Lynch, Richard A. 'Foucault ' s Theory of Power.' Michel Foucault. 1st ed. Routledge, 2011. 13 to 26. Web.

'In his book, ‘Discipline and Punish,’ he shows that sovereign power, which is held or possessed and then wielded repressively by one individual over another or others, became ineffective in the face of increasingly complex social, political and economic relations that developed in the latter part of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries.'

--> Interesting…

'[...] Foucault conceives of modern power as an interactive network of shifting and changing relations among and between individuals, groups, institutions and structures; it consists of social, political, economic and, as many of the contributors to this volume show, even personal relationships (including our relationships to ourselves)'

--> I agree! Power is multifaceted

'Analysing the reality of the workings of modern power is crucial. Foucault argues that as long as we continue to adhere to a very limited and increasingly outdated understanding of power we cannot begin to navigate modern power relations effectively. Uncritical acceptance of anything that is presented as natural, necessary, or ineluctable is problematic from a Foucauldian perspective. Such uncritical acceptance allows power relations to devolve into static states of domination, where only a very limited range of thought and behaviour is deemed valid or acceptable, with the result that many more modes of existence are considered invalid, immoral, or deviant and thereby deserving of social sanction, legal punishment, or eradication.'

--> Thinking on coporal punishment, for example.

'Freedom for Foucault is not a state we occupy, but rather a practice that we undertake. Specifically, it is the practice of navigating power relations in ways that keep them open and dynamic and which, in doing so, allow for the development of new, alternative modes of thought and existence.'

--> Interesting… unsure as to how i can conceptualize this

'As mentioned previously, 'effective' navigation of power relations involves critically analysing our present conditions in order to identify norms and practices that reinforce the status quo to the point where prevailing modes of thought and existence come to be seen as given, as what must be.'

--> Ie heteronormativity, etc

'By illustrating the sociohistorical character of a concept that is taken within the tradition of Western philosophy to be objective and neutral, Foucault helps us to see the extent to which the idea of being a subject is implicated in power relations. Remember that, for Foucault, power is productive: certain power relations give rise to or produce the definition of subjectivity presented in the previous paragraph, relations which that definition effectively masks. Thus, while all rational beings are purported to be subjects, the reality of the situation is that the Enlightenment understanding of subjectivity excluded a wide group of people, including, for example, women and the people of lands that had been colonized by white European men.'

--> No such thing as ‘objective truth’ to humans

'We take up and occupy the subject positions that our sociohistorical context makes available to us: subjects are not only made, we make ourselves. And, as contributors to this volume show, in so far as we make ourselves, we can unmake ourselves, or make ourselves differently: we can use the norms and values of our society in new ways, work on creating totally new forms of subjectivity, or even dispense with 'the subject' as a mode of existence.'

Ouellet, Raphaël. 'From Forms to Form: Contemporary Art and the Practice of Bureaucratic Everyday Life.' RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne / Canadian Art Review, 49(1). 2024, 116 to 27. Web.

'However, to try to understand bureaucracy as a unified system with its own logics—informed by values of rationalization, profitability, and efficacy—only obscure it. Its rules seem arbitrary, its criteria contradictory. Its operations appear to favor statistical abstractions and artificial categories instead of concrete reality.' (117)

'[...]also considers what this system silences, deforms and erases and the symbolic violence it inflicts on artists and cultural workers.' (117)

--> Who bureaucracy misses and why

'These abstractions are nothing more than arbitrary indicators chosen as efficient representations of reality. The principal problem with neoliberal and bureaucratic processes of abstraction is that norms, rules, and proceedings are not understood as arbitrary, but rather conceived as rational, neutral, and self-evident representations of reality. The abstraction, for bureaucracy, becomes reality. This normalization, an act of symbolic violence, excludes and rejects anything that does not fit in this abstracted version of reality.' (118)

--> Representation =/= reality (in the sense of bureaucracy)

--> Reflecting on why representation matters and for whom

'The result is a form of symbolic violence where real people and real situations are reduced to statistics, ticked boxes, and arbitrary abstractions.' (118)

Importance of lived experiences

'The real sense of neoliberal bureaucracy does not come from its abstractions, but from how the formal and informal rules are used, transformed, and manipulated in daily practice.' (119)

'For Graeber, even our antibureaucratic fantasies are shaped and contaminated by bureaucratic values and processes. These tabletop RPGs inhabit a bloody world, ruled by heroes of legend, woven into narratives of struggle, magic, honor and glory. Yet, the mechanisms of its battles and adventures are determined by statistics, which quantify and measure strength, charisma, intelligence, and power. These characteristics, unmeasurable in our world, correspond to the bureaucratic imaginary of total normalization.' (124)

--> DND reference!!

