Discipline and Punish: a Critical Review Essay

OverviewThe main ideas of Discipline and Punish can be grouped jibe to its four secernates bedevil, penalization, hold back and prison house.TortureFoucault begins by contrasting two conditions of penalty the violent and chaotic general worrying of Robert-Franois Damiens, who was convicted of attempted regicide in the mid-18th century, and the highly regimented daily schedule for inmates from an primal nineteenth century prison (Mettray). These examples provide a picture of average how profound the changes in western penal organisations were after less than a century. Foucault wants the reader to consider what guide to these changes. How did western culture shift so radic ally? He conceptualises that the question of the genius of these changes is best asked by expect that they werent dod to create a much humanitarian penal system, nor to more(prenominal) exactly penalize or rehabilitate, but as part of a continuing trajectory of subjection. Foucault wants to tie scientific knowledge and scientific maturement to the development of the prison to prove this usher. He defines a micro-physics of personnel, which is comprise by a supply that is strategic and tactical alternatively than acquired, hold or possessed.He explains that power and knowledge imply one another, as opposed to the common belief that knowledge exists independently of power trans accomplishment (knowledge is always contextualized in a good example which makes it intelligible, so the humanizing dis occupation of psychological medicine is an expression of the tactics of oppression).2 That is, the ground of the game of power isnt win by liberation, beca engagement liberation already exists as a aspect of subjection. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself.3 The problem for Foucault is in close to sense a theoretical sampleling which posits a soul, an identity (the use o f soul be fortunate since identity or name would not properly express the order of subjectione.g., if mere materiality were utilize as a way of tracking individuals then the method of penalty would not have switched from torture to psychiatry) which allows a unharmed materiality of prison to develop.In What is an Author? Foucault as well deals with notion of identity, and its use as a method of control, regulation, and tracking. He begins by examining man torture and carrying into action. He argues that the public spectacle of torture and execution was a theatrical forum the original intentions of which at last larnd several unintend consequences. Foucault stresses the exactitude with which torture is carried out, and describes an extensive legal frame clear in which it operates to achieve specific purposes. Foucault describes public torture as ceremony. The intended purposes were* To make the cryptical public (according to Foucault the probe was kept entirely secret ev entide from the accused). The secret of the investigation and the conclusion of the magistrates was justified by the promotional material of the torture. * To show the effect of investigation on confession. (According to Foucault torture could occur during the investigation, because overtone proofs meant partial guilt. If the torture failed to elicit a confession then the investigation was stopped and innocence assumed. A confession legitimized the investigation and both torture that occurred.) * Reflecting the violence of the original crime onto the convicts personify for all to see, in line of battle for it to be manifested then annulled by reciprocating the violence of the crime on the criminal.* Enacting the revenge upon the convicts body, which the sovereign seeks for having been injured by the crime. Foucault argues that the law was considered an extension of the sovereigns body, and so the revenge must(prenominal) take the form of harming the convicts body. It torture assured the articulation of the pen on the oral, the secret on the public, the procedure of investigation on the physical process of the confession it made it viable to reproduce the crime on the viewable body of the criminal in the same horror, the crime had to be manifested and annulled.It also made the body of the condemned man the place where the vengeance of the sovereign was applied, the anchoring point for a manifestation of power, an opportunity of affirming the dissymmetry of forces.4 Foucault looks at public torture as the out get down of a certain mechanism of power that views crime in a military schema. Crime and rebellion are akin to a declaration of war. The sovereign was not concerned with demonstrating the ground for the enforcement of its laws, but of identifying enemies and fight them, the power of which was re untrieded by the ritual of investigation and the ceremony of public torture.5 Some unintended consequences were* Providing a forum for the convicts bod y to become a focus of sympathy and admiration. * Redistributing blame the executioner rather than the convict becomes the locus of shame. * Creating a site of conflict between the the great unwashed and the sovereign at the convicts body. Foucault notes that public executions often led to riots in support of the captive. Frustration for the inefficiency of this economy of power could be order towards and coalesce around the site of torture and execution. Public torture and execution was a method the sovereign deployed to express his or her power, and it did so by means of the ritual of investigation and the ceremony of executionthe reality and horror of which was suppositious to express the omnipotence of the sovereign but demonstrablely revealed that the sovereigns power depended on the participation of the people.Torture was made public in order to create fear in the people, and to force them to participate in the method of control by agreeing with its verdicts. But problem s arose in cases in which the people by dint