ad he lived, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) would have celebrated his centennial birthday on October 15. A century after his birth, his ideas remain unsettling because they challenge one of modern society’s most cherished assumptions: that progress always produces freedom.

Foucault argued that modern societies are not held together through force alone. They are organised primarily through power that operates so subtly, so routinely and so successfully that people eventually participate in their own governance. Rather than asking who rules, Foucault asked a more disturbing question: how do certain forms of rule become accepted as natural, necessary and unquestionable?

His answer transformed the social sciences.

For Foucault, power is not simply something exercised by governments, dictators or ruling elites. It runs through institutions, professional expertise, social customs, religious authorities, educational systems and bureaucracies; even ordinary language. It shapes what societies recognise as truth and determines who has the authority to define the reality.

Power, therefore, is productive rather than merely repressive. It does not only prohibit behaviour. It manufactures identities, creates categories of normality and deviance, establishes accepted truths, and constructs the very subjects it claims merely to govern.

This insight informed Foucault’s pioneering studies of madness, prisons, medicine, sexuality and government. What interested him was not simply how institutions exercised authority but how they produced forms of knowledge that justified that authority.

His famous formulation that power and knowledge are inseparable remains one of the most influential ideas of modern thought. Knowledge is never entirely neutral. Every society develops institutions that determine who may speak with authority, whose voices are trusted, whose experiences are dismissed and what will count as truth.

Modern societies separate the normal from the abnormal through schools, hospitals, courts, prisons and professional expertise. These institutions appear humane and rational, yet they constantly classify, measure, evaluate and regulate individuals.

The prison became a central example in Foucault’s work. Earlier societies staged public spectacles of punishment. Modern societies increasingly replaced visible violence with surveillance, records, examinations and behavioural correction. The objective shifted from punishing bodies to managing conduct.

His concept of the Panopticon captured this transformation. Individuals who believe they may always be observed begin to regulate themselves. The possibility of surveillance becomes more effective than actual surveillance.

Today, digital monitoring, algorithmic profiling, data collection and social media scrutiny reflect precisely this logic. People frequently censor themselves without receiving a direct order. The fear of consequences is often sufficient.

Foucault’s relevance becomes especially striking when viewed from Pakistan.

Conventional political analysis often reduces Pakistan’s problems to governments, political parties, corruption or elections. A Foucauldian perspective reveals something deeper. The central question is not simply who governs Pakistan but how authority is produced, legitimised and reproduced throughout society.

Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship between military power and the production of political truth.

The armies around the world have historically functioned not merely as a security institution but as a powerful producer of narratives about national identity, patriotism, security, sacrifice and citizenship. Through educational curricula, media discourse, strategic doctrines and national commemorations, certain understandings become normalised while alternative interpretations appear suspicious or irresponsible; even dangerous.

A Foucauldian analysis does not require formal censorship to recognise power. The more significant achievement of power occurs when citizens internalise boundaries and begin regulating their own speech. In such circumstances, people often know instinctively which topics may be discussed safely and which remain sensitive. Surveillance becomes psychological long before it becomes physical.

Religious authority constitutes another powerful mechanism of governance.

Clerical structures around the globe do not simply provide spiritual guidance. They participate in defining morality, legitimacy, respectability, gender roles, acceptable behaviour and social belonging. Through sermons, public discourse, educational institutions and religious media, particular moral truths acquire an appearance of divine certainty. They divide the society, form and reform social identities, write new histories and build new religious narratives that are hardly refutable as they carry a divine tag. The insight is illuminating. What appears to be purely moral guidance often functions simultaneously as a technology of social regulation. Citizens monitor their own behaviour because they fear not only legal punishment but also social condemnation, exclusion from the moral community and punishment in the life hereafter.

The result is a distinctive configuration of power in which military authority frequently speaks in the language of national security while clerical authority speaks in the language of moral truth. Both possess different sources of legitimacy, but both contribute to the governance of subjects.

This does not imply conspiracy or conscious coordination. Foucault repeatedly warned against such simplistic explanations. Power operates most effectively through dispersed networks rather than central commands. Different institutions may reinforce similar forms of obedience without acting under a single plan.

A genuine and deep Foucauldian analysis of Pakistan can explain many features of our socio-political development. The ways in which certain religious narratives gained social and political authority over successive decades reveal how power operates through the production of knowledge, identity and moral legitimacy. Rather than viewing such developments solely as theological phenomena, Foucault would invite us to examine the broad institutional, geopolitical, and historical forces that help shape collective beliefs and social practices. Foucault would encourage us to examine how both domestic and international centres of power shape public narratives, influence collective beliefs and gradually transform the social fabric.

Foucault persuaded scholars to examine how knowledge and authority operate beyond visible political boundaries. In Pakistan’s case, global financial institutions, development agencies, international security partnerships and powerful Western states have long participated in shaping domestic narratives, priorities and permissible political choices.

Since the Cold War, Pakistan has repeatedly found itself inserted into geopolitical projects designed elsewhere. Strategic alliances, security doctrines, economic reforms, counterterrorism policies, aid programmes and development agendas have often reflected the priorities of powerful external actors, particularly the United States and leading European powers.

The language accompanying these interventions is frequently humanitarian, developmental, democratic or security-oriented. Foucault taught us to look beyond benevolent rhetoric and comprehend the forms of power embedded within apparently neutral expertise.

Who defines development? Who determines security threats? Who establishes standards of good governance? Who possesses the authority to classify entire societies as stable/ unstable, moderate/ radical, developed/ or underdeveloped?

These categories are not politically innocent. They shape international funding, diplomatic relations, security policies and public perceptions. They become regimes of truth through which entire populations are understood and governed.

Pakistanis, therefore, inhabit multiple layers of power simultaneously. They are positioned within domestic disciplinary systems shaped by religious and cultural norms; governed by bureaucratic procedures; monitored by digital technologies; influenced by media narratives; and exposed to global political and economic pressures.

Foucault’s greatest contribution has been to show that these forces do not merely constrain individuals from the outside. They produce particular kinds of citizens. People come to understand themselves through categories created by certain institutions. They learn what is respectable, patriotic, normal, modern, religious, deviant, progressive or dangerous.

The most successful exercise of power occurs when these categories no longer appear political and rather look organic, natural and neutral.

This is why Foucault remains indispensable a century after his birth. He reminds us that domination is rarely sustained by brute force alone. It survives because it becomes embedded in accepted truths, moral certainties, administrative procedures, professional expertise and everyday habits.

For Pakistan, his work offers an uncomfortable but necessary invitation. It asks citizens to question not only those who visibly wield authority but also the institutions and narratives that define what may be thought, spoken, believed and imagined. It asks who benefits from prevailing truths, who is excluded by them and whose voices disappear beneath them.

Most importantly, Foucault reminds us that wherever power exists, resistance is also possible. The task of a democratic society is not merely to replace one ruler with another. It is to remain vigilant towards every institution that claims a monopoly over truth. A detailed overview of Foucault’s concept of power and its manifestations can be seen in one chapter of the second volume of Istemaar Ki Nafsiat, recently published by Ilqa Publishers, Lahore.

A century after Foucault’s birth, this insight may be more relevant to Pakistan than ever before.

The writer is a principal clinical psychologist in the Republic of Ireland. He can be contacted at [email protected].