'By completing Arts Council forms, artists abstracts themselves in order to comply with the bureaucratic process, just as one would abstract the characteristics of a character in a RPG. Just as a fantastical character can be described by its luck, charisma, or strength statistics, artists are reduced to their diplomas, the number of shows they have done, the grants they received in the past,' (124)

'the current neoliberal regime exacerbates this demand for abstraction. As Michel Foucault puts it, neoliberalism ensures that market logics permeate all social life. It forces us to become 'entrepreneurs of ourselves' with the result that we show and develop our 'human capital,' namely our capacities, our knowledge, and our experiences, as selling points for ourselves as workers.' (124)

--> We sell ourselves as product to the capitalist machine

Vranou, Sofia. 'Performing the Subcultural Freak: Leigh Bowery’s Peculiar Narcissism and the Disruption of Normativity.' Contemporary theatre review 30.3 (2020): 326 to 339. Web.

'The term ‘freak’, once used as ‘a badge of shame’ to broadly describe individuals with a visible disability, unusual appearance, or mental and behavioural anomaly (and which was thoroughly associated with the cultural institution of the circus during the nineteenth century in the West) has turned into ‘an honorific title by the kind of physiologically normal but dissident young people’, Leslie Fiedler writes.' (326-327)

--> crip theory, counterculture, etc.

'Used in a positive or negative manner, ‘freak’, according to Elizabeth Grosz, has become synonymous with ‘a certain social marginalization’ and a characteristic of a ‘unique social position’; the freak as a culturally constructed subjectivity ‘is a being who is considered simultaneously and compulsively fascinating and repulsive, enticing and sickening.' (327)

--> Attraction vs repulsion dichotomy - dialectical or not?

'To refer to the creative process of fashioning a subcultural subjectivity through the dissonant presentation of self I borrow the term ‘enfreakment’ from David Hevey who used it first in disability discourse to argue that it is the mechanism of representation that renders the strange appearance freakish and not the form of the body itself.' (329)

'Beyond the extremely padded costumes, layers of make-up, and body paint that gave him a monstrous figure, Bowery experimented with human flesh and the way it can be changed. By manipulating the fat of his corpulent body and accentuating specific areas – especially those that are considered unflattering in mainstream fashion when bulging, such as the abdomen – or by creating the illusion of femaleness and concealing his genitals convincingly, Bowery performs bizarreness by unsettling prevailing body ideals and cisgender expectations for bodily display.' (329)

--> Think of drag brought to an extreme

'Bowery’s unique queer visual language, which can be translated as in a constant state of flux, is undeniably a key aspect of his work. He often turns into a self-fashioned hermaphrodite: ‘the most grotesque of all side show Freaks’.22 By blending the human and the alien, the natural and the artificial, the familiar and the uncanny, Bowery frustrates commonly perceived binaries with splendour.' (330)

--> Kaine my beloved, intersex struggles and successes

'By disturbing the visual status quo with his ‘Baroque beauty’, Bowery demands to be stared at and offers interminable voyeurism to the astonished spectators.' (332)

--> Ways of looking/seeing, bell hooks

'Befittingly, therefore, Garland-Thomson highlights that enfreakment in the context of freak shows ‘emerges from cultural rituals that stylize, silence, differentiate, and distance the persons whose bodies the freak-hunters or showmen colonize and commercialize’' (332)

'Similarly, Jennifer Eisenhauer remarks that either as ‘specimen’ or ‘curiosity’, the disabled subject is in both instances vulnerable in front of ‘the powerful and dehumanizing stare of the audience’' (335)

--> My own autistic experiences

--> Found reading obvuscating the main point ?