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Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
In the Middle Ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. The economic changes and growing popular dissent of the 18th century made necessary a more systematic control over the individual members of society, and this in effect meant a change from punishment, which chastised the body, to reform, which touched the soul. Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control - and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole. He also reveals that between school, factories, barracks and hospitals all share a common organization, in which it is possible to control the use of an individual's time and space hour by hour.
337 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1975
About the author
Michel Foucault
685 books5,694 followersPaul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationships between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
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May 26, 2013
This book begins with a bang – in fact, a series of bangs. That is the point, you see. We need to be shocked about what is, after all, our relatively recent past. We too easily forget that there was a time when ‘people like us’ actually span back in history for nearly as far as the mind could imagine. Now, we struggle to believe that people who lived 20 or 30 years ago where quite like us – even when we ourselves were those people. Today we cast off selves and disown past selves like our endlessly cheap clothes – cheaper to buy than to wash, as someone pointed out recently – or like snakes and their skins, cicadas and their chrysalises. For, as Foucault points out here, the point of history isn’t for us to understand the past – that is dead and gone and has only the meaning we can give it from our vantage point – the point of history is to provide the narrative that helps us to understand the present.
I want to start with one of the quotes that go off with a bang at the start of this book – that shock us by how distant our world seems moved from that of a few hundred years ago:
“…in 1584 the assassin of William of Orange was abandoned to what seems like an infinity of vengeance. 'On the first day, he was taken to the square where he found a cauldron of boiling water, in which was submerged the arm with which he had committed the crime. The next day the arm was cut off, and, since it fell at his feet, he was constantly kicking it up and down the scaffold; on the third day, red-hot pincers were applied to his breasts and the front of his arm; on the fourth day, the pincers were applied similarly on the back of his arm and on his buttocks; and thus, consecutively, this man was tortured for eighteen days.' On the last day, he was put to the wheel and 'mailloté' [beaten with a wooden club]. After six hours, he was still asking for water, which was not given him. 'Finally the police magistrate was begged to put an end to him by strangling, so that his soul should not despair and be lost'.”
The spectacle of eighteen days of public torture seems extraordinary to us. Perhaps what is most shocking is the level of vengeance that is taken on the body of the guilty man. A transgression of the law – and the law at the time was represented in the body and in the will of the king – was equally revenged on the body of the transgressor.
The problem was that this expression of state power was far too often arbitrary and grossly overwrought. As in the example above, the vengeance of the state seems to know no bounds. However, and I guess ironically too, the state (king) was also able to pardon – that is, reserved the right to decide when and how the law might be applied – and this arbitrary law effectively undermined the state’s own moral authority.
We like to see our world as one on a kind of slow incline towards progress. And, let’s face it, it would be hard to read the description above and not think that from that particular south pole of inhumanity no matter which way we might have gone would have probably been ‘up’.
Our particular path up from that nadir was to decided that it was unreasonable to punish people’s bodies, that what we needed was to punish (or correct, rather) their souls. Now, this is only partly true, for as Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prove, we still like to get off on torture. All the same, there was a clear shift in policy away from torture of bodies towards using punishment as means of making an example of the criminal and also perhaps being able to reform them. The focus shifted to the souls of the wrong doers – but also on the social consequences of their crimes. It wasn’t any longer a matter of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, instead you might get punished more for a crime that might hardly harm any one single person, but have large social consequences. Punishments were increasingly seen as ways of improving both the individual and society – and therefore punishments tended to need to be seen as being ‘just’ – rather than an arbitrary expression of the will of the ruler. That is, punishments could no longer be ‘excessive’ in the way they had been before. They had to ‘match’ the crime. The punishment had to make risking doing the crime simply not worth it. The punishment also had to encourage the criminal to live a good life, that is, the punishment ought to make the crime abhorrent to the criminal.
That is, punishment needed a pedagogical function – it needs to teach the criminal the ‘right way’ to live one’s life. I couldn’t help, throughout this book, thinking of ‘re-education camps’ and how we imagine changing a label from re-education to rehabilitation can allow us believe what we do is so much better than what those nasty communists did. To understand how to be good requires a particular kind of knowledge. Knowledge, then, is a direct consequence of power, of state power – and true knowledge is aligned with the exercise of power. Ok, that might sound like rubbish – but I think it is a remarkably interesting point. To punish someone now means two things, you have some idea of what is the right way to live a life and that if you inflict a certain punishment on a person that punishment will thereby make them a better person. Ever since Socrates the idea has been that if someone understands ‘the good’ then they must also act in accordance with that knowledge. Well, if people are acting in ways that are not in accordance with the laws (and the laws are, naturally enough, to those who make them, completely rational and totally in accordance with ‘the good’) then the role of punishment isn’t so much to get revenge on those who break the laws, but rather, to help them to better understand the good – that is, to help them to become rational agents in society. Punishment is about re-educating those who transgress society’s laws because only those without reason would ever break these laws. Knowledge and Law and therefore also Power are all instances of the same thing.
There is a wonderful bit in Stephen Fry’s Moab is My Washpot where he says that having been at an English Public School meant that he had much less difficulty adjusting to prison life than other people. That a boarding school was run in much the same way that a prison is run and so it all seemed quite normal to him. This is Foucault’s point exactly, I think.
I need to talk about how you change people’s souls now – and therefore I need to talk about Foucault’s most fascinating metaphor – that of Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon was designed to be an ‘ideal prison’ – and it was literally ideal, never actually having been built. The point is that the ‘ideal’ often helps explain the actual world. It is probably easier if you just Google Panopticon – but the basic idea is to build a prison in which all of the cells are in the circumference of a circular building while at the centre of the circular prison there is a tower. Inside the tower is a guard (or citizens who have dropped by to see that the prisoners are reforming). The cells on the circumference of the circular building all have two windows – one facing into the centre of the building and the other on the opposite wall looking out. The second window looking out provides light into the cell – the window facing the tower means that the prisoner can be watched at any time of the day or night by the guard. The whole thing is designed so that the prisoner just doesn't know if or when the guard is watching – but the prisoner does know that there is no time when the guard will definitely not be watching. It is all a bit like God – constantly watching to constantly provide you with a conscience (or what is the next best thing to a conscience, as you act as if you are doing right for its own sake, even though you are doing right just in case you get caught doing wrong).
There was also the problem of having lots of criminals in one place that needed to be addressed so as to stop that one place becoming a university of criminality. So, prisoners were not allowed to talk to one another. And they were kept in isolation for long periods of time. All the better to allow the voice of the prisoner’s conscience to work on them and thereby to help teach them right from wrong.
The secret to right moral action, then, is more than just the relationship between knowledge and power – but also of proper surveillance. And surveillance now dominates our lives. And not just the cameras that are everywhere filming our every movement. But also in our obsession with tests in schools and performance reviews at work. To Foucault, the panopticon was not just a model for the ideal prison, but also for the ideal hospital, factory and school. He points out that this surveillance has meant turning our lives into texts. There was a time when only the heroes of our world had books written about them - today we are our high school report cards, our credit ratings, our performance review results, our medical history cards.
One of the things Foucault does that I find utterly fascinating is to look at the etymology of words and to show how earlier meanings hang around the word’s usage today like ghosts. In this book he points out that the word discipline has always had the dual meaning it has today – a discipline as an area of study and discipline as in being forced to behave correctly. This seems terribly important to me.
Like in Orwell’s 1984 – the terrifying vision here is that power always acts in ways that are essentially inhuman. I’m certainly not advocating going back to a time when killing a king might involve you in 18 days of unspeakable torture – but then, one has only to read The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism to know we use torture today in ways that would make O’Brien blush with pride. We are shocked when we learn of the surveillance used by the Stasi – and rightly so – but we actively sign up so that international corporations can monitor every single item we purchase so as to better sell to us because they might agree to giving us a free chocolate bar every year or so. But then, what is the point of freedom and privacy if you can’t trade it for some chocolate?
This is a very disturbing book – it is also a must read.
I want to start with one of the quotes that go off with a bang at the start of this book – that shock us by how distant our world seems moved from that of a few hundred years ago:
“…in 1584 the assassin of William of Orange was abandoned to what seems like an infinity of vengeance. 'On the first day, he was taken to the square where he found a cauldron of boiling water, in which was submerged the arm with which he had committed the crime. The next day the arm was cut off, and, since it fell at his feet, he was constantly kicking it up and down the scaffold; on the third day, red-hot pincers were applied to his breasts and the front of his arm; on the fourth day, the pincers were applied similarly on the back of his arm and on his buttocks; and thus, consecutively, this man was tortured for eighteen days.' On the last day, he was put to the wheel and 'mailloté' [beaten with a wooden club]. After six hours, he was still asking for water, which was not given him. 'Finally the police magistrate was begged to put an end to him by strangling, so that his soul should not despair and be lost'.”
The spectacle of eighteen days of public torture seems extraordinary to us. Perhaps what is most shocking is the level of vengeance that is taken on the body of the guilty man. A transgression of the law – and the law at the time was represented in the body and in the will of the king – was equally revenged on the body of the transgressor.
The problem was that this expression of state power was far too often arbitrary and grossly overwrought. As in the example above, the vengeance of the state seems to know no bounds. However, and I guess ironically too, the state (king) was also able to pardon – that is, reserved the right to decide when and how the law might be applied – and this arbitrary law effectively undermined the state’s own moral authority.
We like to see our world as one on a kind of slow incline towards progress. And, let’s face it, it would be hard to read the description above and not think that from that particular south pole of inhumanity no matter which way we might have gone would have probably been ‘up’.
Our particular path up from that nadir was to decided that it was unreasonable to punish people’s bodies, that what we needed was to punish (or correct, rather) their souls. Now, this is only partly true, for as Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prove, we still like to get off on torture. All the same, there was a clear shift in policy away from torture of bodies towards using punishment as means of making an example of the criminal and also perhaps being able to reform them. The focus shifted to the souls of the wrong doers – but also on the social consequences of their crimes. It wasn’t any longer a matter of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, instead you might get punished more for a crime that might hardly harm any one single person, but have large social consequences. Punishments were increasingly seen as ways of improving both the individual and society – and therefore punishments tended to need to be seen as being ‘just’ – rather than an arbitrary expression of the will of the ruler. That is, punishments could no longer be ‘excessive’ in the way they had been before. They had to ‘match’ the crime. The punishment had to make risking doing the crime simply not worth it. The punishment also had to encourage the criminal to live a good life, that is, the punishment ought to make the crime abhorrent to the criminal.
