Michel Foucault, in his book Discipline and Punish, writes: "The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself." [1] This seemingly paradoxical statement raises two issues that are at the core of Foucault's genealogical inquiries. First, how are people subject to control that is "more profound" than themselves? To answer this question, Foucault develops a notion of power and knowledge that combine to imprint the very body of the subject, such as the disciplinary techniques of Bentham's panopticon and its ideal product: the docile body of the prisoner. The second issue is the possibility of freedom. With Foucault's omnipresent notion of power/knowledge, how can there be possibilities for freedom from that power? In other words, how can we resist a power that is "more profound" than ourselves? These are questions that I believe Foucault sought to answer through his genealogical methodology. In this paper I first defend the coherence of Foucault's controversial analysis of power, and in the second part I argue that his genealogical approach successfully provides for possibilities for freedom. These issues are considered alongside Charles Taylor's criticism of Foucault in order to highlight the problems and benefits posed by Foucault's understanding of a subjection that is  "more profound" than one's self.

 

POWER

 

Foucault's concept of power is no straight-forward notion. His genealogies tell us that power can operate without an agent, that it can operate according to a strategy, that it essentially changes between historical periods, and that it is everywhere. Power cannot be reduced to a single operation, or even a generally applicable theory. Still, power remains the object of Foucault's theoretical inquiries. [2] This section will defend the coherence of Foucault's analysis of power in light of some prominent criticisms.

1.

In many ways, Foucault's notion of power does not conform with the term's colloquial usage. Foucault's power is not essentially repression. Indeed, power is not essentially anything. Foucault's description of power turns away from the notion of power as an ahistorical force that operates with the same effect in different contexts. Following Nietzsche, Foucault insists that things do not have "a timeless and essential secret but the secret that they have no essence, or that their essence was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms." [3] As a result, the analysis of power is not a question of examining each historical form of power in hopes of better understanding the nature of power. Instead, Foucault argues that power has no nature. Power is ever-changing and assuming new forms, as every new arrangement of knowledge brings with it a new power formation. Thus, Foucault describes kinds of power rather than power itself.

However, if power has no essence, then what is it that Foucault places at the center of his genealogies? His works suggest this backdrop of power must be filled in by a more general theory of forces: "power is neither given, nor exchanged, nor recovered, but rather exercised, and that it only exists in action . . .  power is not primarily the maintenance and reproduction of economic relations, but is above all a relation of force." [4] That is, power cannot be found in the conditions themselves (such as class inequality) but exists in the way those conditions are exercised (such as the knowledge requisite for class differentiation in the first place). Thus, power should not be said to exist in the sovereign, but rather, in between the sovereign and the subject. Without a relation of forces, power does not exist. Without a subject, a sovereign has no power. In this sense, power is simply nominal for Foucault. His genealogy describes the various interactions of forces, whether they are characterized as knowledge or power. Through these interactions, forces change each other and evolve. In describing power, Foucault seeks to describe the character of these interactions of forces in a general way, as in his characterization of modern power as disciplinary. Given this understanding, Foucault can describe the transition from one type (sovereign, representational) of power to a different type (disciplinary, microphysical) of power, as he does in Discipline and Punish.

While Foucault insists that power has no essence in itself, he does tentatively characterize the form of the interactions between forces. Here again, Foucault can be seen as building on a Nietzschean theory. Gilles Deleuze characterizes Nietzsche's underlying theory of force relations as relying on hierarchy, differentiating "between dominant and dominated forces." [5] Thus, forces are defined in terms of dominance, something Deleuze attributes to the will to power. Foucault, like Nietzsche, does little to develop a theory of forces in his major works. However, he consistently characterizes forces in terms of warfare, as he inverts Clausewitz's formula, arguing in Discipline and Punish for a picture of politics as a perpetual war. [6] Forces are constantly organized and reorganized as they battle amongst themselves: "the alterations in the relations of force, the favouring of certain tendencies, the reinforcements . . . none of these phenomena in a political system should be interpreted except as a continuation of war." [7] Thus, while power may have no essence, Foucault's methodology posits the different forms of power relations as developing through war-like interaction of forces.  Even if Foucault has no answer for what power is, the metaphor of battle provides the backdrop for how power operates. 

