While trying to get a grasp on Foucault's position on power, I was very intrigued by his negation of the "juridico-discursive" model of power. This maintains that there is always a negative relationship between sex and power where power's ultimate objective is to suppress sex. Of course, Foucault adamently contradicts this belief throughout the book as he claims that power works to bring sex into discourse. Rather than supressing sex, power wishes to approach it in a more controlled manner. Before his discussion of the features of juridico-discursive, Foucault remarks that humans need to see power as an oppressive force. He writes on page 82, "As to the idea of a power-repression, you have retained its most fragile theoretical element, and this in order to criticize it; you have restained the most sterilizing political consequence of the idea of power-law, but only in order to preserve it for your own use." If one views power as always negative and repressive, one beliefs he has the ability to act against this power. If you disobey the law, you are free. This belief is in fact an allusion. Power is all-encompassing and it not only exisits within its domination but also our resistance. Once one acknowledges this fact, one will realize that he is not free.
This form of thinking greatly resembles Baudrillard in "Simulacra and Simulacrum." I could see Baudrillard saying that power only allows one to believe that he has the ability to resist it to in fact prevent resistance. Foucault continually refers to the belief that without repression, there would be no desire. Perhaps, Foucault agrees with Baudrillard's belief that power is nothing more than a simulacrum. It attempts to gain legitimacy by opening up discourse for sex and then repressing it in order to project the illusion that citizens have the power of disobedience.