That is, punishment needed a pedagogical function – it needs to teach the criminal the ‘right way’ to live one’s life. I couldn’t help, throughout this book, thinking of ‘re-education camps’ and how we imagine changing a label from re-education to rehabilitation can allow us believe what we do is so much better than what those nasty communists did. To understand how to be good requires a particular kind of knowledge. Knowledge, then, is a direct consequence of power, of state power – and true knowledge is aligned with the exercise of power. Ok, that might sound like rubbish – but I think it is a remarkably interesting point. To punish someone now means two things, you have some idea of what is the right way to live a life and that if you inflict a certain punishment on a person that punishment will thereby make them a better person. Ever since Socrates the idea has been that if someone understands ‘the good’ then they must also act in accordance with that knowledge. Well, if people are acting in ways that are not in accordance with the laws (and the laws are, naturally enough, to those who make them, completely rational and totally in accordance with ‘the good’) then the role of punishment isn’t so much to get revenge on those who break the laws, but rather, to help them to better understand the good – that is, to help them to become rational agents in society. Punishment is about re-educating those who transgress society’s laws because only those without reason would ever break these laws. Knowledge and Law and therefore also Power are all instances of the same thing.
There is a wonderful bit in Stephen Fry’s Moab is My Washpot where he says that having been at an English Public School meant that he had much less difficulty adjusting to prison life than other people. That a boarding school was run in much the same way that a prison is run and so it all seemed quite normal to him. This is Foucault’s point exactly, I think.
I need to talk about how you change people’s souls now – and therefore I need to talk about Foucault’s most fascinating metaphor – that of Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon was designed to be an ‘ideal prison’ – and it was literally ideal, never actually having been built. The point is that the ‘ideal’ often helps explain the actual world. It is probably easier if you just Google Panopticon – but the basic idea is to build a prison in which all of the cells are in the circumference of a circular building while at the centre of the circular prison there is a tower. Inside the tower is a guard (or citizens who have dropped by to see that the prisoners are reforming). The cells on the circumference of the circular building all have two windows – one facing into the centre of the building and the other on the opposite wall looking out. The second window looking out provides light into the cell – the window facing the tower means that the prisoner can be watched at any time of the day or night by the guard. The whole thing is designed so that the prisoner just doesn't know if or when the guard is watching – but the prisoner does know that there is no time when the guard will definitely not be watching. It is all a bit like God – constantly watching to constantly provide you with a conscience (or what is the next best thing to a conscience, as you act as if you are doing right for its own sake, even though you are doing right just in case you get caught doing wrong).
There was also the problem of having lots of criminals in one place that needed to be addressed so as to stop that one place becoming a university of criminality. So, prisoners were not allowed to talk to one another. And they were kept in isolation for long periods of time. All the better to allow the voice of the prisoner’s conscience to work on them and thereby to help teach them right from wrong.
The secret to right moral action, then, is more than just the relationship between knowledge and power – but also of proper surveillance. And surveillance now dominates our lives. And not just the cameras that are everywhere filming our every movement. But also in our obsession with tests in schools and performance reviews at work. To Foucault, the panopticon was not just a model for the ideal prison, but also for the ideal hospital, factory and school. He points out that this surveillance has meant turning our lives into texts. There was a time when only the heroes of our world had books written about them - today we are our high school report cards, our credit ratings, our performance review results, our medical history cards.
One of the things Foucault does that I find utterly fascinating is to look at the etymology of words and to show how earlier meanings hang around the word’s usage today like ghosts. In this book he points out that the word discipline has always had the dual meaning it has today – a discipline as an area of study and discipline as in being forced to behave correctly. This seems terribly important to me.
Like in Orwell’s 1984 – the terrifying vision here is that power always acts in ways that are essentially inhuman. I’m certainly not advocating going back to a time when killing a king might involve you in 18 days of unspeakable torture – but then, one has only to read The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism to know we use torture today in ways that would make O’Brien blush with pride. We are shocked when we learn of the surveillance used by the Stasi – and rightly so – but we actively sign up so that international corporations can monitor every single item we purchase so as to better sell to us because they might agree to giving us a free chocolate bar every year or so. But then, what is the point of freedom and privacy if you can’t trade it for some chocolate?
This is a very disturbing book – it is also a must read.
November 1, 2021
Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison = Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a 1975 book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault.
It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France.
Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists.
He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Prison used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و ششم ماه آگوست سال 1999میلادی
عنوان: مراقبت و تنبیه: تولد زندان؛ اثر: میشل فوکو؛ ترحمه: نیکو سرخوش؛ افشین جهاندیده؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، نشر نی، سال1378، در391ص، مصور، شابک9789643124328؛ چاپ دوم سال1378، چاپ چهارم سال1382، چاپ ششم سال1385، چاپ هشتم سال1388، چاپ یازدهم سال1392؛ کتابنامه به صورت زیرنویس، نمایه دارد، موضوع زندان، انضباط، ثواب و عقاب از نویسندگان فرانسه - سده 20م
با عنوان فرعی: «زایش زندان»، عنوان کتابی از «میشل فوکو» فیلسوف فرانسوی است، «فوکو» در سالهای1972میلادی و1973میلادی، سخنرانیهایی در «فرانسه»، و «برزیل»، شامل «بررسی جامعهٔ جزایی و قدرت قضایی» انجام دادند؛ همان پژوهش در سال1975میلادی به انتشار کتاب «مراقبت و تنبیه: زایش زندان» انجامید؛
در این کتاب، «فوکو» دودمان شکل گیری کالبد و ذهن را، در چارچوب نظامهای مراقبتی، و انضباطی قدرت، مورد پژوهش قرار میدهند، و مدعی هستند، که در نهادهایی همچون «مدارس»، «زندانها»، «بیمارستانها»، و «کارگاهها»، تکنیکهای انضباطی ویژه، به کار میرود، و در چهارچوب آنها، مقررات حاکم بر رفتار، و سلوک، اقدامات مراقبتی، و شیوه های نظارت بر آنها تدوین، و به اجرا درمیآید؛
زندگی «دانش آموزان»، «سربازان»، «بیماران»، و «زندانیان»، در معرض مراقبت و نظارت، و تهیه ی گزارش قرار میگیرد، و رفتار بهنجار مورد تشویق، و رفتار نامطلوب، با اقدامات تنبیهی، مواجه میشوند؛ هدف غایی مراقبت و نظارت و انضباط، بهنجار نمودن فرد، و از میان بردن بی انضباطیهای اجتماعی، و روانی، و سرانجام تربیت انسانهایی مطیع، و سودآور، برای جامعه است؛
فوکو میگویند: (در شیوه های مراقبتی، و کیفری ماقبل مدرن، روشهای وحشیانه شکنجه، و آزار بدنی، به کار میرفت؛ اما به تدریج از سده ی هیجدهم میلادی به بعد، مجازاتهای بدنی، جای خود را، به مجازاتهای ظریف روانی داد؛ از آن تاریخ مجازاتهای جدید، روح را آماج یورش خود قرار داد، مجموعه ی کیفرشناسی جدید، به سوی مراقبت فراگیر، بازگردانده شد؛ از آن تاریخ به بعد، زندانها، مدارس، و آسایشگاه های روانی، به منظومه هایی از نظارت فراگیر، تبدیل شدند، که فرد را، در معرض مراقبت دائمی، و بدون وقفه، قرار میداد، و به تهیه پرونده، و گزارشهایی تفصیلی، از رفتار فرد، و تدوین شناخت شناسانه از آن داده ها، یاری میرساند)؛ پایان نقل
در این منظومه که «فوکو» آنرا «میکروسکوپ قدرت» مینامند، گفتمان علمی، اجتماعی، و کیفیات سیاسی قدرت، و ذهنیت فردی، با هم تلاقی میکنند، و به صورتی ظریف، و پیچیده، بر یکدیگر تأثیر میگذارند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 15/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 09/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a 1975 book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault.
It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France.
Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists.
He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Prison used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و ششم ماه آگوست سال 1999میلادی
عنوان: مراقبت و تنبیه: تولد زندان؛ اثر: میشل فوکو؛ ترحمه: نیکو سرخوش؛ افشین جهاندیده؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، نشر نی، سال1378، در391ص، مصور، شابک9789643124328؛ چاپ دوم سال1378، چاپ چهارم سال1382، چاپ ششم سال1385، چاپ هشتم سال1388، چاپ یازدهم سال1392؛ کتابنامه به صورت زیرنویس، نمایه دارد، موضوع زندان، انضباط، ثواب و عقاب از نویسندگان فرانسه - سده 20م
با عنوان فرعی: «زایش زندان»، عنوان کتابی از «میشل فوکو» فیلسوف فرانسوی است، «فوکو» در سالهای1972میلادی و1973میلادی، سخنرانیهایی در «فرانسه»، و «برزیل»، شامل «بررسی جامعهٔ جزایی و قدرت قضایی» انجام دادند؛ همان پژوهش در سال1975میلادی به انتشار کتاب «مراقبت و تنبیه: زایش زندان» انجامید؛
در این کتاب، «فوکو» دودمان شکل گیری کالبد و ذهن را، در چارچوب نظامهای مراقبتی، و انضباطی قدرت، مورد پژوهش قرار میدهند، و مدعی هستند، که در نهادهایی همچون «مدارس»، «زندانها»، «بیمارستانها»، و «کارگاهها»، تکنیکهای انضباطی ویژه، به کار میرود، و در چهارچوب آنها، مقررات حاکم بر رفتار، و سلوک، اقدامات مراقبتی، و شیوه های نظارت بر آنها تدوین، و به اجرا درمیآید؛
زندگی «دانش آموزان»، «سربازان»، «بیماران»، و «زندانیان»، در معرض مراقبت و نظارت، و تهیه ی گزارش قرار میگیرد، و رفتار بهنجار مورد تشویق، و رفتار نامطلوب، با اقدامات تنبیهی، مواجه میشوند؛ هدف غایی مراقبت و نظارت و انضباط، بهنجار نمودن فرد، و از میان بردن بی انضباطیهای اجتماعی، و روانی، و سرانجام تربیت انسانهایی مطیع، و سودآور، برای جامعه است؛
فوکو میگویند: (در شیوه های مراقبتی، و کیفری ماقبل مدرن، روشهای وحشیانه شکنجه، و آزار بدنی، به کار میرفت؛ اما به تدریج از سده ی هیجدهم میلادی به بعد، مجازاتهای بدنی، جای خود را، به مجازاتهای ظریف روانی داد؛ از آن تاریخ مجازاتهای جدید، روح را آماج یورش خود قرار داد، مجموعه ی کیفرشناسی جدید، به سوی مراقبت فراگیر، بازگردانده شد؛ از آن تاریخ به بعد، زندانها، مدارس، و آسایشگاه های روانی، به منظومه هایی از نظارت فراگیر، تبدیل شدند، که فرد را، در معرض مراقبت دائمی، و بدون وقفه، قرار میداد، و به تهیه پرونده، و گزارشهایی تفصیلی، از رفتار فرد، و تدوین شناخت شناسانه از آن داده ها، یاری میرساند)؛ پایان نقل
در این منظومه که «فوکو» آنرا «میکروسکوپ قدرت» مینامند، گفتمان علمی، اجتماعی، و کیفیات سیاسی قدرت، و ذهنیت فردی، با هم تلاقی میکنند، و به صورتی ظریف، و پیچیده، بر یکدیگر تأثیر میگذارند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 15/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 09/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
June 14, 2024
I knew nothing of Michel Foucault's work. So, what prompted me to choose this book? Perhaps Michel Foucault was one of the great French intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century and a reference for many thinkers and philosophers.