2.

The genealogy of the prison in Discipline and Punish traces the transition from sovereign to disciplinary power. This transition, which Foucault suggests occurred during the eighteenth century, involved a redistribution of power, or a new organization of social forces. Sovereign power relied upon representation of force as a symbol of sovereign authority. Any transgression of the law was taken as an assault on the sovereign itself. As a result, the sovereign established its authority through what Foucault describes as a "ritual" of punishment. The demonstration of the king's power on the body of the tortured criminal in order to force a confession was a means of display. Although it acted directly on the prisoner, this "spectacle of the scaffold" was primarily aimed at the crowd as a sort of reminder of the presence of sovereign power. In this way, the sovereign acted on the social body. However, sovereign power faced limitations. Expressed through periodic representations, the king's power was "a spectacular, unlimited, personal, irregular and discontinuous power." [8] This power left the social body untouched for most of the time, relying on spectacular, but periodic, reminders of its power. Thus, "the subjects" were "free to practice a constant illegality." [9] Illegality, or the spaces where sovereign power could not constantly reach, provided the space necessary for the eighteenth century reform of sovereign power towards disciplinary power.

Foucault shows this radical shift in power relations to occur quickly, during a single generation. And given Foucault's conception of power as force relations, the relatively sudden shift in power may be even more dramatic than it initially seems. The change from sovereign to disciplinary power is not simply a change in the application of a thing called power. Rather, it is an entirely different arrangement of power, with its own unique arrangement of force relations. Disciplinary power did not only emerge in the prison, but also in "factories, schools, barracks, [and] hospitals." [10] Recalling his earlier "archaeological" work, Foucault describes reform as a change in the very logic of an age:

The true objective of the reform movement, even in its most general formulations, was not so much to establish a new right to punish based on more equitable principles, as to set up a new 'economy' of the power to punish, to assure its better distribution, so that it should be distributed in homogenous circuits capable of operating everywhere, in a continuous way, down to the finest grain of the social body [11] .

Importantly, this is a change not only at the level of the state, but one that permeates to the most insignificant portions of the social body.

Discipline implies, for Foucault, a new strategy of power, based on expanding the reach of power to the body itself. He traces the emergence of studies to direct the operation of the individual body, such as the emergence of tactics on the battlefield. The ideal movements of a soldier were studied and developed, and then precisely applied to the body of the soldier. The result of this invasive strategy of discipline was to create bodies invested in specific ways by power: bodies that knew themselves as soldiers, for example. For Foucault, power imprints itself on the very body of the subject. Microphysical techniques, such as repetition, correction and surveillance created bodies that conformed to the dictates of power; bodies that were "normalized." Disciplinary power, for Foucault, does not restrict. Instead it invests. It constitutes a body with knowledge about itself and conditions that body to discipline itself. This is the sense in which Foucault makes the disconcerting claim that man faces "subjection more profound than himself." [12] The body is seen as completely malleable by the forces of power. Through this lens, no body is unshaped by power. Foucault's claim is that humans are constituted by power. Power operates through its object, rather than over its object. Or, put another way, power is exercised on ourselves through our knowledge of ourselves.

The disciplinary power described by Foucault cannot be described without reference to the operation of knowledge in the power apparatus. Foucault writes that "power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations." [13] He thereby asserts that the constant struggle between forces takes place not only in terms of materiality and the body, but also in the realm of ideas and knowledge. This understanding is clearly operative in what Foucault terms the "soul." Prison reform targeted the soul, or the individual's knowledge of himself. Through this mechanism the prison could coerce the prisoner to understand himself as a prisoner, and thus expose him to the expanding corpus of knowledge circulating about prisoners. The soul might otherwise be characterized as self-knowledge. It is on this understanding of the self that the operations of power work through knowledge.

