Civil society has an ambiguous relationship with the state and is often seen as representing the counterpart or positive antithesis of state power and dominance/oppression. This is clear from the political theories of liberalism in both its classic and new forms, since liberal discourses assume that civil society has an existence that transcends historical conflicts. However, the actual practices of power are not only played out in the context of the state and the official political institutions – civil society too is an excellent arena for the exercise of power. This study examines the problematic issues of civil society by means of the genealogies of its concept as considered by French philosopher Michel Foucault in his lectures at the Collège de France, publication of which was recently completed. Based on Foucault's theory on power as knowledge, civil society, in his view, has a productive nature, since authority is no longer exercised by mechanisms of oppression and violence, but by means of various mechanisms operative in civil society and the climate of freedom associated with it. This opens up the question of the position and possibility of resistance: civil society has become a domain for the exercise of technologies of rule, but at the same time, a domain for acts of resistance or what Foucault terms anti-leadership.