Therefore, it is a novice criticism without any pretension. Still, it is undoubtedly good sometimes to look at works so much praised and commented on without any erudition.
I understood why Michel Foucault had acquired this fame from the first chapters. The divination of his analysis and the originality of his observations can only leave you speechless. It is a highly documented work. The author has conducted exhaustive research to include/understand the penitentiary system's current problems (in 1970). This genuine work as a historian led him to broaden his field of analysis to the organizational practices of our societies with the appearance, in the 16th century, of disciplinary structures inherited from monastic rules. These explain the gradual shift from justice as an authority's expression and power of a sovereign to a judge of control of normality.
Indeed, the prison is, according to Michel Foucault, only the tree that hides the forest. Suppose these elementary principles, panoptic control (seeing without being seen) and disciplinary rules of life, have never been called into question despite the perpetual failures of the system (crimes and misdemeanors have never diminished). In that case, these principles also apply to the control of populations by our political system. Disciplinary recurrence proves Foucault correct: in schools, in barracks, in hospitals, and the world of work, everything is subject to discipline. We categorize, separate, and divide in time and space to normalize and subjugate to better control.
These reflections echo in 2008 with the current questions of generalized computer filing, the development of video surveillance, and the lowering of the age of penalization to twelve years! This dramatic underlining, if not that of putting even more people into the circuit of delinquency, that of the most exposed classes, the unprotected classes, the poorest classes, this accentuation would have, at least in no doubt, made Michel Foucault react.
How is it proper not to protest when politicians stigmatize petty criminals, who are, according to them, responsible for all the evils of our daily lives? Meanwhile, the kings of finance live far from the cameras, sheltered from all suspicion, peacefully continuing to disregard the laws that guarantee our living together.
Here then! I understand why I suddenly wanted to read this introductory essay.
Therefore, it is a novice criticism without any pretension. Still, it is undoubtedly good sometimes to look at works so much praised and commented on without any erudition.
I understood why Michel Foucault had acquired this fame from the first chapters. The divination of his analysis and the originality of his observations can only leave you speechless. It is a highly documented work. The author has conducted exhaustive research to include/understand the penitentiary system's current problems (in 1970). This genuine work as a historian led him to broaden his field of analysis to the organizational practices of our societies with the appearance, in the 16th century, of disciplinary structures inherited from monastic rules. These explain the gradual shift from justice as an authority's expression and power of a sovereign to a judge of control of normality.
Indeed, the prison is, according to Michel Foucault, only the tree that hides the forest. Suppose these elementary principles, panoptic control (seeing without being seen) and disciplinary rules of life, have never been called into question despite the perpetual failures of the system (crimes and misdemeanors have never diminished). In that case, these principles also apply to the control of populations by our political system. Disciplinary recurrence proves Foucault correct: in schools, in barracks, in hospitals, and the world of work, everything is subject to discipline. We categorize, separate, and divide in time and space to normalize and subjugate to better control.
These reflections echo in 2008 with the current questions of generalized computer filing, the development of video surveillance, and the lowering of the age of penalization to twelve years! This dramatic underlining, if not that of putting even more people into the circuit of delinquency, that of the most exposed classes, the unprotected classes, the poorest classes, this accentuation would have, at least in no doubt, made Michel Foucault react.
How is it proper not to protest when politicians stigmatize petty criminals, who are, according to them, responsible for all the evils of our daily lives? Meanwhile, the kings of finance live far from the cameras, sheltered from all suspicion, peacefully continuing to disregard the laws that guarantee our living together.
Here then! I understand why I suddenly wanted to read this introductory essay.
July 17, 2024
This is the to-die-for cornucopia of the absolute-zero straight goods on how Society has morphed (in my and Foucault’s own lifetime) into a Prison.
It is ALL due that meddling 18th Century Utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham.
Jerry B. wanted to misguidedly make the world into Best of All Possible Worlds for the majority of people...
Read the people that matter - the Movers and the Shakers. Some animals are just more equal than others.
Now, these head honchos’ dream world is one that’s orderly.
So suddenly it was so - on the outside. Inside, we all live on incredibly sharp tenterhooks.
And they’ve Zapped our Little Brains. Want FRIES with that, fellas?
Foucault has Aced Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon, AKA electronic wizardry compiling its records: Everything You Ever Wanted to know About Anyone but are Afraid to Ask.
Gotta keep your heads screwed up tight...
So now, it’s ALWAYS time for the Big Panopticon’s next big move.
No matter how they slice and dice you, what they get is ALWAYS Juicy.
We’re dead to rights.
Good night and sleep tight…
Like the sound of this?
If your head isn’t screwed on tight (like me) you’ll love it.
For this is the true, unexpurgated Story of Modern Times.
Five totally zapped stars, guys!
This is the Straight Goods.
It is ALL due that meddling 18th Century Utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham.
Jerry B. wanted to misguidedly make the world into Best of All Possible Worlds for the majority of people...
Read the people that matter - the Movers and the Shakers. Some animals are just more equal than others.
Now, these head honchos’ dream world is one that’s orderly.
So suddenly it was so - on the outside. Inside, we all live on incredibly sharp tenterhooks.
And they’ve Zapped our Little Brains. Want FRIES with that, fellas?
Foucault has Aced Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon, AKA electronic wizardry compiling its records: Everything You Ever Wanted to know About Anyone but are Afraid to Ask.
Gotta keep your heads screwed up tight...
So now, it’s ALWAYS time for the Big Panopticon’s next big move.
No matter how they slice and dice you, what they get is ALWAYS Juicy.
We’re dead to rights.
Good night and sleep tight…
Like the sound of this?
If your head isn’t screwed on tight (like me) you’ll love it.
For this is the true, unexpurgated Story of Modern Times.
Five totally zapped stars, guys!
This is the Straight Goods.
January 8, 2016
“Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise.”
― Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
I've had this book for nearly twenty years on myself. Before a couple weeks ago I never quite found myself in the "right" mood for a French post-structural look at power, prisons, and punishment. It is interesting reading this and thinking about how influential Foucault was in the modern criticisms of the penal system, and various areas of control (schools, hospitals, psychiatric facilities, the military and prisons).
I didn't realize until I read the prologue that the "Disciple" part of the title was originally Surveiller (Watch) et punir (Punish). It made sense back in the day to use discipline, but given the giant NSA observation issues, I kinda hope they consider changing the title at some point back to some variant of watch. That was a surprise part of the book that isn't communicated by discipline, and a part that is VERY relevant to the world we exist in.
Anyway, I could probably come up with some high-falutin reason to like or not like this book, but honestly, I kinda liked it, just not enough to put forward HUGE efforts of defense or evangelism. There were some of the obvious issues with a lot of postmodern historical books (big ideas, radical ways to look at things), but the damn flag is pretty high and pretty big and the pole is thin and isn't buried very deep. But God love Foucault and his big poles.
So, I still want to read his sexy books, his book on madness, and his book on the clinic, so I guess that makes this a four-star book. I don't want to read all of his stuff tomorrow, but I want to read more... but later, when nobody's watching.
― Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
I've had this book for nearly twenty years on myself. Before a couple weeks ago I never quite found myself in the "right" mood for a French post-structural look at power, prisons, and punishment. It is interesting reading this and thinking about how influential Foucault was in the modern criticisms of the penal system, and various areas of control (schools, hospitals, psychiatric facilities, the military and prisons).
I didn't realize until I read the prologue that the "Disciple" part of the title was originally Surveiller (Watch) et punir (Punish). It made sense back in the day to use discipline, but given the giant NSA observation issues, I kinda hope they consider changing the title at some point back to some variant of watch. That was a surprise part of the book that isn't communicated by discipline, and a part that is VERY relevant to the world we exist in.
Anyway, I could probably come up with some high-falutin reason to like or not like this book, but honestly, I kinda liked it, just not enough to put forward HUGE efforts of defense or evangelism. There were some of the obvious issues with a lot of postmodern historical books (big ideas, radical ways to look at things), but the damn flag is pretty high and pretty big and the pole is thin and isn't buried very deep. But God love Foucault and his big poles.
So, I still want to read his sexy books, his book on madness, and his book on the clinic, so I guess that makes this a four-star book. I don't want to read all of his stuff tomorrow, but I want to read more... but later, when nobody's watching.
January 14, 2024
Under (social) construction…
Preamble:
...Forgive the pun. This review is merely a reminder for when I revisit this book, although it continues to sink under new priorities.
