While power can be colonized by the state, it should not be seen as belonging to or deriving from the state as the anarchists believed. Power, for Foucault, is not a function of the institution; rather the institution is a function, or an effect, of power. Power flows through institutions, it does not emanate from them. Indeed, the institution is merely an assemblage of various power relations. It is, moreover, an unstable assemblage because power relations themselves are unstable, and can just as easily turn against the institution which ‘controls’ them. Flows of power can sometimes be blocked and congealed, and this is when relations of power become relations of domination. These relations of domination form the basis of institutions such as the state.
Saul Newman, Foucault and the Genealogy of Power, From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power
Saul Newman, Foucault and the Genealogy of Power, From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power
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