Thus, we have a picture of a type of power that controls even the most minute aspects of the individual in a consistent manner. Foucault shows power to function not only in terms of repression, but in ways not apparent to those seeking sovereign power. Disciplinary power does not reveal itself primarily through conflict and repression. Rather, disciplinary power is apparent in the training of the individual subject, as power works to invest and create a disciplined subject. Through this analysis, it is apparent that Foucault's understanding of power necessitates a new methodology; one that locates power's influence as prior to the self-aware agency of the individual. In his understanding of disciplinary power Foucault's theory faces criticism as to the coherence and usefulness of his notion that places power beyond human agency. The intelligibility of Foucault's analysis of power in  light of this criticism will be addressed in the next section.

3.

Foucault consistently situates power in terms of a battle between forces that can be understood in terms of strategy and motivation. Written in these terms, power for Foucault seems lively and animated, and is described as being able to calculate strategy: "Power, after investing itself in the body, finds itself exposed to a counter-attack in that same body . . . But the impression that power weakens and vacillates here is in fact mistaken; power can retreat here, re-organise its forces, invest itself elsewhere . . . and so the battle continues." [14] The motivation that Foucault attributes to power remains detached from any specific agent responsible for the strategic operation of power. Because he sees power as consisting in relations, dissociated from particular actors, power seems to lie beyond the grasp of human agency, which is always already a component of power relations. It might seem that Foucault's power is almost too bad to be true; a controlling force with no explanation.

This is an aspect of Foucault's power that Charles Taylor finds incoherent. For Taylor, Foucault's theory collapses without a means of explaining the connection between human motive and the way power strategically manipulates humans:

Purposefulness without a purpose requires a certain kind of explanation to be intelligible. The undesigned systematicity has to be related to the purposeful action of agents in a way that we can understand . . . The reason for this requirement is that the text of history, which we are trying to explain, is made up of purposeful human action. [15]

Taylor views Foucault's theory of power as essentially unrelated to the motives of human beings. For example, eighteenth century reformers thought of themselves as freeing prisoners from arbitrary punishment, whereas Foucault shows them as spinning an even tighter web of control through disciplinary techniques. These techniques are seen in terms of a strategy. But it is a strategy unrelated to the "purposeful human action" of those working in disciplining institutions. Without connecting the consciousness of the human action with the strategic effect of the action, Foucault's account fails to be intelligible for Taylor. In subordinating purposeful human action to the more profound working of power relations, Taylor sees Foucault as analyzing structures of human interaction to the absolute exclusion of human agency. If the human motive lacks a connection with the actual workings of power, then human action cannot effectively change power, to which we are inevitably subjected. The structure is dominant and action is useless. Only through a connection between the workings of power and human consciousness can we have access to or change that system of power. While this is not the only criticism lodged by Taylor against Foucault, it cuts to a central issue regarding power's intelligibility: is there a need for an explanatory principle for power?

The intelligibility of Foucault's work on power hinges on the way one views the subject of power. Taylor's criticism of Foucault relies on a conception of freedom that is "tied to a concept of the subject as a given, determinate structure of interests, goals, or desires". [16] A key component of freedom for Taylor, therefore, is the ability to exercise control over one's life in order to better satisfy the given "structure of interests" consisting in the subject. Obviously, Foucault's concept of power can offer no possibility for freedom given this understanding of the subject. Foucault's theory of power as absolutely constituting the subject, even in the subject's own understanding of itself places power as primary to the agency of the individual. This notion abandons Taylor's notion of freedom, and in doing so, proposes another understanding of freedom: in subordinating human agency to power, Foucault is concerned with the freedom to change the nature of the subject which Taylor takes to be a given. That is, Foucault sees the given structure of the subject as an impediment to freedom. For Foucault, freedom does not lie in satisfying the given desires of the subject; rather, freedom comes through altering the very structure of the subject.