--I read this book early on (thank goodness in a reading group) when I had limited critical historical foundations:
1) From Default Liberal to Idealist Anarchist:
--Thus, my vague baseline was status quo, default-liberal assumptions (think: cosmopolitan capitalism: ex. "multi-culturalism" rhetoric, while relying on the imperialist global division of labour).
--Thankfully, Chomsky took my “War on Terror” assumptions and flipped it upside upside-down (or right-side up) by filling in the 20th century context rather than relying on fear/ignorance/prejudice: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance
--Next, Graeber waltzed in with playful social imagination (i.e. "idealism": the focus on ideas driving history/social change) for the longer history: Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
--Motion sickness from these somersaults is to be expected; I read Foucault during this time, and his postmodernism only added to my disorientation.
...I later became aware of a crucial context: Chomsky/Graeber are both self-identified "anarchists", thus in dialogue/debate (often not openly, thus tricky to spot) with "Marxists" (who prioritize "materialism"; see later). This means Chomksy/Graeber will refrain from repeating Marxist analysis they agree with, so you need to read this elsewhere:
i) Chomsky: indeed, seems to cite Classical Liberals like Adam Smith more than Marx. Thankfully, Chomsky does cite historical materialists like David F. Noble (ex. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation), so I do not mean there cannot be materialist anarchists as there is much agreement (though often between the lines).
ii) Graeber: while Graeber's provocative rhetoric can create a mess (ex. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity), the best of Graeber still seeks a synthesis [from Direct Action: An Ethnography, bold emphases added]:
2) From "A People's History" to (Geo)Political Economy/Historical Materialism:
--This second half was missing in my repertoire when I read Foucault...
--An easy step from "anarchism" is to "A People's History", popularized by Zinn's A People's History of the United States. This is a lens of history/social change "from below", to counter the bias of "Great Man theory"/winners writing history (ex. why so much focus on the wealth of elites and not on the living conditions of the masses?).
--While geopolitical propaganda was crumbling for me thanks to Chomsky/Graeber, capitalist propaganda remained opaque. I needed structural critiques. World-systems theory (World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction) helped bridge history with political economy (i.e. dissecting capitalism's structures), which of course eventually led to Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1.
...Varoufakis (intro: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails) bridged Marx with Polanyi (historical capitalism's "Great Transformation" of labour/land/money markets) and Keynes (crises in global finance/trade). Hudson elaborated on the latter (The Bubble and Beyond) while the Patnaiks elaborated on imperialism, thus geopolitical economy (Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present).
--Finally, with capitalist propaganda cracking open, I started revisiting the structures of history that I started to explore with World-systems theory, in particular a materialist lens on history/social change ("historical materialism"), i.e. focusing on the interaction between material conditions and social relations, esp. production/distribution/reproduction/surplus and the corresponding class struggles/bargaining powers. Harman's A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium (see the link for my historical materialism checklist) tries to synthesis the "A People's History" lens with historical materialism.
...For intro to historical materialism, see "What is Politics?" video series , in particular these episodes:
-"6. Political Anthropology: When Communism Works and Why"
-"7. The Origins of Male Dominance and Hierarchy; what David Graeber and Jordan Peterson get wrong"
-"7.1 Material Conditions: Why You Can't Eliminate Sexism or Patriarchy by Changing Culture"
-"8. Materialism vs. Idealism: How Social Change Happens"
Highlights:
--Looking back on this book, my perception is a sprawling mess of connections minus Graeber’s clear and engaging presentation. The historical observations provided momentary grounding (although difficult to tie everything together), where the landmarks hint at further analysis in political economy: ex. comparing the function of punishment with the different systems of production, in particular the transition to an industrial economy requiring a "free" labour market:
--This required "corrective" detention. Idleness became criminalized, as time became increasingly quantified and controlled via surveillance (supervisors, Bentham's Panopticon). A "police-prison-delinquency circuit" formed based on a controlled "delinquency" and generalized policing. This now reminds me of the brutal workhouses to enforce work discipline in The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation.
--The Panopticon's method: power should be visible but unverifiable, a mechanized surveillance system where the possibility of surveillance prompts individuals to create self-discipline, some 200 years before our modern digital mass surveillance controversies:
-Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
-This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information
-When Google Met Wikileaks
--This is where it gets Foucauldian in terms of "power", where "Panocopticism" pervades over the scientific formation of knowledge and thus power: this starts in the 18th century, first in hospitals (i.e. examinations) and then in schools, workshops, armies, etc. As I work in health information, this was my most vivid recollection of the book.
--The sprawling web of connections conflicted with what I was learning from the best of physical/natural sciences (how to deal with confirmation bias/heuristics in pattern recognition, using careful study methodologies and meta-analysis):
-Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks
-I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That
…so we can avoid biases and untangle messes:
-ex. liberal materialism/physical sciences: How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future
-ex. liberal pop psychology/social science: Outliers: The Story of Success
-ex. vaporous critical theory: Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
-ex. undecipherable postmodern philosophy: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...
Next Encounter?:
--When I revisit, my game-plan starts with: revisit critical engagements with Foucault by Graeber's idealism, as well as Marxist historical materialism especially on the topic of “primitive accumulation” (the often-censored violence to set up and perpetuate capitalism). Relevant texts include:
-Federici’s Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (I recall there are critiques of Foucault)
-Perelman’s aforementioned The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation.
…If you’ve already done this and can save me some time, do share :)
--Note: “primitive accumulation”, despite being a critical concept, is a bit of a misnomer. It comes from Adam Smith’s assumption of an idyllic “previous accumulation” (so, "primitive" simply means "previous", not "barbaric" or "vulgar") where future capitalists first accumulated their capital through hard work.
...Marx critiqued this assumption at the end of Capital Volume 1, calling it “so-called primitive accumulation” to expose the actual history of violent “expropriation”. Later Marxists emphasized the fundamental continuity (as opposed to “previous” or “original”) of this expropriation by capitalism, ex. David Harvey's “accumulation by dispossession”). Marx on “so-called primitive accumulation” [Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, Ch.26, emphases added]:
Preamble:
...Forgive the pun. This review is merely a reminder for when I revisit this book, although it continues to sink under new priorities.
--I read this book early on (thank goodness in a reading group) when I had limited critical historical foundations:
1) From Default Liberal to Idealist Anarchist:
--Thus, my vague baseline was status quo, default-liberal assumptions (think: cosmopolitan capitalism: ex. "multi-culturalism" rhetoric, while relying on the imperialist global division of labour).
--Thankfully, Chomsky took my “War on Terror” assumptions and flipped it upside upside-down (or right-side up) by filling in the 20th century context rather than relying on fear/ignorance/prejudice: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance
--Next, Graeber waltzed in with playful social imagination (i.e. "idealism": the focus on ideas driving history/social change) for the longer history: Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
--Motion sickness from these somersaults is to be expected; I read Foucault during this time, and his postmodernism only added to my disorientation.
...I later became aware of a crucial context: Chomsky/Graeber are both self-identified "anarchists", thus in dialogue/debate (often not openly, thus tricky to spot) with "Marxists" (who prioritize "materialism"; see later). This means Chomksy/Graeber will refrain from repeating Marxist analysis they agree with, so you need to read this elsewhere:
i) Chomsky: indeed, seems to cite Classical Liberals like Adam Smith more than Marx. Thankfully, Chomsky does cite historical materialists like David F. Noble (ex. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation), so I do not mean there cannot be materialist anarchists as there is much agreement (though often between the lines).
ii) Graeber: while Graeber's provocative rhetoric can create a mess (ex. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity), the best of Graeber still seeks a synthesis [from Direct Action: An Ethnography, bold emphases added]:
It has always been these kinds of practical, moral questions that have tended to stir anarchist passions: What is direct action? What kind of tactics are beyond the pale and what sort of solidarity do we owe to those who employ them? Or: what is the most democratic way to conduct a meeting? At what point does organization stop being empowering and become stifling and bureaucratic? For analyses of the nature of the commodity form or the mechanics of alienation [i.e. capitalist structures, materialism], most [anarchists] have been content to draw on the written work of Marxist intellectuals (which are usually, themselves, drawn from ideas that originally percolated through a broader worker’s movement in which anarchists were very much involved). Which also means that, for all the bitter and often violent disagreements anarchists have had with Marxists about how to go about making a revolution, there has always been a kind of complementarity here, at least in potentia.
2) From "A People's History" to (Geo)Political Economy/Historical Materialism:
--This second half was missing in my repertoire when I read Foucault...
--An easy step from "anarchism" is to "A People's History", popularized by Zinn's A People's History of the United States. This is a lens of history/social change "from below", to counter the bias of "Great Man theory"/winners writing history (ex. why so much focus on the wealth of elites and not on the living conditions of the masses?).
--While geopolitical propaganda was crumbling for me thanks to Chomsky/Graeber, capitalist propaganda remained opaque. I needed structural critiques. World-systems theory (World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction) helped bridge history with political economy (i.e. dissecting capitalism's structures), which of course eventually led to Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1.
...Varoufakis (intro: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails) bridged Marx with Polanyi (historical capitalism's "Great Transformation" of labour/land/money markets) and Keynes (crises in global finance/trade). Hudson elaborated on the latter (The Bubble and Beyond) while the Patnaiks elaborated on imperialism, thus geopolitical economy (Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present).
--Finally, with capitalist propaganda cracking open, I started revisiting the structures of history that I started to explore with World-systems theory, in particular a materialist lens on history/social change ("historical materialism"), i.e. focusing on the interaction between material conditions and social relations, esp. production/distribution/reproduction/surplus and the corresponding class struggles/bargaining powers. Harman's A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium (see the link for my historical materialism checklist) tries to synthesis the "A People's History" lens with historical materialism.
