Figures of the People in Foucault: The People as a Power Object
Figures of the People in Foucault: The People as a Power Object

Summary/Abstract: The concept of ‘the people’ is accompanied by constant debate on the genesis, structure and real dimensions of its supposed referent. The standard deconstructionoriented critique of ‘the people’ focuses mostly on the constructed character of this fi gure, omitting its status as a ‘reality’. By contrast, this paper offers a symptomatic reading of some texts by Michel Foucault, which starts from his analytical uses of ‘the people’ (and the related ‘plebs’, ‘popular classes’, ‘population’). It thus offers a different perspective, which focuses on the multiplicity, heterogeneity and constant mobility of the reality called ‘the people’, as well as on the inevitable interrelation and confrontation of power relations and resistances that both generate ‘the people’ and keep it in permanent motion and displacement vis-à-vis itself. The implicit ambition of such a reading is to show that this type of analysis could tell us more about the concrete functioning of ‘the people’ than a critique that sees ‘the people’ merely as a fi ction of a defi nite political imaginary.

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