Foucault subordinates analysis of the subject to an analysis of forces that compose the subject. If power is understood in terms of a strategy, it is not the strategy of one entity, whether that entity be the president or the economic system. Instead, the strategy of power has to be understood in terms of the relational forces of power. The way that Foucault continually describes the action of those force relations is in terms of battle. Forces can ally with each other and, therefore, enhance each other, or they can oppose each other and, therefore, struggle against each other. For Foucault there are always at least two sides to the power relationship:

There are no relations of power without resistances; the latter are all the more real and effective because they are formed right at the point where relations of power are exercised; resistance to power does not have to come from elsewhere to be real, nor is it inexorably frustrated through being the compatriot of power. It exists all the more by being in the same place as power. [17]

The important point is that power does not take on the character of a univocal force that inevitably subsumes human action for its own purposes, as Taylor seems to fear. Instead, power gains its shape from those force relations. So, although we cannot escape power as a whole, power provides its own immanent form of resistance. The subject cannot step outside of power to make free choices, but Foucault argues that power itself provides the perspective of its own resistance.

The strategies of power also must be understood in terms of a multiplicity rather than a unity. The description of force relations above was, in a sense, too simple. For Foucault, it is never a question of two simple forces: the dominating and the dominated. Rather, every force relation is a multiplicity of converging forces, and not a single, unified body of force. This understanding follows from Foucault's refusal to attribute an essence to power. Power cannot be contained or defined in a single unity, but remains diffuse and constantly shifting: "[power] is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another." [18] Thus, Foucault's analysis of power can operate at the most minute levels, such as in between the very bodies of prisoners. Here, Foucault's theoretical distance from Taylor is most visible. Rather than a stable entity, Foucault proposes the subject (i.e. the prisoner) to be the coordination of an ever-changing multiplicity of various forces. For Foucault, this perspective reveals aspects of power that remains hidden given Taylor's understanding of the subject.

Foucault's theory of forces can be thought of as operating on different, yet interrelating, levels. He describes power as operating "at every point" and at the lowest level, but he also describes the power of the state operating throughout society. These differing levels must be related as forces, but they need not be strictly related. How is it, then, that force relations concatenate to form larger force relations? It is clear that Foucault cannot mean that forces are organized according to a general form of power, with the more powerful forces determining lesser forces. This would focus power in an entity, a center point from which power emanates. Foucault's opposing view is that "[p]ower comes from below." [19] That is, Foucault sees power as beginning at the very lowest levels of force. Only when the minute tactics of power "become connected," can larger forces develop. These larger forces are composed of smaller levels of force that combine in a coherent way. Thus, the subject of power comes to exist through the interconnection of seemingly insignificant, "micropolitical", forces. The question of power, then, is the question of how these forces combine to compose the subject of power; a type of analysis unavailable to the static subject proposed by Taylor.

The combination of forces is, in one sense, the question Foucault seeks to answer in each of his genealogies. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault describes the development of disciplinary power as a multiplicity of disciplinary techniques with distinct histories that came into general use according to a characteristic disciplinary logic. These techniques did not just arise, but were put into place by reformers who saw themselves as improving the system of punishment in France. What is it that signifies these disciplinary techniques? Why did they arise in the eighteenth century and not another set of practices? It is not that these techniques were initially or essentially linked in any way. On the contrary:

Taken one by one, most of these techniques have a long history behind them. But what was new, in the eighteenth century, was that, by being combined and generalized, they attained a level at which the formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process. [20]

Each disciplinary technique arose independently, presumably for a specific purpose of the reformers. However, through practice, these techniques "combined and generalized" to form a larger structure of power composed of specific techniques working according to a similar logic. Diffuse and specific techniques (such as the tactics of the individual soldier) become incorporated into a larger system (such as the tactics of the battlefield as a whole). Thereby, lesser forces combined into a coherent, larger force.

However, Foucault avoids saying that larger forces (capitalism, e.g.) determine the development of other forces. Instead, the larger capitalist forces are seen to be consistent with and to correspond to lesser forces. In other words, the lower levels of force operate through a similar, or coherent logic to compose a larger force. However, this does not necessitate a rational relationship between different levels of force. That is, the techniques of power do not necessarily contribute to economic production:

There was no really 'rational' economic reason to force prisoners to work in prisons. Economically, it served no purpose and yet it was done. There is a whole series of similar ways of exercising power that, while having no economic justification, were nevertheless transposed into the judicial institution. [21]

Although forcing prisoners to work served no direct economic purpose it was an operation that fit in with the direction of the economy. The practice persisted because it did not contradict the forces of economic production. Through his "bottom-up" analysis of power, Foucault shows that micropolitical change constantly occurs as forces "battle" one another. Larger forces serve as a means of selection, not determination of smaller forces. Thus, Foucault provides an account of how multiple forces unintentionally combine to form intelligible systems of force. He makes it an important point that power be dissociated from any particular agent; that it remains diffuse. Power constitutes the subject, and not vice versa.