...For intro to historical materialism, see "What is Politics?" video series , in particular these episodes:
-"6. Political Anthropology: When Communism Works and Why"
-"7. The Origins of Male Dominance and Hierarchy; what David Graeber and Jordan Peterson get wrong"
-"7.1 Material Conditions: Why You Can't Eliminate Sexism or Patriarchy by Changing Culture"
-"8. Materialism vs. Idealism: How Social Change Happens"
Highlights:
--Looking back on this book, my perception is a sprawling mess of connections minus Graeber’s clear and engaging presentation. The historical observations provided momentary grounding (although difficult to tie everything together), where the landmarks hint at further analysis in political economy: ex. comparing the function of punishment with the different systems of production, in particular the transition to an industrial economy requiring a "free" labour market:
--This required "corrective" detention. Idleness became criminalized, as time became increasingly quantified and controlled via surveillance (supervisors, Bentham's Panopticon). A "police-prison-delinquency circuit" formed based on a controlled "delinquency" and generalized policing. This now reminds me of the brutal workhouses to enforce work discipline in The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation.
--The Panopticon's method: power should be visible but unverifiable, a mechanized surveillance system where the possibility of surveillance prompts individuals to create self-discipline, some 200 years before our modern digital mass surveillance controversies:
-Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
-This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information
-When Google Met Wikileaks
--This is where it gets Foucauldian in terms of "power", where "Panocopticism" pervades over the scientific formation of knowledge and thus power: this starts in the 18th century, first in hospitals (i.e. examinations) and then in schools, workshops, armies, etc. As I work in health information, this was my most vivid recollection of the book.
--The sprawling web of connections conflicted with what I was learning from the best of physical/natural sciences (how to deal with confirmation bias/heuristics in pattern recognition, using careful study methodologies and meta-analysis):
-Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks
-I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That
…so we can avoid biases and untangle messes:
-ex. liberal materialism/physical sciences: How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future
-ex. liberal pop psychology/social science: Outliers: The Story of Success
-ex. vaporous critical theory: Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
-ex. undecipherable postmodern philosophy: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...
Next Encounter?:
--When I revisit, my game-plan starts with: revisit critical engagements with Foucault by Graeber's idealism, as well as Marxist historical materialism especially on the topic of “primitive accumulation” (the often-censored violence to set up and perpetuate capitalism). Relevant texts include:
-Federici’s Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (I recall there are critiques of Foucault)
-Perelman’s aforementioned The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation.
…If you’ve already done this and can save me some time, do share :)
--Note: “primitive accumulation”, despite being a critical concept, is a bit of a misnomer. It comes from Adam Smith’s assumption of an idyllic “previous accumulation” (so, "primitive" simply means "previous", not "barbaric" or "vulgar") where future capitalists first accumulated their capital through hard work.
...Marx critiqued this assumption at the end of Capital Volume 1, calling it “so-called primitive accumulation” to expose the actual history of violent “expropriation”. Later Marxists emphasized the fundamental continuity (as opposed to “previous” or “original”) of this expropriation by capitalism, ex. David Harvey's “accumulation by dispossession”). Marx on “so-called primitive accumulation” [Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, Ch.26, emphases added]:
We have seen how money is transformed into capital; how surplus-value is made through capital, and how more capital is made from surplus-value. But the accumulation of capital presupposes surplus-value; surplus-value presupposes capitalist production; capitalist production presupposes the availability of considerable masses of capital and labour-power in the hands of commodity producers. The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn around in a never-ending circle, which we can only get out of by assuming a primitive accumulation (the ‘previous accumulation’ of Adam Smith) [Note: ‘The accumulation of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to the division of labour’ (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk II, Introduction)] which precedes capitalist accumulation; an accumulation which is not the result of the capitalist mode of production but its point of departure.
This primitive accumulation plays approximately the same role in political economy as original sin does in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote about the past. Long, long ago there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent and above all frugal élite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort finally had nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority who, despite all their labour, have up to now nothing to sell but themselves, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly, although they have long ceased to work [inheritance, passive income, money creating more money]. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property [i.e. capitalist property over the means of production; not personal property].
May 5, 2016
Foucault begins this book by recounting the fate of a man called Damien the regicide, who attempted to assassinate King Louis XV of France in 1757. He was publicly tortured for hours, beaten, stabbed and crushed only to be quartered by horses at last. Foucault says that Public executions and scenes like this were common and happened every once in a while for those who were accused of heinous crimes. This practice, perfectly inhuman and brutish, was officially sanctioned just two centuries ago. Criminals were subjected to torture, flogging, beating, humiliation and beheading in public. But the most surprising thing is that all this ended rather suddenly in the 19th century, which is when the modern prison system was born.
Foucault is meticulous. He inspects each and everything from philosophical and psychological point of view; He disrobes the myth and romance of history only to show us a picture that is as real as it is shocking. For the most part of reading it, I was not entirely sure what Foucault was coming at, he dropped hints here and there but more importantly, he intends to enable us to see for ourselves. All his works are an attempt to understand the relation between power, culture and the individual.
Modern prison is the model for control of an entire society. What happens behind the prison walls becomes so distant for the ones outside it, that they have no empathy for the man who suffers in solitary confinement or sleeps on cold prison floors. His sufferings become none of our concern. There is a ‘dehumanizing’ effect that the modern prison has on the criminal, an effect that expels any chance of sympathy or pity for the prisoner. He fades rather quickly in society’s collective memory. Such was not the case, Foucault says, back when men were tortured in streets and executed brutally.
Power now looks kind, but isn’t. In past it wasn’t kind and therefore it could encourage open rebellion. So Prison system, doesn’t only takes away the spectacle of torture and murder from the streets, it crushes dissent and shackles the conscience of the society.
There is much more to this book than I could possibly explain here. Taught and recommended in universities around the world, this book is a timeless classic. Since it is not an easy book to read, I’d recommend that the new reader starts slowly and take it chapter by chapter. You can agree with his thesis or you could disagree, but there no doubt that Foucault was a genius.
Foucault is meticulous. He inspects each and everything from philosophical and psychological point of view; He disrobes the myth and romance of history only to show us a picture that is as real as it is shocking. For the most part of reading it, I was not entirely sure what Foucault was coming at, he dropped hints here and there but more importantly, he intends to enable us to see for ourselves. All his works are an attempt to understand the relation between power, culture and the individual.
Modern prison is the model for control of an entire society. What happens behind the prison walls becomes so distant for the ones outside it, that they have no empathy for the man who suffers in solitary confinement or sleeps on cold prison floors. His sufferings become none of our concern. There is a ‘dehumanizing’ effect that the modern prison has on the criminal, an effect that expels any chance of sympathy or pity for the prisoner. He fades rather quickly in society’s collective memory. Such was not the case, Foucault says, back when men were tortured in streets and executed brutally.
Power now looks kind, but isn’t. In past it wasn’t kind and therefore it could encourage open rebellion. So Prison system, doesn’t only takes away the spectacle of torture and murder from the streets, it crushes dissent and shackles the conscience of the society.
There is much more to this book than I could possibly explain here. Taught and recommended in universities around the world, this book is a timeless classic. Since it is not an easy book to read, I’d recommend that the new reader starts slowly and take it chapter by chapter. You can agree with his thesis or you could disagree, but there no doubt that Foucault was a genius.
August 23, 2007
I've read this book three times: First time was in undergraduate, second time was in law school, third time was last week. I can honestly say that my understanding of this work has grown with each reading, but that growth in comprehension has come more from my reading of other books either discussing or related to Discipline and Punish.
Specifically, I would recommend Jurgen Habermas's critique of Foucault, although I now forget which book of his contains his critique. I would also recommend Goffman's "Asylums" and Sykes "The Society of the Prison" as works which can illuminate Foucault's oft dense prose.
Foucault's main thesis is that the transistion of society into modernity has resulted in institutions which are increasingly devoted to the control of the "inmate's" time. The instituions use this control of time to develop discipline. Discipline is then used to both reinforce the strength of the instituion and also to expand the reach of institution's into the community.
As other reviewers have noted, this book isn't really about Prisons. Rather, the development of the modern prison represents the pinnacle of the relationship between power and discipline. Foucault leads up to his discussion of the prison by examining developments in other instituions: the work shop, the school and the barracks.
I really would encourage admirers of this work to read Goffman's "Asylums". The two books overlap to a considerable degree, but they both complement one another.
Specifically, I would recommend Jurgen Habermas's critique of Foucault, although I now forget which book of his contains his critique. I would also recommend Goffman's "Asylums" and Sykes "The Society of the Prison" as works which can illuminate Foucault's oft dense prose.
Foucault's main thesis is that the transistion of society into modernity has resulted in institutions which are increasingly devoted to the control of the "inmate's" time. The instituions use this control of time to develop discipline. Discipline is then used to both reinforce the strength of the instituion and also to expand the reach of institution's into the community.
As other reviewers have noted, this book isn't really about Prisons. Rather, the development of the modern prison represents the pinnacle of the relationship between power and discipline. Foucault leads up to his discussion of the prison by examining developments in other instituions: the work shop, the school and the barracks.
I really would encourage admirers of this work to read Goffman's "Asylums". The two books overlap to a considerable degree, but they both complement one another.
February 2, 2013
NEW REVIEW [it took more than a few days to get back to this -- I hope someone reads it... lol]
I will add only a few additional comments to what I’ve already written (below and in the comments sections). It will be enough and more than enough.
I came at this book with decades of prejudice built-up – and it showed in my (essentially failed) reading of Madness and Civilization. I knew that Foucault was a fake and a charlatan before I ever cracked a page. So to speak…
So one can imagine my surprise at discovering that he was, in fact, a philosophical genius of sorts, and that this book – though difficult, slow, craggy, like “cracking nuts”, paragraph by paragraph, was full of insight and sense and interest. To all those who are skeptical of opening up a front here, and it is a time consuming front…, I have to say that “I, too, am a recovering Foucault-hater.”
That does not mean that I am persuaded.
(1) To echo Habermas’ complaint, Foucault (like many of the postmodernists) equivocates between irony or literature and serious work – and he does not always know the difference himself. His verbal cleverness, the frequent use of reversals and antitheses, isocola, polarities, etc…, often reveal NOT the underlying truth, but an addiction to illusion and pretense. It is rhetorical
… none of which takes away from the sheer surface brilliance of this book.
-- and as a reader of Plato’s Theaetetus and Sophist, I *fully* understand the philosophical and metaphysical implications of ‘the rhetorical’ – in fact, I teach a course on this topic.
