Il me semble que la tache politique actuelle dans une société comme la notre c’est de critiquer le jeu des institutions apparemment les plus neutres et les plus indépendantes, de les critiquer et les attaquer de telle manière que la violence politique qui s’exerçait obscurément en elles (les institutions) surgissent et qu’on puisse lutter contre elles.
Debate with Noam Chomsky, École Supérieure de Technologie à Eindhoven, November 1971
“I believe that political power also exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions that seem to have nothing in common with political power, that have the appearance of being independent, but are not.”
Je crois que le pouvoir politique s’exerce encore, s’exerce en outre, de plus, par l’intermédiaire d’un certain nombre d’institutions qui ont l’air comme ça de n’avoir rien de commun avec le pouvoir politique, qui ont l’air d’en être indépendantes et qui ne le sont pas.
Debate with Noam Chomsky, École Supérieure de Technologie à Eindhoven, November 1971
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Michel Foucault 128
French philosopher 1926–1984Related quotes
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Source: Politics Among Nations (1948), p. 29 (1978 edition).
Context: The struggle for power is universal in time and space and is an undeniable fact of experience. It cannot be denied that throughout historic time, regardless of social, economic and political conditions, states have met each other in contests for power. Even though anthropologists have shown that certain primitive peoples seem to be free from the desire for power, nobody has yet shown how their state of mind can be re-created on a worldwide scale so as to eliminate the struggle for power from the international scene. … International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim.
“To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.”
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Source: Politics Among Nations (1948), p. 27 (1954 edition).
Context: We must distinguish between military and political power.
Political power is a psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised. It gives the former control over certain actions of the latter through the influence which the former exert over the latter's minds. That influence may be exerted through orders, threats, persuasion, or a combination of any of these.