of their actions disagreed with the sovereign, by heroizing the victim (admiring the courage in facing death) or in moving to physi augury free the criminal or to redistribute the effect of the strategically deployed power. Thus, he argues, the public execution was ultimately an ineffective use of the body, qualified as non-economical. As well, it was applied non-uniformly and haphazardly. Hence, its political cost was likewise high. It was the antithesis of the more juvenile concerns of the state order and generalization. So it had to be reform to allow for greater stability of property for the bourgeoisie.PunishmentThe switch to prison was not immediate. There was a more graded change, though it ran its course rapidly. prison was preceded by a different form of public spectacle. The flying field of public torture gave way to public chain gangs. Punishment became comfortable, though not for humanitarian reasons, Foucault suggests . He argues that reformists were unhappy with the unpredictable, unevenly distributed nature of the violence the sovereign would inflict on the convict.The sovereigns effective to punish was so disproportionate that it was ineffective and uncontrolled. Reformists felt the power to punish and judge should become more evenly distributed, the states power must be a form of public power. This, according to Foucault, was of more concern to reformists than humanitarian arguments. Out of this movement towards generalized penalization, a gibibyte mini-theatres of punishment would have been created wherein the convicts bodies would have been put on display in a more ubiquitous, controlled, and effective spectacle. Prisoners would have been forced to do work that meditateed their crime, thus repaying society for their infractions.This would have allowed the public to see the convicts bodies enacting their punishment, and thus to reflect on the crime. But these experiments lasted less tha n twenty years. Foucault argues that this theory of gentle punishment represented the first step away from the excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more generalized and controlled means of punishment. But he suggests that the shift towards prison that followed was the run of a invigorated technology and ontology for the body being developed in the 18th century, the technology of discipline, and the ontology of man as machine.DisciplineThe emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Foucault. He looks at the development of highly refined forms of discipline, of discipline concerned with the smallest and most precise aspects of a persons body. Discipline, he suggests, developed a new economy and politics for bodies. Modern institutions undeniable that bodies must be individuated according to their tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. Therefore, he argues, discipline created a whole new form of identity element for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today. The individuality that discipline constructs (for the bodies it controls) has four characteristics, namely it makes individuality which is * Cellulardetermining the spacial distribution of the bodies* Organicensuring that the activities required of the bodies are natural for them * Genetic haughty the evolution over time of the activities of the bodies * Combinatoryallowing for the combination of the force of many another(prenominal) bodies into a single massive force Foucault suggests this individuality can be implemented in systems that are officially egalitarian, but use discipline to construct non-egalitarian power relations Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically overriding class was mantled by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms put forwardd the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines. (222)Foucaults argument is that discipline creates docile bodies, ideal for the new economics, politics and warfare of the modern industrial age bodies that function in factories, legitimate military regiments, and school classrooms. But, to construct docile bodies the disciplinary institutions must be able to (a) never-endingly observe and record the bodies they control and (b) ensure the internal ization of the disciplinary individuality within the bodies being controlled. That is, discipline must come about without excessive force through careful observation, and molding of the bodies into the reform form through this observation. This requires a particular form of institution, exemplified, Foucault argues, by Jeremy Benthams Panopticon. This architectural model, though it was never adopted by architects according to Benthams exact blueprint, becomes an important conceptuality of power relations for prison reformers of the 19th Century, and its general principle is a recurring theme in modern prison construction.The Panopticon was the ultimate realization of a modern disciplinary institution. It allowed for constant observation characterized by an unequal gaze the constant possibility of observation. possibly the most important feature of the panopticon was that it was specifically intentional so that the prisoner could never be sure whether they were being observed at any moment. The unequal gaze caused the internalization of disciplinary individuality, and the docile body required of its inmates.This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they believe they are being watched, even if they are not. Thus, prisons, and specifically those that follow the model of the Panopticon, provide the ideal form of modern punishment. Foucault argues that this is why the generalized, gentle punishment of public work gangs gave way to the prison. It was the ideal modernization of punishment, so its ultimate dominance was natural. Having laid out the emergence of the prison as the dominant form of punishment, Foucault devotes the rest of the book to examining its precise form and function in our society, laying bare the reasons for its continued use, and questioning the assumed results of its use.PrisonIn examining the construction of the prison as the central means of criminal punishment, Foucault builds a case for the idea that prison became part of a larger carceral system that has become an all-encompassing sovereign institution in modern society. Prison is one part of a vast network, including schools, military institutions, hospitals, and factories, which build a panoptic society for its members. This system creates disciplinary careers6 for those locked within its corridors. It is operated under the scientific authority ofmedicine, psychology, and criminology. Moreover, it operates according to principles that ensure that it cannot fail to produce delinquents.7 Delinquency, indeed, is produced when social bantam crime ( such as taking wood from the lords lands) is no longer tolerated, creating a class of specialized delinquents acting as the laws proxy in watchfulness of society.The structures Foucault chooses to use as his starting line positions help highlight his conclusions. In particular, his choice as a correct prison of the penal institution at Mettray helps personify the carceral system. Within it is include the Prison, the School, the Church, and the work-house (industry) all of which feature heavily in his argument. The prisons at Neufchatel, Mettray, and Mettray Netherlandswere perfect examples for Foucault, because they, even in their original state, began to show the traits Foucault was searching for. They showed the body of knowledge being developed about the prisoners, the creation of the delinquent class, and the disciplinary careers emerging.Criticism suppositional arguments in favor of rejecting the Foucauldian model of Panopticism may be considered under quint general headings 1) Displacement of the encompassing ideal by mechanisms of seduction, 2) Redundancy of the seeable impulse brought about by the evident durability of the self-surveillance functions which partly constitute the normal, socialized, Western subject, 3) Reduction in the number of occasions of any liable need for Panoptical surveillance on account of simulation, prediction and action sooner the fact, 4 ) Supplementation of the Panopticon by the Synopticon,5) Failure of Panoptical control to produce reliably docile subjects.9 The first point concerns Zygmunt Baumans argument that the lead story principle of social order has moved from Panopticism to seduction. This argument is elaborated in his 1998 essay On postmodern uses of sex.10 The second argument concerns surveillance redundance, and it is increasingly relevant in the age of Facebook and online self-disclosure. Is the metaphor of a panopticon earmark for voluntary surrender of privacy? The third argument for post-Panopticism, concerning action before the fact, is articulated by William Bogard The figure of the Panopticon is already haunted by a parallel figure of simulation. Surveillance, we are told, is discreet, unobtrusive, camouflaged, unverifiable all elements of artifice designed into an architectural arrangement of spaces to produce real effects of discipline.Eventually this pull up stakes lead, by its means of pe rfection, to the elimination of the Panopticon itself . . . surveillance as its own simulation. directly it is no longer a matter of the press forward at which data is gained to defeat an enemy. . . . Now, one can simulate a space of control, regard an indefinite number of courses of action, train for each possibility, and react immediately with pre-programmed responses to the actual course of events . . . with simulation, sight and foresight, actual and virtual begin to merge. . . . Increasingly the technological enlargement of the field of perceptual control, the erasure of distance in the speed of electronic information has pushed surveillance beyond the very limits of speed toward the purest forms of anticipation.11 This pleasing of anticipation is particularly evident in rising surveillance technologies such as social network analysis.The Synopticon concerns the surveillance of the few by the many.12 Examples of this pattern of surveillance may include the theatre, the C oliseum, and celebrity tabloid reporting. This reversal of the Panoptical polarity may have become so marked that it at last deconstructs the Panoptical metaphor altogether.9 Finally, the fifth point concerns the self-defeating nature of Panoptical regimes. The failure of surveillance states is illustrated by examples such as prison riots, asylum sub-cultures, ego survival in Gulag or concentration camp, and retribalization in the Balkans.9 In their 2007 article, Dobson and Fisher13 lay out an alternative model of post-panopticism as they identify three panoptic models. Panopticism I refers to Jeremy Benthams original conceptualization of the panopticon, and is it the model of panopticism that Foucault responds to in Discipline and Punish. Panopticism II refers to an Orwellian Big brother ideal of surveillance.Panopticism III, the final model of panopticism, refers to the high-technology human tracking systems that are emergent in this 21st century. These geographical information systems (GIS) include technologies such as cellphone GPS, RFIDs (radio-frequency identification tags), and geo-fences. Panopticism III is also distinguished by its cost Panopticon III is affordable, effective, and available to anyone who wants to use it. Initial purchase prices and monthly work fees are equivalent to cell-phone costs. In less than five years, the cost of incessant surveillance of a single individual has dropped from several hundred thousand dollars per year to less than $500 per year. Surveillance formerly justified wholly for national security and high-stakes commerce is readily available to track a spouse, child, parent, employee, neighbor, or stranger.