(2) Worse, Foucault equivocates repeatedly on this question that “Nathan” and I were discussing regarding the law of contradiction. Taking pages out of the Philebus of Plato, Foucault loves to talk about the minute parts, exhaustive, continuous, almost infinite divisions and partitions into which his moral continua (and the physical continua, like body, as well) can be partitioned, divided, apportioned, etc. – without ever coming out and saying whether or not the division is infinite or not. That “almost” is an equivocation of huge proportions, and it is deceitful. One must take a stand.
(3) Again, much rests in Foucault on his claims about “power-knowledge”. But what actually happens (in this book, at least) is that Foucault suggests the notion that knowledge is a function of power – and then seeks to ground this notion with an utterly fraudulent move (see my commentary below on induction) – and then operates from here on out as if his principal point had been established. Since very few people will have the time or patience to track the beast (the fallacy) to its lair – he pulls it off and persuades. But moves of this sort are (by definition) sophistical. And I have unmasked him.
(At least so far… I now have a copy of Power & Knowledge, the interviews, and will be interested to see if there is a better justification put forth there – though I am skeptical that I will find it.)
These are decisive objections.
And yet none of them matter…
Let me explain:
If Foucault relied on historical data QUA historical data, then his project would have been an utter failure. But my contention is that he uses ‘historical data’ as myth – like Rousseau’s story of le bon sauvage in the Second Discourse – like the story line in a Utopia or, in Foucault’s case, in a ‘fictionalized’ dystopia. It does not matter whether the history is true or not. Even when he relies on real facts, they are ‘falsified’ in their proportionality. Minor figures are treated as “turning points of great moment”, incidents that no one would remember (and quite rightly) are treated as “symbols” of deeper truths (a use, or rather, an abuse of history that goes back to Dilthey, I believe)… all these are clues, in my opinion, that Foucault did not intend us (or at least, in his more lucid moments would not have intended us) to take his history as ‘historical’ – it is simply the plot he weaves, a pseudo-history (made up of bits and pieces of the Real, perhaps…, but nonetheless….), that forms the warp and matrix of a philosophical nightmare that he is seeing beneath the pattern of modernity… and it is a nightmare that is anything but fictional… Indeed, the events of the past 15 years, the advent of the ‘national security state’, the ‘surveillance state’, the increasing, encroaching normalization of the Schmittian “State of Exception’ – the Society of the Spectacle – not only under Bush, but now continuing under a “Liberal” Presidency, all show that Foucault was prescient.
Thus, those historians who criticize him for being ahistorical are missing the point entirely.
Now of course, it was Foucault’s obligation to indicate clearly to the reader that his account is only ‘history as such…’, and I do not believe (though I could be wrong) that he does so. Maybe the postmodernist in him thinks irony is the default position, and that he doesn’t have to say anything…, or maybe he was not quite sure himself… but that is, in the final analysis, a relatively minor criticism…
(*Just as an aside, I believe that I can prove that Rousseau has given his readers a massive hint that his account of the noble savage in the Second Discourse is, indeed, a myth (and not to be taken as history) – a topic which is controversial in the literature on Rousseau – and that he adopts this method from Plato. I thought once I would publish a paper on this, but as Rousseau is outside my field, and I would have had to read and master a bibliography outside my area of knowledge, I never did.)
PREVIOUS COMMENTS:
I must pause here and add what I believe might be a comment of some significance – for I have found (I believe) a major flaw in MF’s thinking.
I no longer think it is just to criticize Foucault for a lack of historical accuracy – for I do not think that he intends his work to be taken as “historical”, despite appearances. I will develop this idea at greater length when I have finished the book. But I need first to take up an issue that I had raised in the comment section several weeks ago – and which concerns Foucault’s famous thesis about Power and Knowledge.
In my opening “comment”, I showed that Foucault had misinterpreted (pp. 41f.) the ancient notion of the “ordeal”, which he takes as “creating” truth, rather than simply “reflecting” it. He simply doesn’t know his history well enough, and his position is foolish.
Now, in the chapter on “Panopticism” (225ff.), he argues that the empirical sciences were born, in the later Middle Ages, out of the politico-juridico processes of investigation exemplified by the Inquisition. These “investigative techniques” were actually developed, he says, in the 12th-13th centuries as a method for establishing “truth”, and thus replacing the older method of “creating” truth through the “joust” or the “ordeal”.
This is absurd. The empirical sciences were born out of the development of the theory and practice of induction
(See A.C. Crombie, though I can supply a wealth of material on this: http://www.amazon.com/History-Science...),
which went back to the time of Roger Bacon, who got it (via the Arabs) from the Greek Commentary tradition -- that is, from the C.A.G.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commenta...
which developed these ideas in the context of Aristotle’s distinction between analysis and synthesis in geometry. The idea of analysis (which is clearly explained at the very beginning of Aristotle’s Physics I, however, was derived from the Socratic dialectic (itself a development of the sophistic/rhetorical dialectic of the late 5th cen.), which is analytical (and consciously so), not synthetic.
The theory of ideas was then postulated by Plato to explain why analysis works – and does not lead to an infinite division. This is incontrovertible.
Then, to adduce Francis Bacon, as Foucault does on p. 226, is really a blunder, for Francis Bacon was actually one of the very few people who recognized that induction had its roots in the Socratic dialectic (see Novum Organon, 1.105). Foucault simply doesn’t know what he is talking about. To seek to reduce ‘analysis’ to a juridico-investigative root is simply ignorance.
But if this postulated origin falls, then so too falls his theory that knowledge is simply power.
(That said -- I am really impressed by this book -- and think it is a major work, and I'm quite embarrassed to have missed its importance all these years. Consider the above a small attempt to make amends... in my typically Socratic fashion, of course....)
I will add only a few additional comments to what I’ve already written (below and in the comments sections). It will be enough and more than enough.
I came at this book with decades of prejudice built-up – and it showed in my (essentially failed) reading of Madness and Civilization. I knew that Foucault was a fake and a charlatan before I ever cracked a page. So to speak…
So one can imagine my surprise at discovering that he was, in fact, a philosophical genius of sorts, and that this book – though difficult, slow, craggy, like “cracking nuts”, paragraph by paragraph, was full of insight and sense and interest. To all those who are skeptical of opening up a front here, and it is a time consuming front…, I have to say that “I, too, am a recovering Foucault-hater.”
That does not mean that I am persuaded.
(1) To echo Habermas’ complaint, Foucault (like many of the postmodernists) equivocates between irony or literature and serious work – and he does not always know the difference himself. His verbal cleverness, the frequent use of reversals and antitheses, isocola, polarities, etc…, often reveal NOT the underlying truth, but an addiction to illusion and pretense. It is rhetorical
… none of which takes away from the sheer surface brilliance of this book.
-- and as a reader of Plato’s Theaetetus and Sophist, I *fully* understand the philosophical and metaphysical implications of ‘the rhetorical’ – in fact, I teach a course on this topic.
(2) Worse, Foucault equivocates repeatedly on this question that “Nathan” and I were discussing regarding the law of contradiction. Taking pages out of the Philebus of Plato, Foucault loves to talk about the minute parts, exhaustive, continuous, almost infinite divisions and partitions into which his moral continua (and the physical continua, like body, as well) can be partitioned, divided, apportioned, etc. – without ever coming out and saying whether or not the division is infinite or not. That “almost” is an equivocation of huge proportions, and it is deceitful. One must take a stand.
(3) Again, much rests in Foucault on his claims about “power-knowledge”. But what actually happens (in this book, at least) is that Foucault suggests the notion that knowledge is a function of power – and then seeks to ground this notion with an utterly fraudulent move (see my commentary below on induction) – and then operates from here on out as if his principal point had been established. Since very few people will have the time or patience to track the beast (the fallacy) to its lair – he pulls it off and persuades. But moves of this sort are (by definition) sophistical. And I have unmasked him.
(At least so far… I now have a copy of Power & Knowledge, the interviews, and will be interested to see if there is a better justification put forth there – though I am skeptical that I will find it.)
These are decisive objections.
And yet none of them matter…
Let me explain:
If Foucault relied on historical data QUA historical data, then his project would have been an utter failure. But my contention is that he uses ‘historical data’ as myth – like Rousseau’s story of le bon sauvage in the Second Discourse – like the story line in a Utopia or, in Foucault’s case, in a ‘fictionalized’ dystopia. It does not matter whether the history is true or not. Even when he relies on real facts, they are ‘falsified’ in their proportionality. Minor figures are treated as “turning points of great moment”, incidents that no one would remember (and quite rightly) are treated as “symbols” of deeper truths (a use, or rather, an abuse of history that goes back to Dilthey, I believe)… all these are clues, in my opinion, that Foucault did not intend us (or at least, in his more lucid moments would not have intended us) to take his history as ‘historical’ – it is simply the plot he weaves, a pseudo-history (made up of bits and pieces of the Real, perhaps…, but nonetheless….), that forms the warp and matrix of a philosophical nightmare that he is seeing beneath the pattern of modernity… and it is a nightmare that is anything but fictional… Indeed, the events of the past 15 years, the advent of the ‘national security state’, the ‘surveillance state’, the increasing, encroaching normalization of the Schmittian “State of Exception’ – the Society of the Spectacle – not only under Bush, but now continuing under a “Liberal” Presidency, all show that Foucault was prescient.
Thus, those historians who criticize him for being ahistorical are missing the point entirely.
Now of course, it was Foucault’s obligation to indicate clearly to the reader that his account is only ‘history as such…’, and I do not believe (though I could be wrong) that he does so. Maybe the postmodernist in him thinks irony is the default position, and that he doesn’t have to say anything…, or maybe he was not quite sure himself… but that is, in the final analysis, a relatively minor criticism…
(*Just as an aside, I believe that I can prove that Rousseau has given his readers a massive hint that his account of the noble savage in the Second Discourse is, indeed, a myth (and not to be taken as history) – a topic which is controversial in the literature on Rousseau – and that he adopts this method from Plato. I thought once I would publish a paper on this, but as Rousseau is outside my field, and I would have had to read and master a bibliography outside my area of knowledge, I never did.)
PREVIOUS COMMENTS:
I must pause here and add what I believe might be a comment of some significance – for I have found (I believe) a major flaw in MF’s thinking.
