Perspectivas biopolíticas : como a noção de poder em Michel Foucault influenciou outros autores

Abstract

The present study has as its theme the analysis of Michel Foucault's conception of power. It is thanks to Foucault's critical work on power that we can shed light on the links between power, biopolitics and the subject. The interest in this theme is important to analyze the Foucaultian influence on other authors, such as Deleuze, Mbembe and Agamben. It is still important to verify how Foucault's conception of power is consecrated until today, even without the French having defined it. Thus, we are not studying power by itself. It is not an essence, a concept or a universal given beforehand, for which a hidden meaning can be unraveled. Therefore, the study that reports power in Foucault does not open a debate on the concept of power. The question is not what power is, but how power relations take place. In other words, the study of power is mediated by issues such as truth, knowledge, State, governmentality, disciplines, sex, crime, madness, disease, among others. Consequently, it is not because of power that these and other questions are studied, such as the modes of subjectivation, but in relation to problems such as those described above that we undertake the study of power. [resumo fornecido pelo autor]