02/19 Lecture: Power and Knowledge

It was my first impression that the lecture from today accounted Foucault’s essay seemed different and somewhat departed from my initial understanding when I was reading. However, I also have to admit that I had so much confusion at the first time, but the lecture’s presentation of his ideas from different angle (at least, different for me) had me understand better and help me to absolve some questions.
I was wondering what the relationship between power and knowledge can be defined or even just explicated as Foucault put a great emphasis on their almost interchangeable nature. Is power ubiquitous? How could he have come to a definite conclusion that power is always positive?
First, I begin with knowledge: how is knowledge obtained (or learned)? Although I personally cannot give a precise definition of knowledge, I almost certainly believe that knowledge is exchanged and transferred as a form of semiotics. In other words, in order for one to learn about a fact or even just to recognize the other person’s idea, information or any “knowledge”, it is required for them to communicate with some sort of medium that they both can understand and recognize. In this sense, (possible that I am stretching) power is everywhere because as far as I know there are no people without language. The omnipotent nature of power becomes more evident when considering “discourse”. While people are conversing, one may present an idea or possibly something only existed within oneself. The other person in front of him would learn; now, the knowledge that was only one’s becomes available to another. As this process of building knowledge through medium of language, Foucault’s claim that power is always positive seems to be correct to me. Just logically thinking without employing Foucault’s explanation, I think of power as force that is exerted with an expectation to have some kind of outcome. Outcome can be negative, positive, or even neutral; however, power certainly works only in one direction. First, I thought it is not even logical to say power is positive or negative. But, when considering the nature of power first being ubiquitous and second something exerted, it is always positive.
Even I now understand and mostly agree with Foucault, there is still a question. As I personally believe that things that are not tangible like emotion, characteristics, virtue and etc. are defined by relativity and opposition, I wonder if power can be defined in the same way.