Foucault’s Other to Power

Foucault, mostly recognized by his contributions on power, is less regarded as a thinker of otherness and especially as a thinker of the other to power, i.e., that which cannot be reduced to power. By proposing a reading of power relations that seem to preclude any possible way out from them, Foucault becomes an essential author for approaches to alterity that neither essentialize nor romanticize the other as a way of escaping power. While commentators, such as Deleuze, consider that the last Foucault of the ethical period, i.e., of the techniques of the self, is the one in which the question of the other acquires a relevance that seemed to be absent in previous works, we argue that the question of alterity is a theme that appears very early on in his genealogical and even archaeological incursions. We propose a reading of the techniques of the self based on these initial approaches by Foucault to the theme of alterity to show that Foucault manages to think of an other to power, a power that neither reduces alterity nor is reduced to it, by making alterity an essay, an attempt, something to be done, and carried out by the subject on herself. By taking essentiality away from otherness, including the essentiality of not having an essence, i.e., of being something that essentially escapes or that cannot be objectified, Foucault opens the way to an other to power because not even the other appears as an absolute, from which a power of otherness would emerge instead of an other to power.