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Similarities Between Alhusser And Foucault

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Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault produced extraordinary where they explored issues and models for the reproduction of power. Though both these philosophers do not actually agree on how power and state operates they do come up with incredible arguments that are valid within our current society. Michel Foucault believes that the law within any society operates mostly at the supernatural level, thus he believes power lies within individual, unlike Althusser who believes that the state and its ideology has total control of its citizen due to its major branches. Althusser developed the most essential points of his analysis in his famous essay “ideology and the State’s Ideological Apparatus”. Althusser states that “the State is explicitly conceived as a repressive apparatus. The State is a ‘machine’ of repression, which enables the ruling classes (in the nineteenth century the bourgeois class and the ‘class’ of big landowners) to ensure their domination over the working class, thus enabling the former to subject the latter to the process …show more content…

Thus althusser believes that state derives it’s through these apparatus, these also use the ideological power to voluntarily submit masses. This voluntary submission requires the use of the mechanisms of discipline hence Foucault sense to assure the docility and conformity of people. These mechanisms are mostly used in for internal discipline mostly in families and schools; hence they are the most important mechanisms of the state. Althusser also notes the importance of these mechanisms as he sites that they are the main strongholds of the state control apparatus as individual are molded at a tender age and enslaved to certain

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