The above analysis does not seek to show how Foucault's theory meets Taylor's explanatory requirement: that power be analyzed in connection with human agency. Instead, Foucault shows this requirement to be unnecessary. He argues for a more productive view of the subject that takes into account its constitution as an object of power. In this connection Foucault does seem to meet Taylor's explanatory requirement, only in the reverse direction. Instead of drawing the connection from human action to the strategies of power, Foucault traces the ways in which the strategies of power create human action. Power is productive of the subject in many ways that remain invisible to Taylor's mode of analysis.

Foucault is not satisfied with an account of power that ultimately springs from human consciousness. In fact, he sees this image of power as a masking function for the actual operation of power:

Power in the West is what displays itself the most, and thus what hides itself the best: what we have called "political life" since the 19^th century is the manner in which power presents its image. Power is neither there, nor is that how it functions. The relations of power are perhaps the best-hidden things in the social body. [22]

Power operates outside of the subject, and it operates on the subject. These are the aspects of power that Foucault argues remain hidden from analysis concerned with human consciousness as the central "text of history." The subjectification of individuals by power is a sort of counter-demonstration. It does show an intelligible connection between human consciousness and the force relations of power. However, it does not base this connection in human consciousness. Foucault sees the explanatory requirement of Taylor as a requirement to do history in a certain, subject-centered way. It is Foucault's explicit methodological point to reverse the direction of the connection between power and agency. For Foucault, such a reversal is the only possibility for understanding the ways in which power constitutes humans in ways that they cannot themselves understand. Any loss in explanatory coherence or intelligibility is offset, for Foucault, by the expanded explanatory capacity of his theoretical works on power.

The last defense of the intelligibility of Foucault's conception of power and strategy is the claim that power need not always operate with a strategy. Instead, Foucault suggests in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 that the strategical model of power is only appropriate to the specific type of force relations that developed in Western society. Instead of claiming that perpetual warfare is the essential force relation underlying all power, Foucault describes strategical power as the most appropriate mode of analysis for this specific concatenation of power relations.

The strategical model, rather that the model based on law. And this, not out of a speculative choice or theoretical preference, but because in fact it is one of the essential traits of Western societies that the force relationships which for a long time had found expression in war, in every form of warfare, gradually became invested in the order of political power. [23]

Foucault can use this concept of power as a tool in specific contexts where it seems to describe the operation of power, such as in prisons and in sex. However, he abandons strategical power as inapplicable when he turns his study to the ancient Greeks.

 

GENEALOGY AND FREEDOM

 

Foucault's work on power and freedom gives rise to criticism that his theory remains useless without providing for a standpoint from which to criticize power. For Taylor and others, to say that power is inevitable is to say that freedom is unattainable. Critics contend that no effective criticism can occur if there is no reason to prefer one form of power over another. From this reading Taylor concludes that Foucault's genealogies are simply a kind of articulation for articulation's sake: "The neo-Nietzschean type of theory sees no value in this articulation other than the polemical one . . . It sees no value in this articulation itself." [24] The articulation of power is itself subject to power, leading Taylor to conclude that Foucault's articulation of power is a somewhat hopeless task, given the inevitability of power.

