Foucault - power as creator of the individual

I'm finding the whole thing slightly confusing, but I guess that's because i'm making assumptions about what I expect from this book. After exploring, in viseral detail the torture, confinement and control societies make for individuals, you get . . .
'we must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms; it 'excludes, 'represses' . . . Infact power produces; it produces reality; ....'

So via the production of an object, called an individual, that is only possible via the introduction of norms and the process of measuring individuals against them, do we get the social idea of ourselves. And only the organization of this by the states power has led this process.

I'm finding the whole thing slightly confusing, but I guess that's because i'm making assumptions about what I expect from this book. After exploring, in viseral detail the torture, confinement and control societies make for individuals, you get . . .
'we must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms; it 'excludes, 'represses' . . . Infact power produces; it produces reality; ....'

So via the production of an object, called an individual, that is only possible via the introduction of norms and the process of measuring individuals against them, do we get the social idea of ourselves. And only the organization of this by the states power has led this process.

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