Foucault and 12 angry mans

12 Angry Man (Movie) and Power/Knowledge (Foucault)

Power is strategy operated trough society and produces “different types of knowledge aimed at investigating and collecting information on people’s activities and existence. No form of knowledge emerges independently of complex networks of power and that the exercise of power produces certain types of knowledge” (O’Farrel 2005:101).
Foucault believed that knowledge is always a form of power, but he took it a step further and told us that knowledge can be gained from power, producing it, not preventing it. Through observation, new knowledge is produced. In his view, knowledge is forever connected to power, and often wrote them in this way: power/knowledge. Foucault's theory states that knowledge is always a form of power:
Knowledge linked to power, not only assumes the authority of 'the truth' but has the power to make itself true. All knowledge, once applied in the real world, has effects, and in that sense at least, 'becomes true.' Knowledge, once used to regulate the conduct of others, entails constraint, regulation and the disciplining of practice. Thus, 'There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time, power relations (Foucault.1979:27)

Power exists everywhere and comes from everywhere, and was a key concept because it acts as a type of relation between people, a complex form of strategy, with the ability to secretly shape another's behavior.

For instance: state enforce military service, because every member is tied in a vast network of power relation, which includes parents, teachers, employers and other agents. Grand strategies of State depend on these other small, local and individual power tactics in which everybody is involved. “All these relations of power at different levels work together and against each other in constantly shifting combinations. The State is merely a particular, and ultimately precarious, configuration of these multiple power relations. It is not a ‘thing’ or a universal essence” (O’Farrel 2005:100).

It means power is not property of some particular social/institutional agent, or a thing to use at wills. On the contrary, it occurs by way of various forms of subordination that operate whenever and wherever social relations exist.


Source:

Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish - the Birth of the Prison translated by Alan Sheridan. New York, Vintage Books

O’Farrel, Clare. 2005. Michel Foucault. London, SAGE Publications