ABSTRACT
Foucault rejects the idea of power as an object. Power, he says (1980), is not derivative; it does not exist in agencies or structures. Power is in the relationships among people as they try to understand who they are (their identities), and as they construct their identities with others. Individuals do not live in isolation; they are, pathology or coercion aside, social beings whose identities are always negotiated with others. Who people become is a matter of politics. An individual is not ‘given’ in a pre-political sense; people will often try to force others to become the kinds of persons they wish them to be. Power is not an object to be used in the construction of identity; power is identity. We do not encounter power as such; we encounter practices which are discursively and politically enacted. We live in and through these practices, and people become the identities whose identities are being formed. Power, says Dyrberg (1997: 93), is not a game to be played; it is the nature of the game itself.
