Power

Definition

Power, in Foucault's analytics (which is this wiki's primary reference for the concept), is not a substance possessed by a sovereign but a relation exercised through techniques, strategies, and spatial arrangements. "The concept dual of Foucault of 'power/knowledge' showed that at least for the study of human beings, the goals of power and the goals of knowledge cannot be separated" (Fontana-Giusti). Power is productive, not merely repressive: it produces subjects, behaviors, spatial orders, and forms of knowledge. For architecture, power is exercised through the "distribution of people in space, a canalization of their circulation, as well as the codification of their reciprocal relations" (Foucault, cited by Fontana-Giusti). Foucault's three spatial modes — spatial metaphors, space as model of thought's spatiality, and architecture as extension of discourses and practices — map the ways power operates through the built environment without being reducible to it.

Key Thinkers

• Michel Foucault — power/knowledge; power as productive and relational, not sovereign.
• Gordana Fontana-Giusti — power and space in Foucault's three spatial modes.

Related Concepts

• Discipline — the modality of power targeting individual bodies.
• Biopower — the modality of power targeting populations.
• Governmentality — the integrated art of governing.
• Panopticon — the architectural model of power as automatic, continuous visibility.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Foucault for Architects — power/knowledge and architecture.