Resistance operates along multiple foci

Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power. Should we say that we are necessarily “inside” power, that we cannot “escape” it . . . or that . . . power is to be the ruse of history, which always emerges victorious? This is to misunderstand the strictly relational character of power relations. They can only exist via a multiplicity of points of resistance, which play, in power relations, the role of adversary, target, support, or handhold. These points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network. Hence there is with power relations no single locus of great Refusal. . . . Rather there are resistances, which are all special cases: possible, necessary, improbable, spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant, violent, irreconcilable, quick to settle, interested, or sacrificial; by definition, they can only exist within the strategic field of power relations. But this does not mean that they are only the backlash or hollow trace of that field, forming, in relation to the basic domination, an under-side that is in the end always passive, doomed to perpetual defeat. Resistances do not depend upon a few heterogeneous principles; but neither are they a lure or promise that is of necessity betrayed. They are the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in these relations as an irreducible counterpart. Hence they too are distributed in an irregular fashion: the points, knots, or foci of resistance are spread over time and space at varying densities, at times mobilizing groups or individuals in a definite way, inflaming certain points of the body, certain moments in life, certain types of behaviour. Are there great radical ruptures, or massive binary divisions? Sometimes there are. But more often it is a matter of mobile and transitory points of resistance, introducing into a society cleavages, which shift around, shattering unities and giving rise to regroupings, ploughing through individuals themselves, carving them and re-modelling them, drawing irreducible areas in them, in their bodies and their souls. Just as a network of power relations ultimately forms a thick fabric which traverses apparatuses and institutions, without precisely localising itself in them, so too does the swarming of points of resistance traverse social stratifications and individual unities. And it is doubtless the strategic codification of these points that makes a revolution possible, somewhat similar to the way in which the state relies on the institutional integration of power relationships. (VS 125–27; cf. WK 95–96) It is in this sphere of force relations that we must try to analyze the mechanisms of power. In this way we will escape from the system of Law-and-Sovereign which has captivated political thought for such a long time. And if it is true that Machiavelli was among the few-and this no doubt was the scandal of his "cynicism"-who conceived the power of the Prince in terms of force relationships, perhaps we need to go one step further, do without the persona of the Prince, and decipher power mechanisms on the basis of a strategy that is immanent in force relationships.