Foucault: “The Subject and Power”

To sum up, the main objective of these struggles is to attack not so
much “such or such” an institution of power, or group, or elite, or
class but rather a technique, a form of power. This form of power
applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorizes the
individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own
identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and
which others have to recognize in him. It is a form of power which makes
individuals subjects. There are two meanings of the word “subject”:
subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own
identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form
of power which subjugates and makes subject to. Generally, it can be
said that there are three types of struggles: either against forms of
domination (ethnic, social, and religious); against forms of
exploitation which separate individuals from what they produce; or
against that which ties the individual to himself and submits him to
others in this way (struggles against subjection, against forms of
subjectivity and submission). I think that in history you can find a lot
of examples of these three kinds of social struggles, either isolated
from each other or mixed together. But even when they are mixed, one of
them, most of the time, prevails.