Power as an art of contingency: Luhmann, Deleuze, Foucault

Abstract

Abstract This article recovers the conceptual content of Michel Foucault's model of power as 'action upon actions'. The principal argument is that the innovations of this model are intelligible only against the background of a broader social-theoretical distinction between 'substance' and 'emergence'. The suggestion is that the idea of bio-power, as distinct from sovereignty, becomes clearer, and more productive, if it is seen as a figure of emergence. More specifically, it is suggested that the logic of acting upon actions, which encapsulates so many of the vital innovations of Foucault's account of power, may be defined as a relation of 'non-indifferent difference'. In explaining these concepts, the article makes connections between Foucault's project and the work of Niklas Luhmann and Gilles Deleuze. The object of this method is to open Foucault's analyses of power to some particularly illuminating and incisive theoretical complements.