“Discipline and Punish” Foucault (1975)
o Foucault argues in "Discipline and Punish" that Enlightenment, which invented the liberties, also
invented the disciplines
o Discipline is a series of techniques by which the
body's operations can be controlled
o Discipline worked by coercing and arranging the
individual's movements and his experience of space and time
o This is achieved by devices such as timetables and
military drills, and the process of exercise
o Through discipline, individuals are created out of a
mass. Disciplinary power has three elements:
1)
hierarchical observation
2)
normalizing judgment
3)
examination
o Observation and the gaze are key instruments of power
o By these
processes, and through the human sciences, the notion of the norm developed
o Disciplinary power is exemplified by Bentham's
Panopticon, a building that shows how individuals can be supervised and
controlled efficiently
o Institutions modeled on the panopticon begin to spread
throughout society (see Foucault's Panopiticism)
o Prison develops from this idea of discipline
o It aims both to deprive the individual of his freedom
and to reform him
o The penitentiary is the next development. It combines
the prison with the workshop and the hospital
o The penitentiary replaces the prisoner with the
delinquent
o The delinquent is created as a response to changes in
popular illegality, in order to marginalize and control popular behavior
o The prison is part of a network of power that spreads
throughout society, and which is controlled by the rules of strategy alone
o Power in knowledge: custom in our society that power
is localized in the hands of the
governments and that it is exercised through a certain number of
particular institutions, such as the administration, police or army
à
Made to transmit and apply a certain number of orders and to punish those who
don’t obey
à
Many institutions that look to have nothing in common with political power also
exercise political power (hospitals, schools, etc.)
o Rise of a new kind of power, a new kind of
governmentality (prison, schools. hospitals, factories, etc.)
o History:
1)
17th century: era of absolute monarchs: power was visible and
repressive, crime= offense against the king
·
Punishment= ritual, symbolic reproduction of power (public torture)
·
Punishment equals the crime
·
Punishment directed to the physical, external body
2)
Mid 18th century
·
Politics: French revolution
·
Knowledge: Age of Enlightenment
·
Economy: rise of capitalist industrial economy
·
Punishment:
§ Crime= offense against society
§ At stake= public hygiene, the body politic
§ Punishment= re-educating, normalizing the offender
§ Effective & efficient correction (not symbolic
ritual)
§ Offender becomes the object of observing, knowing
§ Disciplining
§ Punishment directed to the soul (not the body)
·
Shift from the power of the monarch to the disciplinary institutions (prison,
hospitals, schools, army)
·
Power from restrictive (do not) and destructive (corporal punishment)
towards productive
·
Power not centralized but distributed
in different institutions
·
Micro power,
subtle forms of coercion that is everywhere, continuously, anonymous,
non-personal
·
Disciplinary techniques such as distribution of individuals in space,
under observation, makes individuals comparable units, subject for correction
·
From visibility monarch to visibility individual citizen
·
Normalization: examination, observation, dossiers
archives à classification, comparison
3)
20th century: The health care panopticon
·
Registered from birth until death
·
Continuous monitoring, risk classification, correcting, creating modern
disciplined subjects
·
Normalizing children in public health, in schools, universities
·
Normalizing mothers during sexual relationships, marriage, pregnancy,
child rearing, etc.
·
What about freedom in public health?
§ Everybody in a capitalist society is an object of the
normalizing disciplines à is there an escape?
§ Kant 1784: “I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor
who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet then I have no
need to exert myself”
Normalization
o Result of biopower
o Archives enable classification and comparison
o Enabling a normalizing judgment
·
norm= empirical, statistical, measured by sciences (not an expression of
morals)
o Knowledge (human sciences) advanced in prison,
hospitals, schools, army, etc.
