Alles Macht, oder was?

Foucault, Althusser und kritische Gesellschaftstheorie

Abstract

Challenging the current poststructuralist interpretations of Foucault’s analytic of power, the article explores the materialist borrowings Foucault has taken from Althusser. Conflating domination and politics into a single term, the Foucauldian concept of power appears to be equivocal. Starting from this, it is shown how the Althusserian distinction between ideology and violence haunts the concept of discipline, how the critique of the juridical model of power leads Foucault to a positivistic command model of law, and how Foucault eschews to elaborate the collective character of political action. Finally, the article pleads for reconsidering both Foucault’s and Althusser’s approach in terms of the critical-realist debates on structure and agency.