Foucault didn't accept to be labelled as a post-modernist or post-structuralist. His ideas and methods were inspired in many instances by those of Nietzsche. When it comes to hermeneutics which is the science of interpretation, and for example objectivist hermeneutics seeks “understanding of underlying meaning, not the explanation of causal relations”. (Alvesson and Sköldberg, p.91)
As we have seen while discussing Foucault and his methods, his aim is not interpretation or explanation and he sees also the hermeneutics of suspicion which was developed by Freud, in which people we supposed to understand themselves as part of the problem and not the solution. Because Foucault saw that also the process of understanding oneself is interwoven with the power problem. Hermeneutics and other sciences contributed in creating “bio-power” that is the power of controlling the human beings.
“Bio-power can be described as «a set of historical practises which produces the human objects systematized by structuralism and the human subjects explicated by hermeneutics»” (Dreyfus and Rainbow, quoted in Alvesson and Sköldberg, p.254)
So bio-power is that power which is found in institutions such as schools, hospitals, etc.
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