This section will argue that Foucault's articulation of the workings of power through his genealogical method is not valueless. Rather, the form of the genealogy provides a historical standpoint from which to oppose all formations of power. Furthermore, I will argue that the articulation of power through a genealogy alone can transform power relations through changing knowledge relations. Through a genealogy, Foucault provides a mode of inquiry appropriate to its object: disciplinary power. In doing so, Foucault provides access to a type of freedom appropriate to his view of the subject of power. That is, the freedom to alter the very structure of interests and desires composing the subject; to alter the way power affects us. Foucault seeks freedom through power, thereby abandoning Taylor's conception of freeing the subject from power. This section will argue for the efficacy of Foucault's articulation of power in resisting and transforming power relations.

1.

Foucault describes the task of genealogy in his essay Nietzsche, Genealogy, History as recording "the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality." [25] He attempts to describe the forces that combine or operate to form events. Importantly, however, Foucault does not attempt to situate those events according to the meaning of the age, or in relation to the present understanding of that event. Once again, Foucault insists on the meaninglessness of events. The context through which an event is viewed provides the meaning that the event takes on. For example, the meaning of punishment has shifted dramatically throughout history. Context constantly shifts, so the meaning of events must be equally contingent. Thus, Foucault avoids situating events in terms of finality. The finality of meaning can never be achieved because no essential meaning exists. This methodological point begets another: if meaning continually shifts, all that is possible is interpretation. Interpretation cannot arrive at the final meaning of an event. It can only arrive at another interpretation: "If interpretation is a never-ending task, it is simply because there is nothing to interpret. There is nothing absolutely primary to interpret because, when all is said and done, underneath it all everything is already interpretation." [26] Consequently, genealogy works on the level of interpretation.

Genealogy, then, is aimed at tracing the development of interpretations of an event, or any other discursive object. Instead of searching for the "origin" of a practice, such as punishment, genealogy seeks to show that there is, in fact, no origin. The origin was never meaningful; it was not in any way a purposeful construction. A genealogy is detached from the purposes of humanity. In fact, Foucault argues that the purposes of humanity are not responsible for any event: "no one is responsible for an emergence; no one can glory in it, since it always occurs in the interstice." [27] Foucault takes the subject out of history. History is attributable to nobody. This is a sharp reversal of Taylor's argument that "the text of history is made up of purposeful human action". Foucault sees genealogy as an opportunity to alter the text of history, and thereby change the context and possibilities for purposeful human action.

Instead of the search for origins and beginnings, Foucault's genealogy traces the emergence of multiple forces and various meanings that combine to form presumed singularities. The approach used by Foucault in order to disentangle the meaning surrounding a concept is that of "ascending analysis." Rather than try to understand the specific operations of force in terms of general forces, Foucault begins with the smallest forces that concatenate to form general systems of power. An analysis of prisons that began with the system of economic control would be too simple. It would be obvious that prisoners were put to work in prisons because it served industrial production. What this "descending analysis" disregards, however, is the utter uselessness of prison labor for the overall system of production. Thus, it misses the more important reason for prison work: the logic of discipline. Foucault writes, "One must conduct an ascending analysis of power, starting, that is, from its infinitesimal mechanisms . . . and then see how these mechanisms of power have been invested . . . by more general forces." [28] The untangling can only occur from the bottom up. To start with the dominating forces is to obscure the interconnections between smaller forces that combine and interrelate to form larger forces.

In revealing the historical forces that give meaning to a practice, genealogy changes our understanding of that practice. Genealogy provides a historical perspective that serves as a standpoint from which to evaluate power. By explaining the historical circumstances of an accepted understanding, genealogy can provide a more adequate interpretation of a practice's meaning. This is the type of "profound visibility" that Foucault commentators Dreyfus and Rabinow attribute to genealogy. [29] Although no interpretation provides insight into the real meaning of a practice, genealogy may allow better insight into more of the meaning that has been attributed to a practice.

