Power and its relationship with the individual in Foucault\u27s political philosophy

Michel Foucault\u27s primary interest was the power, discourse, pleasure, desires, and how these generally make up our individuality, or rather the key ways through which modern society implements power over its subjects who also play an important role in shaping of the perception of ourselves as individuals. He had an unusual opinion about the individual, for he considered that he was the result of the exercising power and resisting it with resistance, demanding that he (the individual) be understood as an elemental nucleus, immovable material upon which power was reinforced. Thus, the individual is also seen as a source of resistance by giving him priority over the community, because at its center it must be him – the coherent individual to give power to the resistence. According to him, the individual is not a given entity previously used by the practitioners of power, on the contrary, it is through his identity and characteristics, that it becomes a product of a relationship of power which is directed to bodies, movements, variability, desires, and forces. According to Foucault, the characteristic form that modern power attains is deprived of the center and is not centered on the state or another unique source from which some secondary and dependent forms would appear. Although it is commonly considered that power, at least in the European society, is located in the hands of the government and is realized through a certain number of institutions such as the administration, police, army and state apparatus, according to Foucault, however, power is also realized through other institutions which at first glance seem to have nothing in common with it and operate in a totally independent way from it. So, unlike the traditional political philosophy that usually defines power as central in the Leviathan, Foucault says it is the most common thing because it is present everywhere: in the family, between two loved ones, in the office, at the workshop, in the one-way streets