o Correcting: producing ‘normal’ citizens, soldiers,
children, mothers
Biopower
o Explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for
achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations by
governing institutions
à Correcting the pathological towards the ‘norm’
·
People start correcting themselves according to the norm
o Biopolitics: deployed to manage population (e.g. to
ensure a healthy workforce) à discipline is the technology to make individuals
behave, to be productive workers
Discipline
o Discipline is a way of controlling the movement and operations of the body
in a constant way
o
It is a type of power that
coerces the body by regulating and dividing up its movement, and the space and
time in which it moves
o
Timetables and the ranks into
which soldiers are arranged are examples of this regulation
o
The disciplines are the
methods by which this control became possible
o
Foucault traces the origins of
discipline back to monasteries and armies
·
He is clear, however, that the
concept changed in the eighteenth century
·
Discipline became a widely
used technique to control whole populations
·
The modern prison, and indeed
the modern state, is unthinkable without this idea of the mass control of
bodies and movement
Discourse
o The basic unit that Foucault analyzes in all his works
o Foucault defines the discourse as a system in which certain knowledge is
possible
o Discourses determine what is true or false in a particular field
o The discourse of psychiatry, for example, determines what it is possible to
know about madness
o Saying things outside of a discourse is almost impossible
o Foucault's argument about prisons is a good example:
·
Abolishing
the prison is unthinkable partly because we do not have the words to describe
any alternative
·
The prison
is at the center of the modern discourse of punishment
o Discourses such as that of modern punishment define
what it is possible to say and do about certain things
Human Sciences
o Together, human sciences create a regime of power that controls and
describes human behavior in terms of norms
o By setting out what is "normal", the human sciences also create
the idea of abnormality or deviation
Norm
o An average standard created by the human sciences against which people are
measured
o Idea of the "normal" also implies the existence of the abnormal
o Idea of deviance is possible only where norms exist
o For Foucault, norms are concepts that are constantly used to evaluate and
control us:
·
They also exclude those who cannot conform to
"normal" categories
·
As such, they are an unavoidable but somehow
harmful feature of modern society
Penalty
o Particular system of punishment a society uses
o Includes all aspects of the examination and treatment of those who break
the law
Power
o Foucault's conception of power is a central part of this work
o Power is a relationship between people in which one affects another's
actions
o Power is a strategy, or a game not consciously played
by individuals but one that operates within the machinery of society
o Power affects everyone, from the prisoner to the
prison guard, but no one individual can "control" it
o Power differs from force or violence, which affect the body physically
o It involves making a free subject do something that he would not have done
otherwise
à Power
therefore involves restricting or altering someone's will
o Power is present in all human relationships, and penetrates throughout
society
o The state does not have a monopoly over power, because power relations are
deeply unstable and changeable
o Patterns of domination do exist in society: for example, the modern power
to punish was established through the action of the human sciences
o The relationship between power and knowledge is also an important one
o The human sciences are able to control and exclude people because they make
claims to both knowledge and power
o To claim that a statement is true is also to make a claim to power because truth can only be produced by power
o Criminology can make claims that exclude the delinquent, for example,
because a system of power relations exists in which the delinquent is dominated
Power and knowledge (see extended summary on Foucault's power and knowledge)
o Discipline and Punish essentially charts the reorganization of the power to
punish, and the development of various bodies of knowledge (the human sciences)
that reinforce and interact with that power
o The modern power to punish is based on the supervision
and organization of bodies in time and space, according to strict technical
methods
o The modern knowledge that Foucault describes is the
knowledge that relates to human nature and behavior, which is measured against
a norm
o Foucault's point is that one cannot exist without the
other:
1)
The power and techniques of punishment depend on knowledge that creates
and classifies individuals
2)
and that knowledge derives its authority from certain relationships of
power and domination
The body and the soul
o The body as an object to be acted upon
o Foucault charts the transition to a situation where
the body is no longer immediately affected
o The body will always be affected by punishment—because
we cannot imagine a non-corporal punishment
o but in the modern system, Foucault says, the body is
arranged, regulated and supervised rather than tortured
o Move from a situation where the criminal's body is attacked,
to one where we are all disciplined and controlled
o overall aim of the penal process becomes the reform of
the soul, rather than the punishment of the body
o the soul gradually replaces the body as the focus of
punishment and reform
o Ideas such as the psyche, conscience, and good
behavior are effects created by a particular regime of power and knowledge
o When the power to judge shifted to a judgment about
normal and abnormal, the modern soul was formed
Prison and society
o The relationship between the prison and the wider
society cannot be stressed enough
o mechanisms of discipline that control the delinquent
also control the citizen
o The prison is part of a "carceral network"
that spreads throughout society, infiltrating and penetrating everywhere
Analysis of “Discipline and Punishment”
o The body-soul shift is central to Discipline and
Punish
o For Foucault, the body has a real existence, but the
"modern soul" is a recent invention
o Invention of the soul allows new possibilities:
1)
It allows you to consider why the
crime occurred; the motives that drive the criminal become knowable, and the
subject of investigation
2)
It becomes possible to consider the criminal beyond the crime and its
punishment
à
Instead of inflicting a painful penalty it becomes possible to supervise and
investigate him
o The shift from body to soul also marks the end of the
public idea of punishment, because whilst the body has to be tortured in
public, the soul is a private thing
o Rise of human sciences: Psychiatry, social work,
medicine and other professions assess and judge people according to standards
called norms: they ultimately decide what is "normal" and
"abnormal"
o This involves judging not a crime but a person, making
decisions about his sanity, his treatment, and even when he should be released
o According to Foucault, the modern world has given the
important power to judge to a shadowy body of professionals whose role is
sometimes uncertain
o Discipline creates individuality out of the bodies
that it controls
o It has four techniques: it draws up tables, it
prescribes movements, it imposes exercises and arranges tactics
o Highest form of disciplinary practice is war as
strategy
Second chapter: Docile body
o Body is not subject to torture but to forces of
discipline and control
o Foucault analyzes various technologies that control
and affect the body
o Docility is achieved through the actions of discipline
o Discipline is different from force or violence because
it is a way of controlling the operations and positions of the body
o Fact that Foucault finds the roots of discipline in
monasteries and armies is important
o Institutions like prisons, schools and hospitals acted
like machines for transforming and controlling people
à To do this, they fixed individuals in time and space
o Regulation of time and space (in prisons e.g. the
cells) is important for enforcing discipline
à The control of space and time is essential to
Foucault's disciplinary system because they are the most basic elements of
human life
·
Regulating them affects the way in which people act and think
Art of distributions
o Discipline proceeds from the distribution of
individuals in space
o Employs several techniques:
1)
Discipline sometimes requires enclosure in a protected place, e.g.
