Foucault II Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Foucault IIDiscipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison April 4, 2012 Instructor: Sarah Whetstone

Readings and Key Concepts • “Discipline and Punish” • Changing modes of power: Sovereign Disciplinary  Biopower • Panopticon/Panoptic Power • Disciplinary power works though: • Economic production • Political rights • Scientific knowledge • Subjected body/Subjectivity • “The Means of Correct Training,” D & P • Hierarchical observation • Normalizing judgment

Sovereign  Disciplinary Society- “History of Sexuality” “One might say that the ancient right to take life or let live was replaced by a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death… The setting up, in the course of the classical age, of this great bipolar technology– anatomic and biological, individualizing and specifying, directed toward the performances of the body… characterized a power whose highest function was perhaps no longer to kill, but to invest life through and through” (193-94).

Discipline and Punish: Overview • Punishment moved from public torture in medieval times to prisons in contemporary society • Sovereign  Disciplinary power • Goals of containment, force, physical harm in punishment still there, but now with a much greater focus on surveillance, documentation, correction. • Role of prison and social sciences in producing the modern individual

Panopticon… “They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible… Visibility is a trap” (209).

Effects of Panoptic Power… • Panopticon reverses the principle of the dungeon. • Crowd vs. “collection of separated individualities” • Guardians can number, document, and supervise the individuals • Inmates are sequestered and alone – can’t see each other, and can’t band together • Visible and Unverifiable • Visible: The inmate constantly sees the panopticon, the instrument of power • Unverifiable: The inmate does not know when they are being watched • “Disindividualizes” power: “Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies… It does not matter who exercises power” (210). [power is depersonalized, automated] • Acts directly on the mind/body, without the use of physical force

DUNGEON PANOPTICON

Ultimate effect of panoptic power… “To induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power… the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary.. In short, the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they themselves are the bearers” (210).

Panopticon today…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVTKHI5ovyc

Panopticon & Discipline… • Panopticon as a symbol of the modern era of power: disciplinary society • Pervasive in all realms: prison, school, hospital, family, the state… • Growth of a disciplinary society – Discipline has not replaced other forms of power, but has infiltrated them, linked them together, extended them… (211)

Why did disciplinary society emerge? • An increase in the size and mobility of populations • Growth of economic production, which was becoming more costly and demanded increased profits • Need for more effective means of controlling individuals -- Old forms were no longer enough.

Discipline operates through the economy in 3 ways: • Exerting the least amount of effort to control populations through maximum invisibility: If power is not seen, it will not be resisted. • Bringing their effects to their “maximum intensity” and extending the effects widely: Discipline should be accomplished to the fullest effect in as many places as possible. • Increase “the docility and utility of all elements of the system” (212)

Group Work: Marx & Foucault • Put Foucault into dialogue with Marx– Is Foucault’s theory of power compatible with Marxist logic? [pg. 194] • What is the difference between Foucault’s idea of discourse and the Marxist concept of ideology? (202-203). • How did the disciplinary power Foucault writes about make possible the growth of economic production and the expansion of capitalism? (212-213 in book, and “Means of Correct Training”)

“Double Subjection” in Disciplinary Society Subject (Subjected body) As person under the rule of authority Subject (Subjectivity) As person with a narrative, identity who testifies, brings their own Actions, Thoughts, Desires, Experiences to light

Relationship between Disciplinary Power and Formal Political Rights (214-15) Subjected body The Modern Citizen with Political “Rights”

Power/knowledge “microphysics of power” the swarming of disciplinary practices creating subjected/“docile” bodies scientific knowledge the development of human sciences for analyzing human behavior and biology

Disciplinary Power The Subjected body Scientific Knowledge The Human (Research) Subject Industrial Capitalism The Productive Body Liberal Democracy The Citizen with Political “Rights”

Specific techniques of disciplinary power (how it works) : I heirachical observation (surveillance) II normalizing judgment Group Work: Define each technique of power using “Means of Correct Training” reading List some specific methods/goals of each technique Identify some examples where this power is exercised in social life. Pair one of Foucault’s examples of each technique with one you think of on your own.

Early-Modern Physical Punishment Disciplinary Society/Biopower

HIERACHICAL OBSERVATION / SURVEILLANCE Foucault concentrates in this section on the architecture of surveillance. – The ideal type of observatory was the military camp - [a] its potential for designing from scratch, and its already subject population meant it could achieve a purity of power without any relics of the sovereign period, [b] it had to be as effective as possible because the men were armed. The layers of authority were interspersed through the camp, with the entrances of officers' tents opposite those they supervised: a "spatial 'nesting' of hierarchized surveillance. The camp model became the principle behind working-class housing estates, hospitals, prisons, asylums, and schools.

NORMALIZING JUDGEMENT At the heart of all disciplinary systems functions a small penal mechanism. These micro-penalties fill up the gaps left by the "relative indifference of the great systems of punishment" with an infinite web of regulation: - Now what is punished is failing to carry out the desired tasks to an exact standard - non-observance rather than clear deviance. Punishment, therefore, tends towards training rather than vengeance. - Punishment is only one end of the integrated gratification-punishment system. "..instead of the simple division of the prohibition, as practised in penal justice, we have a distribution between a positive pole and a negative pole; all behaviour falls in th field between good and bad marks, good and bad points." - This distribution can be arithmetically mapped out, with plus points cancelling out minus ones etc. The apparatus can therefore heirarchically lay out the individuals. - Distribution according to rank is in itself a reward or punishment. - At the furthest extreme, a shameful group representing the excluded, those beyond the frontier of the abnormal, can be created as a warning to those in the higher classes.

FOUCAULT AND MARX - WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECONOMIC POWER AND Disciplinary POWER? II Foucault acknowledges the influence of Rusche and Kirchheimer's Punishment and Social Structures, which lays out a materialist analysis of punishment - relating different regimes of control to different modes of production. Slave society -- Punishment creates extra workforce beyond those provided by war or the slave trade Feudalism -- Money and production still at early state of development: body is the most accessible property to punish Mercantilism -- Forced labor, prison factory and the penitentiary provide developing capital with cheap labor Industrialism -- Requires free labour market - forced labour replaced by corrective detention

REVIEW: CHARACTERISTICS OF POWER FOR FOUCAULT

Foucault II Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison