Baudrillard vs. Foucault: revolving conceptions of power in foucaultian writings

Abstract

This article aims at investigating, specifically, the critical fixation of author Jean Baudrillard against the idea of power as defended by Michel Foucault. The later – an exponent author from post-structuralism, often studied both by Literature and Law specialists – explored the concept of “micro-physical power”, which sees that all the legal or political discourses could not handle any longer all the possible practices of power acted upon the social subjects, broadening the concept of power in several publications and putting it in the dimension of a new approach. Baudrillard, on the other hand, considers power as a doomed value that is to disappear due to the volatility of politics. We tried to analyze the ideas in the discourse of Baudrillard in the book in which he debated with the ideas of Foucault, Oublier Foucault, in which there was an attempt of dismantling the literature by Foucault about power, explaining this literature as, itself, a spiral generator of power.