microphysics of power

is not a miniaturization of visible or enunciable forms. It is another domain, a new type of relations, a dimension of thought irreducible to knowledge: Mobile and non-localizable relationships.

Deleuze cautions that a micro-physics must not be imagined as a miniaturization of visible or enunciable forms, but as another domain, a new type of relations, a dimension of thought irreducible to knowledge: mobile and non-localizable relationships (Deleuze Foucault xxx). . . .

is not univocal. Rather, they define innumerable points of confrontation, focuses of instability, each of which has its own risks of conflict, of struggles, and of at least temporary inversion of the power relations.

Lastly, they are not univocal... they define innumerable points of confrontation, focuses of instability, each of which has its own risks of conflict, of struggles, and of an at least temporary inversion of the power relations. (foucault 'discipline': 27)

is organized by the state, (which is not the source of power but that which maintains it) via the supposed relationships of governmental power.

the State and the Party cannot be the source or essence of power. . . .'they reproduce the relations of force that sustain them'. . . ..'The State like all other organizations simply organizes the supposed relationships of governmental power and these forces are microphysical' (xxx).

is the level at which apparatuses and institutions operate between great political functionings and the bodies themselves with their materiality and their forces.

The political technologies of the body 'cannot be localized in a particular type of institution or state apparatus. For they have recourse to it... they use, select or impose certain of its methods. But, in its mechanisms and its effects, it is situated at a quite different level. What the apparatuses and institutions operate is, in a sense, a micro-physics of power, whose field of validity is situated in a sense between these great functionings and the bodies themselves with their materiality and their forces (DP 26)' ((Dreyfus and Rabinow 113)

is the meticulous rituals of power by which power operates, and the manner in which power is localized.

He claims to have isolated the mechanism by which power operates: meticulous rituals of power. He claims to have found the manner in which power is localized: the political technology of the body. He also claims to have revealed the dynamics of how power works: a microphysics of power. Foucault is excessively metaphoric on this point... it remains to be seen exactly what a microphysics is and how it operates. Genealogy is still in the process of being formulated' ((Dreyfus and Rabinow 114).

microphysics of power, n.All

microphysics of power