Dispositif

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Michael Foucault generally uses the term "dispositif," "deployment," or "apparatus" to refer to the various institutional, physical and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures which enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body.

[edit] Roots

Dispositif is a French word, meaning device. The three terms are analogous in the French to English translations of Foucault's work.

[edit] Usage

An example of such usage of the terms can be seen in Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, An Introduction, he presents some of the traits of juridical representations of power, including the fifth characteristic trait entitled "The uniformity of the apparatus" (or the unity of dispositif of power-knowledge): Power over sex operates according to law, taboo, and censorship. This comes in the same form of power that exists at all levels,including “state to family, from prince to father, from the tribunal to the small change of everyday punishments from the agencies of social domination to the structures that constitute the subject himself” (Foucault, p.84-85). He puts power into perspective consisting of (a) a commanding head or ruler, and (b) the obedient subject: “the formal homogeneity of power in these various instances corresponds the general form of submission in the one who is constrained by it – whether the individual in question is the subject opposite the monarch, the citizen opposite the state, the child opposite the parent, or the disciple opposite the master. A legislative power on one side, and an obedient subject on the other” (Foucault, p.85). The point made is that power has existed in the uniformness of the traditional format that includes a dominating leader, and an acquiescent and loyal subject. Foucault examines the reduction to lead to the effects of obedience, which he defines as the modes of domination, submission, and subjugation. Power is everywhere, and everywhere there is a consistent and unvarying repression of sex.