I no longer think it is just to criticize Foucault for a lack of historical accuracy – for I do not think that he intends his work to be taken as “historical”, despite appearances. I will develop this idea at greater length when I have finished the book. But I need first to take up an issue that I had raised in the comment section several weeks ago – and which concerns Foucault’s famous thesis about Power and Knowledge.
In my opening “comment”, I showed that Foucault had misinterpreted (pp. 41f.) the ancient notion of the “ordeal”, which he takes as “creating” truth, rather than simply “reflecting” it. He simply doesn’t know his history well enough, and his position is foolish.
Now, in the chapter on “Panopticism” (225ff.), he argues that the empirical sciences were born, in the later Middle Ages, out of the politico-juridico processes of investigation exemplified by the Inquisition. These “investigative techniques” were actually developed, he says, in the 12th-13th centuries as a method for establishing “truth”, and thus replacing the older method of “creating” truth through the “joust” or the “ordeal”.
This is absurd. The empirical sciences were born out of the development of the theory and practice of induction
(See A.C. Crombie, though I can supply a wealth of material on this: http://www.amazon.com/History-Science...),
which went back to the time of Roger Bacon, who got it (via the Arabs) from the Greek Commentary tradition -- that is, from the C.A.G.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commenta...
which developed these ideas in the context of Aristotle’s distinction between analysis and synthesis in geometry. The idea of analysis (which is clearly explained at the very beginning of Aristotle’s Physics I, however, was derived from the Socratic dialectic (itself a development of the sophistic/rhetorical dialectic of the late 5th cen.), which is analytical (and consciously so), not synthetic.
The theory of ideas was then postulated by Plato to explain why analysis works – and does not lead to an infinite division. This is incontrovertible.
Then, to adduce Francis Bacon, as Foucault does on p. 226, is really a blunder, for Francis Bacon was actually one of the very few people who recognized that induction had its roots in the Socratic dialectic (see Novum Organon, 1.105). Foucault simply doesn’t know what he is talking about. To seek to reduce ‘analysis’ to a juridico-investigative root is simply ignorance.
But if this postulated origin falls, then so too falls his theory that knowledge is simply power.
(That said -- I am really impressed by this book -- and think it is a major work, and I'm quite embarrassed to have missed its importance all these years. Consider the above a small attempt to make amends... in my typically Socratic fashion, of course....)
January 11, 2008
This book rearranged my brain. I have never read something that met my intuition half way, and then expanded my vision beyond all critical capacities I knew before. I will never conceive of power, structures, knowledge, statistics, or my cock the same way again. His anti-humanitarian, empirical, and nonuniversal critiques that follow the money and the violence are the perfect medicine for people who have been reading saggy assed media studies and cultural studies for too long. Saved my life.
January 25, 2020
Is the world turning into a panopticon in which everyone of us cannot evade the gaze of whoever that is occupying the central point? I find this book to be making a powerful argument, but I do have doubts as to whether surveillance by itself (without corporal violence) could impose discipline ( in other words, whether the observed really interiorizes the system of surveillance). I also doubt as to whether the systems of micro-power really fits into a bigger top-down power hierarchy. In the example of the school for instance, I think that students have certain power over the teachers just as the teachers have over the students. I don't think power is as top-down as Foucault describes.
My favorite quote: "The ideal point of penality today would be an indefinite discipline: an interrogation without end, an investigation that would be extended without limit to a meticulous and ever more analytical observation, a judgement that would at the same time be the constitution of a file that was never closed, the calculated leniency of a penalty that would be interlaced with the ruthless curiosity of an examination."
My favorite quote: "The ideal point of penality today would be an indefinite discipline: an interrogation without end, an investigation that would be extended without limit to a meticulous and ever more analytical observation, a judgement that would at the same time be the constitution of a file that was never closed, the calculated leniency of a penalty that would be interlaced with the ruthless curiosity of an examination."
October 31, 2022
Primo (e di certo non ultimo) incontro con Foucault, filosofo che ho deciso di approfondire per via dell'interesse che in me suscitano molte delle sue tematiche. In questa celebre opera Foucault esamina il passaggio dai vecchi supplizi medievali alla nascita della prigione come forma di sorveglianza e controllo. Vi si scopre il lento processo che, influenzato dalla progressiva capitalizzazione della società, ha condotto a preferire lo sviluppo del sistema carcerario come espediente per eliminare gli individui ritenuti pericolosi o, tramite mezzi coercitivi, rieducare (diciamo) alle norme sociali imposte quelli ritenuti 'recuperabili'. Viene analizzato il fallimento di tutti questi propositi ed evidenziati i reali motivi che sottendono a simili pratiche. Il discorso si allarga poi alla dinamica del controllo e della sorveglianza che la società contemporanea esercita anche sugli individui liberi per irregimentarli e renderli docili alle disposizioni emanate dal potere. Lettura obbligatoria per tutti.
April 3, 2007
In many ways a response to the French government's penal codes of the 60s and 70s but also a continuation of Foucault's work in Madness and Civilization, the influence of D&P can be seen everywhere from Spielberg's Minority Report to Enemy of the State to Ted Conover's Newjack and most if not all critiques of surveillant governments. It's also a horrifying read, starting out as it does with an account of the ritualistic execution of a regicide, which Foucault compares favorably to the prisons of the Enlightenment. The general thrust is that under the guise of humanism, Europeans decided on punishing the soul rather than the body. This they accomplished first by quite theatrically monitoring prisoners and delinquents, and eventually by having prisoners monitor themselves, saving the government all the work.
I personally don't think Discipline and Punish is the strongest of Foucault's works, though. Partly, I think he misunderstands the nature of physical violence. His strategy here and in M&C is to lay out a pretty sinister historical transition in the way states used their power, passing over counterexamples that might disprove his point (Australia, anyone?), and then allow the reader to assume that the trend he has identified continues... to this... very... moment! You're supposed to wonder, is the videocamera in my bank (*gasp*) part of the Panopticon? Have I been deprived of my free will and become a tool of the State? Harold Bloom rightly complains of Foucault that he tended to forget that the historical ironies he uncovered were just metaphors, and aren't as all-encompassing as his many followers in academe suppose. Mikey's History of Sexuality books are much more closely reasoned, or at least Introduction is and what I've read of Uses of Pleasure.
The problem is that you can carp all day about D&P but you will continue to see it everywhere, long after you've set it down. That makes it an amazing book.
I personally don't think Discipline and Punish is the strongest of Foucault's works, though. Partly, I think he misunderstands the nature of physical violence. His strategy here and in M&C is to lay out a pretty sinister historical transition in the way states used their power, passing over counterexamples that might disprove his point (Australia, anyone?), and then allow the reader to assume that the trend he has identified continues... to this... very... moment! You're supposed to wonder, is the videocamera in my bank (*gasp*) part of the Panopticon? Have I been deprived of my free will and become a tool of the State? Harold Bloom rightly complains of Foucault that he tended to forget that the historical ironies he uncovered were just metaphors, and aren't as all-encompassing as his many followers in academe suppose. Mikey's History of Sexuality books are much more closely reasoned, or at least Introduction is and what I've read of Uses of Pleasure.
The problem is that you can carp all day about D&P but you will continue to see it everywhere, long after you've set it down. That makes it an amazing book.
February 17, 2013
Foucault, who was mentally unstable, tells us that there is no such thing as individual human agency except when we're lovingly embracing the slimy tendrils of "power". But "power" can't be defined because it's just out there slithering around for humans to use, even though it's an abstract concept. Oh yeah, and everything that' I'm writing right now is because I've (un)con)science)sciously submitted to the ruling authority of the keyboard, because the dominion of typing, which I will(fully) become the serpentine slave of, is part of an apparatus of discipline (disciple) which tells my hands what to do and by extension (existension) my soul, whatever that is, I'm not supposed to know, just Foucault.
January 5, 2024
الرؤية المختلفة في هذا الكتاب أنّه لا يناقش فكرة السجون كادواتٍ صُممت للعقاب فقط بل يتعدّاها إلى تطور البنية الاجتماعية التي تلعب دورًا مهمًا في عملية المراقبة ، وأكبر مثال على ذلك المستشفيات والمدارس بعملية التدّجين التي تتم فيها لصالح الحزب الحاكم غالبًا ، مُمارسةً العقاب بصورٍ مباشرة وغير مباشرة.
ببساطة انت لا تحتاج إلى السجن والتخويف دائمًا لتسيطر على الشعوب وخاصة مع التطور القائم لِتُصبح السلطة بمختلف مكوناتها وأفرعها جهاز لتغيير تلك المفاهيم القديمة وقمع الحريات والإرادة.
أفكار فوكو التي يتركها في كتبه مميزة وتفتح الذهن لأشياء كانت تخفى علي أو لم أُعرها اهتمامًا من قبل!
ببساطة انت لا تحتاج إلى السجن والتخويف دائمًا لتسيطر على الشعوب وخاصة مع التطور القائم لِتُصبح السلطة بمختلف مكوناتها وأفرعها جهاز لتغيير تلك المفاهيم القديمة وقمع الحريات والإرادة.
أفكار فوكو التي يتركها في كتبه مميزة وتفتح الذهن لأشياء كانت تخفى علي أو لم أُعرها اهتمامًا من قبل!
January 7, 2021
This book made me think I must be getting older. Why? Because I used to enjoy trying to parse the unnecessarily complex and obtuse sentences of French intellectuals and now I seem to lack the patience. (A glorious example: "The moment that saw the transition from historico-ritual mechanisms for the formation of individuality to the scientifico-disciplinary mechanisms, when the normal took over from the ancestral, and measurement from status, thus substituting for the individuality of the memorable man that of the calculable man, that moment when the sciences of man became possible is the moment when a new technology of power and a new political anatomy of the body were implemented.") Oh, how we pine for our free-er days of savagery!
