ABSTRACT
Power, for Foucault, should be thought of as originating at the local level and generated by practices and rituals in institutions. Foucault’s histories of various institutions such as the prison, the mental asylum, and the hospital show how what he calls “modern power” differs from the wielding of power in the “classical age.” In the classical age, Foucault explains, power was wielded in specific places where examples were made-spectacles of punishment on the body like public executions. In the modern age, power is everywhere, seamless, networked, and involves everyone, operating through surveillance and connected to life instead of death. In his book Discipline and Punish, for example, Foucault paints a vivid picture of the difference between state punishment in the classical age of monarchy and pre-capitalist economic formations as opposed to the modern form of punishment found after the advent of capitalism and parliamentary democracy.