school
2)
Machinery works on the principle of partitioning space; it is always
cellular
o The key unit is the rank or place in a classification:
rank begins to define the distribution of individuals in educational space
Control of activity
o Time penetrates the body with all the controls of power
o Traditional timetable forbids men to waste time
o Dividing activities into series makes detailed control
and intervention possible
Third chapter: The means of correct training
o Success of disciplinary power depends on three
elements:
1)
Hierarchical observation
·
Mechanism that coerces by means of observation
·
Disciplinary institutions created a mechanism of control
·
The perfect disciplinary mechanism would make it possible to see
everything constantly
·
Monitoring techniques function as a sort of panopticon in which
individual and collective work is rendered visible for the professionals
themselves
2)
Normalizing judgment
·
Disciplinary punishment has to be corrective
·
Punishment defines behavior on the basis of good-evil
·
Discipline rewards and punishes by awarding ranks
·
Punishment differentiates individuals from each other by means of a rule
that is the minimum of behavior
·
It measures individuals and places them in a hierarchical system
·
It also traces the abnormal
·
Normalization makes people homogeneous, but it also makes it possible to
measure differences between individuals
3)
Examination
·
Examination unites the processes of observation and normalization
·
Represents the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a
normalizing judgment (a gaze that makes it possible to qualify, classify and
punish)
·
Example: organization of the hospital as an examining machine
·
Introduces individuality into the field of documentation
·
Each individual becomes a "case" that can be analyzed and
described
·
Examination constitutes the individual as object of power
·
Power does not exclude or repress
o The individual is a modern invention, a construction
of power
o It is a body that is observed, and compared to a
"norm" of average behavior
o Foucault's point about observation is that you can be
coerced or forced to do something by being observed constantly
·
Not only do you feel self-conscious, but your behavior changes
·
Good example for operation of power: effect occurs on your body without
physical violence
o The perfect disciplinary institution is that in which
everything can be seen at once
à Panopticon
o What is normal is good, and what is abnormal is bad
and must be corrected
o Penalty becomes about correcting deviations from the
norm, organizing people into ranks and classifications according to their
"normality"
o The aim of Discipline and Punish is to show how
unnatural this process is
o The more abnormal and excluded you are, the more
individual you become
·
It has nothing to do with taking control over one's own life
Bentham’s panopticon
o Foucault adopts the panopticon as a symbol
o Building with a tower at the center from which it is
possible to see each cell in which a prisoner or schoolboy is incarcerated
o Each individual is seen but cannot communicate with
the warders or other prisoners
o The crowd is abolished
o Induces a sense of permanent visibility that ensures
the functioning of power
o The prisoner can always see the tower but never knows
from where he is being observed
o It perfects the operations of power by increasing the
number of people who can be controlled and decreasing the number needed to
operate it
o It gives power over people's minds through
architecture
o As it can be inspected from outside, there is no
danger of tyranny
o The panopticon was destined to spread throughout
society
·
It makes power more economic and effective
o To spread education, develop economy, improve public
morality
o Bentham develops the idea that disciplines could be
dispersed throughout society
à Provides a formula for the functioning of a society
that is penetrated by disciplinary mechanisms
à To make power operate more efficiently
o The panopticon represents the way in which discipline
and punishment work in modern society
·
how the processes of observation and examination operate
o The disciplinary society is not necessarily one with a
panopticon in every street: it is one where the state controls such methods of
coercion and operates them throughout society
o Foucault argues that more sophisticated societies
offer greater opportunities for control and observation
More about Foucault:
Michel Foucaul - ""The History of Sexuality"
Michel Foucaul - ""The History of Sexuality"
Foucault - "Of Other Spaces" - summary
Michel Foucault: Panopticism - Summary
Foucault's Panopticism explained
Michel Foucault and Marxism
Foucault, Structuralism and post-structuralism
Truth and Power / Foucault
Michel Foucault - The Discourse on Language
Michel Foucault: Panopticism - Summary
Foucault's Panopticism explained
Michel Foucault and Marxism
Foucault, Structuralism and post-structuralism
Truth and Power / Foucault
Michel Foucault - The Discourse on Language
Recommended books by and on Foucault:
