ما وراء القهر آليات إنتاج الطاعة الطوعية في فكر الجاحظ وميشيل فوكو

آليات إنتاج الطاعة في فكر الجاحط

Abstract

obedience is produced, not as a mere outcome of coercion or overt repression, but as a complex process of internalized normalization operating through language, discourse, habit, and knowledge. It offers a comparative reading of al-Jahiz’s reflections on power, eloquence, reason, and social custom within the Abbasid context, alongside Michel Foucault’s analysis of modern power as exercised through discipline, surveillance, and the production of compliant subjects.

The paper argues that al-Jahiz articulated an early critical insight into forms of obedience that arise without direct force, emphasizing persuasion, rhetorical authority, habituation, and the subject’s gradual assimilation of power’s logic until individuals themselves become agents in its reproduction. By contrast, Foucault demonstrates that modern power does not primarily rely on repression, but rather on the regulation of bodies, the normalization of behavior, and the construction of knowledge regimes that render obedience a seemingly autonomous choice.

The study concludes that voluntary obedience is not the opposite of coercion, but its more sophisticated form: a shift from the imposition of commands to the shaping of consciousness, and from external domination to the internal construction of obedient subjectivity. In this regard, the convergence between al-Jahiz and Foucault opens a critical horizon for understanding power not merely as a top-down structure, but as a pervasive relation embedded in language, reason, and everyday practices.