seems to me that what must now be taken into account in the intellectual is not
the 'bearer of universal values'. Rather, it's the person occupying a specific position -
but whose specificity is linked, in a society like ours, to the general functioning of an
apparatus of truth. In other words, the intellectual has a three-fold specificity: that
of his class position (whether as petty-bourgeois in the service of capitalism or
'organic' intellectual of the proletariat); that of his conditions of life and work,
linked to his condition as an intellectual (his field of research, his place in a
laboratory, the political and economic demands to which he submits or against
which he rebels, in the university, the hospital, etc.); lastly, the specificity of the
politics of truth in our societies. And it's with this last factor that his position can
take on a general significance and that his local, specific struggle can have effects and
implications which are not simply professional or sectoral. The intellectual ca~
c9perate and struggle at the general level of that regime of truth which is so essential
to .r.h~s_tructur.e...and functioning of our society. There is a battle 'for truth', or at least
'around truth' - it being understood once again that by truth I do not mean 'the
ensemble of truths which are to be discovered and accepted', but rather 'the en:J
semble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific
effects of power attached to the true', it being understood also that it's not a matter
of a battle 'on behalf' of the truth, but of a battle about the status of truth and the
economic and political role it plays. It is necessary to think of the political problems
of intellectuals not in terms of ~i~ and 'ideologi., but in terms of 'truth' and
'pp~. And thus the question of the professionalisation of intellectuals and the
di~ision between intellectual and manual labour can be envisaged in a new way.
All this must seem very confused and uncertain. Uncertain indeed, and what I am
saying here is above all to be taken as a hypothesis. In order for it to be a little less
confused, however, I would like to put forward a few 'propositions' - not firm
assertions, but simply suggestions to be further tested and evaluated.
'Truth' is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production,
regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements.
'Truth' is linked in arirc11lar relatio..Q_with..~Y~J.~ms._oLp_ow.e..r which produce and
Sl!,'!tai.n.it. and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of
truth.
210 MICHEL FOUCAULT

This regime is not merely ide.olog.i.Q! or superstructural; it was a condition of the

formation and development of capitalism. And it's this-same regime which, subject
to certain modifications, operates in the socialist countries (I leave open here the
question of China, about which I know little).
Th~-fSS@ru.i.a.l-1"()"lit~_i<:£s.h.~-j_ut.cllectu.al-is-not to criticise the ideological
contents supposedly linked to science, or to ensure that his own scientific practice is
accompanied by a correct ideology, but that of ascer.talning the possibility of
constituting a new politics of truth. The problem is not changing people's ~dous­
nesses-=: or what's in their heads-:..._ but .th.:~ P.?lit_i~!!_l, economic, institu.!!()~_a)E_~_gi~_of
the .12.rQQJ.iction..oLtru.th. ·--- --
It's not\? matter of emancipating truth from every system of power (which would
be a c~~ for truth is already power) but of_cie~ach_Lqg__tlu:_pow.er.--0f._gµthJr..Qm
th_e___forms_of hegemony, social, ecol').QIUic.,and cultura.4 within which it operates at
the present i:iriie; · · ·~ · ···
Th~_.political.ques_~, to sum up, is_Q<_?t err% ill~~~n, alieQ<l!~~ ~<>.D-~s;ious~or
iQ.~ology; it .is.Jrl1th itsejf. Her:ice. th.e importance of.Ni_etzsch,e.