ABSTRACT

Resistance stands a key element of Foucault’s conception of power, and his overall oeuvre. Yet, despite its prominence, it remains largely under-theorised. In this chapter I explore what Foucault may have meant by resistance through an exploration of three key related ideas: discourse, critique and his notion of dispositif developed in his later work to name the apparatuses of power at work within modern forces of government, or governmentality. Following the theoretical exegesis of resistance, this chapter turns to explore how transparency has been, and could be, resisted. I examine the idea of the right to be forgotten as a possible legal avenue of resistance, as well as the work of Clare Birchall on secrecy and opacity as a means through which the symbolic terms of the transparency discourse could be changed.