A Concept of Power

On the pragmatic interpretation of Foucault’s work on power put forward in this book, the term ‘power’ was used by him to express a system of different yet coherently linked concepts. The system’s core component lies in the notion of power as intentional influence over the actions and behavior of others. This notion forms the subject matter of this second chapter, which explores its basic contours with a focus on the following aspects: the distinction between intentional and nonintentional influence; the two dimensions of power, namely, its possession and exercise, along with the related notion of the ‘mobilization’ of power; power relations and their components (powerholder and targeted subject, goal and means, mode and range, and the factors of power); the relationality, multiformity, and contingency of power; and the graduality of power.