Foucault's genealogies supplant previous interpretations by appealing to a historical perspective that provides visibility of the emergence of a practice. In this sense, his description gains hermeneutical superiority by providing a better, or more adequate, explanation of punishment. But, Foucault does not claim a generally superior visibility of all punishment. Instead, the Foucauldian genealogy is specific. As Dreyfus and Rabinow point out, Foucault's method does not seek some sort of "hidden meaning" or "final truth" to supplant the others. [30] Foucault's method is better explained as "pragmatic." [31] It is aimed at a specific type of domination (the prison, or sex) and the genealogy results from the author's own experience with regard to a present problem. [32] Importantly, Foucault writes a localized history: the history of the prison in France. He describes his study as "adequate to a restricted period, that of the last ten, fifteen, at most twenty years." [33] Thus, Foucault's analysis need not hermeneutically supplant previous interpretations of punishment or prisons. For Foucault, the understanding of prisons in any other context would require a different kind of genealogy. Or maybe it would require a different theoretical mechanism altogether.

2.

Foucault's specific type of pragmatism allows a standpoint from which to resist power, despite the inevitability of power relations. In Foucault's words, "to say that one can never be 'outside' power does not mean that one is trapped and condemned to defeat no matter what." [34] In terms of the overall operation of power, it may be impossible to escape. However, in the specific struggles between forces, it is possible to resist domination.

For Foucault, power is total, and can be found wherever forces interact. But this power is not solely a repressive force. It works between and through forces. So, although power can be found everywhere, it is necessarily accompanied by possibilities for resistance. Power must work on something. Foucault's genealogies seek to unearth the past resistance to power; those forces that formations power initially became dominant over. He calls this practice "an insurrection of subjugated knowledges . . . the historical contents that have been buried and disguised." [35] These knowledges serve as the starting point of resistance. Subjugated knowledge already provides a standpoint from which to criticize dominant power formations. Such knowledge is not free from power in toto; but it is free from, and serves to illuminate, the formations of power that served to subjugate them.

Genealogy is the mechanism through which Foucault seeks to revive these "subjugated knowledges". The mode of description of dominant systems of knowledge (through his ascending analysis and the insistence that everything is meaningless) gives no preference to the dominant system of knowledge. Foucault aims at reviving both sides of the conflict of force, and therefore provide a point of criticism against the dominant knowledge system. He describes his project in these terms: "what I wanted to write was a history book that would make the present situation comprehensible and, possibly, lead to action . . . I wanted to make it intelligible and, therefore, criticizable." [36] This implies Foucault's belief that power, most often, is not intelligible. Because we are the subjects, and products, of power relations, their workings are obscured. Power is hidden and its terms are not accessible. Through genealogy, Foucault attempts to make those terms visible and to expose them to criticism and resistance.

The historical aspect of genealogy also provides another mechanism for critique: it exposes the emergence of systems of power. Whereas power presents itself as a necessary relation and serves to occlude its own history, an account of the disparate forces that combined to form power creates a space of instant critique: "historical beginnings are lowly: not in the sense of modest and discreet, like the steps of a dove, but derisive and ironic, capable of undoing every infatuation." [37] The grand pretension of power relations is mocked through an investigation of beginnings. Against power's claim to necessity a successful genealogy can uncover the arbitrary and random circumstances that combined to form power. And against the claims of power to truth, genealogy can offer an opposing truth. Through this operation, power ceases to be self-evident and possibilities for change emerge for consideration.

These are ways that genealogy provides a sort of preparatory analysis for criticism, or action, against formations of power. However, Foucault also sees genealogy as performing a more immediate function against power. For Foucault, power operates on the level of truth. For example, the truth that delinquents are a threat and prisons serve to reform them. This is a truth that is directly challenged by a successful genealogy. A genealogy can perform a sort of reversal, challenging the necessity of a system of truths by offering an interpretation that undercuts those truths. Genealogy changes the operation of power by challenging the self-evidence of certain truths in the minds of those whom power invests. Foucault writes,

Practising criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult. In these circumstances, criticism (and radical criticism) is absolutely indispensable for any transformation. A transformation that remains within the same mode of thought, a transformation that is only a way of adjusting the
same thought more closely to the reality of things can merely be a superficial transformation. [38]

By changing the "mode of thought" regarding prisons, for example, Foucault sees a kind of transformation occurring. Certain truths about the efficacy of prison reform, and the prison system in general, are supplanted through the genealogy offered by Foucault. As the genealogy enters the field of knowledge, it changes the truth surrounding the prison. Foucault's critique makes the practices of the prison newly questionable, when they were once self-evident. In a sense, power exposed through genealogy loses its cloak, and, with it, its unquestioned dominance. Even if the dominant system remains in place, it is profoundly altered. Genealogy directly changes the arrangement of knowledge, and concurrently alters the arrangement of power.

