The vicissitudes of the "personal dose": from constitutional right to "little crime".

Abstract

"Speeches, like silences, are not once and for all subjected to power or raised against it. It is necessary to admit a complex and unstable game where discourse can, at the same time, be an instrument and effect of power, but also an obstacle, a buffer, a point of resistance and an opposing strategy. Discourse transports and produces power; it reinforces it but also undermines it, exposes it, makes it fragile and allows it to be stopped. In the same way, silence and secrecy shelter power, anchor its prohibitions: but they also loosen its constraints and negotiate more or less obscure tolerances".