DISCOURSE AND POWER IN FOUCAULT'S CONCEPT: POINTS OF INTERSECTION

Abstract

Modern man, even when he considers himself free, is confronted, when trying to exercise this freedom, with the necessity to realise himself as a radically unfree socially determined being. According to M. Foucault, power is not reducible to state power alone, he believes that power relations exist and go through many other things. And they exist in all the aspects of social discourse, which means that he does not regard power as a set of institutions and apparatuses, which will guarantee subordination of citizens in any kind of state. Rather, the author views power as a universal system of domination, which is exercised by one element or group of elements over another, and the results of this action go through a series of successive branches and permeate the entire social body. Accordingly, power is to be understood more as a plurality of power relations that are in the realm where constitution for organisation is also exercised, and these are complex strategic situations in society [1].