Michel Foucault, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
Pouvoir-savoir is not a compound of two things that happen to influence each other. It names a single level of reality where the two are constitutively entangled — where power does not merely distort or suppress knowledge from outside, but generates it, and where knowledge does not merely serve power instrumentally, but exercises it.1 The traditional philosophical picture placed the knowing subject at the origin: the subject already there, knowledge already at work, the known already given.2
Against that picture, what I took from Nietzsche was the demand to look behind knowledge for something altogether different — something in relation to which the knowing subject and knowledge itself are both effects.3 That something is not a hidden essence or a deeper truth; it is the activation of forms of power that creates savoir, which in turn increases power: an indefinite play of formation, displacement, circulation, and concentration that endlessly produces surpluses of power and surpluses of knowledge simultaneously.4
The practical consequence is that no power is exercised without the extraction, appropriation, distribution, or restraint of a knowledge; and no knowledge functions without exercising a certain power within the field of other possible knowledges.5 Every statement considered true exerts a power, creates a possibility; every exercise of power, even the most brutal, implies at minimum a savoir-faire.6
There is, as I once put it in conversation, a kind of shimmering beneath the polarities that seem to us so distinct.7 What this means historically is that the forms through which knowledge is produced — measure, inquiry, examination — are simultaneously forms through which power is exercised.8 Measure was a means of establishing order in the combat of men and elements, and also the matrix of mathematical and physical knowledge.
The inquiry was a means of establishing facts, events, rights, and also the matrix of empirical knowledge and the natural sciences. The examination was a means of setting the standard, the rule, the distribution, the exclusion — and also the matrix of all the psychologies, sociologies, and psychiatries, everything we call the human sciences.9
Before these forms appeared in their clarified epistemological shape, they were connected to the setting in place of political power; they were both its effect and its instrument.10 The critical point, the one that separates this analysis from the Marxist concept of ideology, is that power does not merely produce ideological effects in the domain of knowledge, as if knowledge were a distorted mirror of real social relations.11
The relation is more intimate and more generative than that. The constitution of a subject of knowledge, the carving out of an object to be known, the act of knowing itself — these are historical effects of processes of pouvoir-savoir located in our type of civilization.12
The notion of 'power-knowledge,' coined in 1972 to designate that level of reality, distinct from the plane of the history of the sciences, where knowledge and power reciprocally reinforce each other.On the Government of the Living, Lectures at the College de France 1979-1980, pp. 389–390
Traditional philosophical analysis placed knowledge (the knowing subject) at the origin, the root of knowledge: the subject already there, knowledge already at work, the known already given.Penal Theories and Institutions, Lectures at the College de France 1971-1972, pp. 213–214
The Nietzschean analysis which looks behind knowledge for something altogether different from knowledge. Something altogether different in relation to which the knowing subject and knowledge itself are effects.Penal Theories and Institutions, Lectures at the College de France 1971-1972, pp. 213–214
it is the activation of forms of power that creates knowledge (savoir), which in turn increases power: indefinite play of formation, displacement, circulation, and concentration which endlessly produces the supplements, excess, and reinforcements of power and the increase of knowledge, the extra knowledge, surplus-knowledge.Penal Theories and Institutions, Lectures at the College de France 1971-1972, pp. 213–214
No power, on the other hand, is exercised without the extraction, appropriation, distribution, or restraint of a knowledge. At this level there is not knowledge on one side and society on the other, or science and the state, but the basic forms of 'power-knowledge'.PART ONE: THE COURSES, pp. 61–62
for knowledge to function as knowledge it must exercise a power. Within other discourses of knowledge in relation to discourses of possible knowledge, each statement considered true exerts a certain power and it creates, at the same time, a possibility. Inversely, all exercise of power, even if it is a question of putting someone to death, implies at least a savoir-faire.The Politics of Truth, pp. 70–71
there is a kind of shimmering under the polarities which, to us, seem very distinct from those of power.The Politics of Truth, pp. 70–71
In their historical formation, measure, inquiry, and examination were all means of exercising power and, at the same time, rules for establishing knowledge.PART ONE: THE COURSES, pp. 61–62
The inquiry: a means of establishing or restoring facts, events, actions, properties, rights; but also a matrix of empirical knowledge and natural sciences. The examination: a means of setting or reinstating the standard, the rule, the distribution, the qualification, the exclusion; but also a matrix of all the psychologies, sociologies, psychiatries—in short, of what is called the 'human sciences.'PART ONE: THE COURSES, pp. 61–62
Before appearing together, in this clarified form, inside definite epistemological domains, they were connected to a setting in place of a political power; they were both its effect and its instrument.PART ONE: THE COURSES, pp. 61–62
it is important to 'differentiate oneself' from the analysis according to which power 'can only ever produce ideological effects in the domain of knowledge.'On the Government of the Living, Lectures at the College de France 1979-1980, pp. 389–390
The constitution of a 'subject of knowledge', the carving out of an 'object to be known', and what is called the act of knowledge are historical effects of these processes of power-knowledge located in our type of civilization.Penal Theories and Institutions, Lectures at the College de France 1971-1972, pp. 213–214