As such, the transformation achieved through genealogy is more profound than a simple means of criticizing prisons. The work performed by genealogy can change the terms in which power relations exist. Jon Simons explains: "Specific genealogical analyses show how contingently certain rational discourse became true by presenting historical versions of the systems of exclusion that determine what is true and false." [39] To answer in the terms of power does not challenge the operation of power. The work of a genealogy is to change the terms of the question. In short, genealogy makes it possible to no longer think in the terms offered by power. Instead, through historical analyses, genealogy can unearth alternative interpretations and formations of power that ask entirely different questions. For Foucault, to answer in the terms of power can result only in the "superficial transformation" described above. In contrast, if genealogy is able to alter the way one thinks, change is inevitable: "as soon as one can no longer think things as one formerly thought them, transformation becomes both very urgent, very difficult and quite possible." [40] Genealogy accesses the mechanisms of practical reasoning for humans by operating on the level of truth. Genealogy supplants power, makes it contingent, and provides the possibility of new directions of inquiry.

This challenge from genealogy can result in entire reversals of power relations. The mechanisms of power are meaningless in themselves, and it is only in the context of power, and its attendant truths, that they gain their significance. However, if one is able to change the terms of power through critique, the operation of the mechanisms of power, or its "rules" can be simultaneously reversed. For Foucault, the "rules" of power can also be the means of resistance:

Rules are empty in themselves, violent and unfinalized; they are made to serve this or that, and can be bent to any purpose. The successes of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these rules, to replace those who had used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them." [41]

This is the hope for genealogy. Through interpretation, and historical inquiry, the forces of power can be turned against itself, and the "rules" of a system can be bent to serve different purposes. For example, Foucault describes in Discipline and Punish how the very terms of sovereign power were turned against itself, fueling waves of reform. [42] Suddenly, and through the complicated intersection of forces that Foucault attempts to trace, sovereign power could be seen as "inefficient." The space for reform opens, and through reform another arrangement of power forces emerges: disciplinary power.  Importantly, it was only through this operation of reversal that public execution becomes intolerable, dissolving the system of sovereign power.

However, critique through genealogy cannot be a one-time operation. Every formation of power suggests a type of domination. Thus, while specific criticisms can be effective locally, they cannot defeat power generally. New power formations can quickly take shape and solidify into forms of concrete domination, as in the case of the emergence of disciplinary power. The risk of a "re-codification" or "re-colonisation" by power always looms. [43] In response to this possibility of cooptation, Foucault suggests a form of constant and vigilant critique. With their eyes always on power, looking for hints of domination and seeking out the excluded discourses, Foucauldian intellectuals can "throw out a challenge: 'Just try to colonize us then!" [44] The goal is to constantly break up systems of domination, not allowing them to solidify or operate effectively. This sense of continual critique and openness about power relations might get us as close as we can to Foucault's use of genealogy for freedom.

Foucault's genealogical work eyes a more profound type of freedom than Charles Taylor. Taylor presumes the existence of a subject with a sense of identity and the ability to discern authentic and inauthentic desires. For Taylor, the identity and desires of the subject are understood as a given, determinate structure, so Taylor understands freedom as the ability to exercise control over one's life by fulfilling the given desires of the subject. Foucault proposes a very different kind of control over one's life. Foucault sees freedom in the ability to alter the very terms of one's life; to change the nature of desires. He attempts to change the way we understand punishment in order to change the role punishment serves in our lives. That is, Foucault seeks to alter the structure of values that Taylor seeks to protect. In this sense, Foucault's analysis of freedom occurs on a different level. His genealogy provides access to the formation of the subject through power. Taylor is correct that Foucault's analysis cannot escape power. However, in his task to transform and expose formations of power, Foucault's genealogical methodology proves an important tool for achieving freedom through history.