For Michel Foucault, understanding the individual, as well as their social and psychological processes, can be summarised in power relations with society. The practice of disciplining and punishing 1 is exercised in social institutions, and in all rules and laws. From the “ships of fools” at the end of the Middle Ages — which were thrown into the sea to ensure the respectability and tranquillity of citizens considered not to be mad — to the creation of prisons and gated communities, this power is maintained.

The pater familias, prisons, social coercions, laws, and institutions of regularisation constantly express this instrument, i.e., the power of social institutions that regulate and decide. At this point, it is inevitable to recall Kafka, who describes in the short story Before the Law the simple man crushed by the power of anonymous bureaucratisation, discipline, and surveillance, led to wait all his life for access to justice that is never achieved.

He writes: Before the law stands a doorkeeper. A man from the country comes to this doorkeeper, and asks for admission to the law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant him admission now. The man reflects, and then asks if he will therefore be permitted to enter later. 'It is possible,' the doorkeeper says, 'but not now.' Since the gate to the law is open as always and the doorkeeper steps aside, the man bends down to look through the gate into the interior. When the doorkeeper notices this, he laughs and says: 'If you find it so tempting, then try to enter despite my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. From room to room, however, stand doorkeepers, each one more powerful than the last. The mere sight of the third is more than even I can bear'…'So now what else do you want to know?' the doorkeeper asks. 'You are insatiable.' 'But everyone strives towards the law,' the man said, 'how is it that during those many years no one except for me requested admission?' The doorkeeper realizes that the man is nearing his end, and in order to reach his diminished hearing he roars at him: 'Nobody else could be admitted here since this entrance was intended for you alone. I shall go now and close it'. (Franz Kafka, translated by Mark Harman.)

When the individual is reduced only to motivations and demands, the human horizon narrows and is configured between desire and power. This reductionism creates categories, builds patterns, stimulates contingencies, and establishes Having as the parameter of Being, as the reference point for being-in-the-world-with-the-other.

For Freud, desire — which in its guise actualises old and unconscious demands — is the key to understanding every human action and movement. Killing women, for example, not being able to live with them, can be a manifestation of wanting to destroy the terrible mother who rejected and problematised them. Breaking down barriers and attacking powerful people can mean seeking the fulfillment of frustrations or destructive desires.

Human beings have little left when they are fixated on power and energised by desire. This fixed idea often leads them to deceive, defraud, and usurp those who cross their path, just as wish fulfillment is their yardstick. However, this constant search for happiness and support is frustrating, although energizing. It's a goal achieved that allows a winner, but throws the others, most of them, into the basement of the unassisted. Could this be the new and current “ship of fools” thrown into the sea? Is it Oedipus gouging out his own eyes when faced with the overwhelming desire that excludes him? Today, there is no Oedipus who gouges out his own eyes. In these times of ours, they shout, complain, and justify all their mistakes by attributing them to bad gears.

It turns out that we are beings in a relationship. Everything that exists is in relation to each other. It's the great network, the configuration that encompasses everything. We are beings resulting from intersections. We are constituted by time, space, and the other. Dividing up the human constitution generates artificial points or highlights that begin to function like jigsaw pieces, making it possible for external explanations to emerge to unite them, such as analyses using the concepts of power, society, culture, desire, and economics.

If we think about this issue without a utilitarian objective, without a modus operandi, and without predetermined functions, we will see that the human being must be perceived or configured as a possibility of relationship subject to necessary and possible conditions. It is precisely in this exercise of necessity and possibility that their freedom, alienation, or participation will be established. Being in the world is, by definition, exercising freedom through the bonds and contexts made possible by its relational structuring. This vision is necessary if we are not to fall prey to the determinism expressed in concepts such as power; desire; biological, genetic, social, economic, karmic, and historical systems; and so on, as explanatory approaches to the human being.

Notes

1 In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault deals with this issue.