Closely related to Foucault’s analysis of power and knowledge is his
concept of “discipline” or disciplines which appear in his famous book
Discipline and Punish.
Discipline for Foucault is a type of power, a modality for
its exercise. It comprises a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures,
levels of application, targets. It is a “physics” of power, an “anatomy” of
power, or a technology of power.
Disciplines are techniques for assuring the ordering of
human groups with the following aims: to exercise power at the lowest cost and
maximum efficiency and effectiveness; to increase the docility and utility of
the people who are disciplined.
According to Foucault's analysis disciplines emerged in the
course of 18th-19th centuries in Western Europe at the
historical conjuncture of two processes: (a) The increase in national
populations, and the increase in the population of institutions which needed to
be controlled (such as schools, hospitals, prisons, armies, etc.) (b) The
growth in the productive apparatus (the production of commodities, and the
“production” of health, education, etc.)
What distinguished the disciplines from previous forms of
power based on repression and violence are the following features:
n Discipline objectifies
the people on whom it is applied. This type of power forms a body of knowledge
about the individuals it disciplines, rather than the deployment of visible
signs of sovereignty.
n Population increase and growth of capitalism are interrelated.
Disciplining techniques would not have been possible without the latter, or
useful, without the former.
n There is a parallel between the emergence of a formally
egalitarian juridical framework and a parliamentary, representative political
regime in Western Europe , and the development
and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms.
è Representative regime
promises sovereignty by the people, but at the same time, panopticism and the
disciplines guarantee submission of the people.
“The ‘Enlightenment,’ which
discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.”
The main example that Foucault
uses here is the “Panopticon,” a surveillance technique “invented” by Jeremy
Bentham, the utilitarian theorist, for the observation of prisoners. The
panopticon consisted of a tower from which, the prisoners down on the ground
could be watched at all times.
According to Foucault, in the
modern prison system, “the codified power to punish becomes the disciplinary
power to observe.”
Foucault's idea about the
panopticon or more generally with the disciplines is that, when one knows that
one is being watched, one becomes more docile and more “useful.” Thus,
discipline is a more efficient instrument of power than repression.