All that aside, Foucault seems to do an incredibly meticulous job of tracing the history of discipline and punishment. He takes the reader from medieval tortures and public executions on up through today's modern prison-industrial complex. As Marx predicted capitalism's eventual undoing of itself, Foucault seems to suggest that the prison itself will become obsolete, thereby being replaced by a series of ever more technical disciplinary apparatuses supplied by the likes of fields better suited for controlling/shaping the individual (sociology, psychology/psychiatry, education, etc.). Other than providing physical safety by removing the dangerous individual from his fellow citizens, we still seem to have very little additional insight into the benefits or preferred goals of incarceration. We still seem just as split on whether purely punitive measures are justified or whether rehabilitation is truly possible. The prison seems to mirror the very same social constructs we use to discipline and control ourselves--regimented schedules and timetables; clearly defined responses and roles; meaning, productivity, and avoidance of temptation through labor; etc. At one point, Foucault points out the arbitrary nature of penalization almost exactly split down the class divides (those who meet out justice and bring suits belonging to one class, and those who suffer punishment and commit crimes belonging to another; the arbitrary part being to which class and circumstances one is born).
I get the feeling that, like me, Mikey also requested a replica panopticon in the form of a cake in honor of his 12th birthday. The difference is in how we dealt with the disappointment of not getting such a cake. I shed a tear or two and played some Nintendo. But he didn't have Super Mario Brothers as a distraction, and thus he theorizes as such: "Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, or altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies."
And so, what are we left with? A court system that defines "offences" as that which the (nonviolent) accused sees as a vital life: "the lack of a home as vagabondage, the lack of a master as independence, the lack of work as freedom, the lack of a time-table as the fullness of days and nights." A separation between those who judge and those who punish, which gives an inordinate amount of power and mostly unmonitored discretion to those who punish. And an almost perpetual discussion over prison reform, a topic originating with the very first prison.
And here in the United States?
2.3 million people in jail.
Note: This paperback edition has the worst book cover I've ever seen in my life.
-------------------------------------------------------
Words I Learned While Reading This Book:
anamnesis | dyad | teratological | saturnalia | suzerainty
-----------------------------------------------
11/12/19 Update: I woke up a morning or two ago and thought to myself how much funnier it would have been if my review had simply read: This is the worst BDSM manual ever.
All that aside, Foucault seems to do an incredibly meticulous job of tracing the history of discipline and punishment. He takes the reader from medieval tortures and public executions on up through today's modern prison-industrial complex. As Marx predicted capitalism's eventual undoing of itself, Foucault seems to suggest that the prison itself will become obsolete, thereby being replaced by a series of ever more technical disciplinary apparatuses supplied by the likes of fields better suited for controlling/shaping the individual (sociology, psychology/psychiatry, education, etc.). Other than providing physical safety by removing the dangerous individual from his fellow citizens, we still seem to have very little additional insight into the benefits or preferred goals of incarceration. We still seem just as split on whether purely punitive measures are justified or whether rehabilitation is truly possible. The prison seems to mirror the very same social constructs we use to discipline and control ourselves--regimented schedules and timetables; clearly defined responses and roles; meaning, productivity, and avoidance of temptation through labor; etc. At one point, Foucault points out the arbitrary nature of penalization almost exactly split down the class divides (those who meet out justice and bring suits belonging to one class, and those who suffer punishment and commit crimes belonging to another; the arbitrary part being to which class and circumstances one is born).
I get the feeling that, like me, Mikey also requested a replica panopticon in the form of a cake in honor of his 12th birthday. The difference is in how we dealt with the disappointment of not getting such a cake. I shed a tear or two and played some Nintendo. But he didn't have Super Mario Brothers as a distraction, and thus he theorizes as such: "Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, or altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies."
And so, what are we left with? A court system that defines "offences" as that which the (nonviolent) accused sees as a vital life: "the lack of a home as vagabondage, the lack of a master as independence, the lack of work as freedom, the lack of a time-table as the fullness of days and nights." A separation between those who judge and those who punish, which gives an inordinate amount of power and mostly unmonitored discretion to those who punish. And an almost perpetual discussion over prison reform, a topic originating with the very first prison.
And here in the United States?
2.3 million people in jail.
Note: This paperback edition has the worst book cover I've ever seen in my life.
-------------------------------------------------------
Words I Learned While Reading This Book:
anamnesis | dyad | teratological | saturnalia | suzerainty
-----------------------------------------------
11/12/19 Update: I woke up a morning or two ago and thought to myself how much funnier it would have been if my review had simply read: This is the worst BDSM manual ever.
Read
October 12, 2016Ovo je bilo mnogo prijatnije iskustvo nego što sam očekivala - e, da mi je Nadzirati i kažnjavati pre iks godina bio prvi Fuko, a ne Reči i stvari, ko zna šta bi bilo.
S druge strane, drago mi je što ga čitam s malo razvijenijim kritičkim mišljenjem nego onomad sa dvaes godina :P Jer Fuko piše tako super retorički zavodljivo a usto potkovano činjenicama da mic po mic čitalac krene da prihvata i one klimavije delove njegovih teorija o zatvoru kao sistemu za (jelte) nadziranje i kažnjavanje koji u suštini odražava ustrojstvo čitave države i povratno ga određuje. Sve je to izloženo tako ubedljivo i, ponoviću, sa sjajnom retorikom i inteligentnom strašću (koja mnohohogo nedostaje raznim Fukoovim sledbenicima) da u nekom trenutku prosto može da izmakne kako Fuko "državi kao represivnom aparatu" ne suprotstavlja ništa tj. kad čovek bolje pogleda ispada da život van represivnog sistema ne samo da nije moguć nego da nije ni zamisliv sistem koji nije represivan. Ili kad na kvarnjaka izjednačava zatvore i školstvo (zapravo ne, to je ok), dakle zatvore i bolnice - jasno je da to čini jer ga zanima odnos prema *duševnim* bolesnicima (sledeće na spisku: Istorija ludila u doba klasicizma) ali zaboga, reći ćete vi, nije to sasvim isto! a Fuko će odgovoriti nenenene jeste, slušaj pažljivo, i onda će navaliti s brdom dokaza i primera i sve koji se savršeno uklapaju u njegovu teoriju i čik se onda vi držite nečeg drugog.
Stvarno dobra knjiga i stvarno pristupačna i zanimljiva i lep dokaz da poststrukturalisti umeju i jasno da se izražavaju kad hoće. Samo čitati sa zrnom soli (i ruke dalje od epigona, hvala, dovoljno).
S druge strane, drago mi je što ga čitam s malo razvijenijim kritičkim mišljenjem nego onomad sa dvaes godina :P Jer Fuko piše tako super retorički zavodljivo a usto potkovano činjenicama da mic po mic čitalac krene da prihvata i one klimavije delove njegovih teorija o zatvoru kao sistemu za (jelte) nadziranje i kažnjavanje koji u suštini odražava ustrojstvo čitave države i povratno ga određuje. Sve je to izloženo tako ubedljivo i, ponoviću, sa sjajnom retorikom i inteligentnom strašću (koja mnohohogo nedostaje raznim Fukoovim sledbenicima) da u nekom trenutku prosto može da izmakne kako Fuko "državi kao represivnom aparatu" ne suprotstavlja ništa tj. kad čovek bolje pogleda ispada da život van represivnog sistema ne samo da nije moguć nego da nije ni zamisliv sistem koji nije represivan. Ili kad na kvarnjaka izjednačava zatvore i školstvo (zapravo ne, to je ok), dakle zatvore i bolnice - jasno je da to čini jer ga zanima odnos prema *duševnim* bolesnicima (sledeće na spisku: Istorija ludila u doba klasicizma) ali zaboga, reći ćete vi, nije to sasvim isto! a Fuko će odgovoriti nenenene jeste, slušaj pažljivo, i onda će navaliti s brdom dokaza i primera i sve koji se savršeno uklapaju u njegovu teoriju i čik se onda vi držite nečeg drugog.
Stvarno dobra knjiga i stvarno pristupačna i zanimljiva i lep dokaz da poststrukturalisti umeju i jasno da se izražavaju kad hoće. Samo čitati sa zrnom soli (i ruke dalje od epigona, hvala, dovoljno).
May 27, 2015
The first two chapters are interesting, although his defense of public torture is idiotic. His critique of modern society is a stunning case of postmodern claptrap. My god, prisons are meant to dissuade us from committing crime! You don't say! He essentially says Enlightenment reform was actually insidious and bad for humanity. In this way he is actually a conservative, by calling into question all the reasons for reform. The fact that the left embraced this book, which was a grand critique of left wing reform ideology, is just another reason why the conservatives triumphed in the age of postmodernism, when leftists became their own worst enemy. Internal debate is good, but without a moral compass and faith in reform, then you are lost. I think/hope the left is regaining this and abandoning the poisons of postmodernism and its hand-maiden moral relativism. Simply put, this is a nihilistic work if you follow it to its conclusion, and nihilism serves no end. Read Locke, Rousseau, and just about anyone else if you can.
May 24, 2020
This deeply disturbing work starts with the evolution of modern penal justice system from the public spectacle of gruesome tortures and executions pertaining to the earlier 17th and 18th centuries. Foucault argues, with his rich historical citations, that the changing to the methods of incarceration to maintain social order marks the shift of subjection and control from individual's anatomy over psyche by means of various schemes of hierarchical observation(surveillance). With architectural figure of 'Panopticon' implemented in prisons enables and exposes the prisoners to being observed, watched upon anytime from the centralized annular watch tower.
It felt ineluctable to note from citations provided parallels to major historical movements like Enlightenment or French Revolution. Foucault here also connects the other 'emergent' structures of Enlightenment era such as the militia schools, education system, systematic working patterns in (manu)factories and other institutions with the ways of social control with this evolving form of discipling the crime and punishment.
"Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"
What started as a erudite historicity of incarceration and penal practices ends with underscoring the problem and the power of normalization in the mass society making it all the more 'undemocratic' and its further production of knowledge and 'disciplines.' Are we all prisoners of this constructed human reality?
Afterall a highly unavoidable read to explore the dynamics of power relations and authority, existing hegemony of the western societies which pretty impact everywhere in these postcolonial postmodern times.
Foucault was a mad Genius with an intriguing biography. His influences from youth communist circle, experimentations with homosexuality, recreational stuffs, BDSM, and Nietzsche, Kant, Heidegger, Althusser, Freud, Sade make his books a weird mix of rich intellectual experience. As for me, this is the most approachable Foucault having tried and dropped many of his works.
It felt ineluctable to note from citations provided parallels to major historical movements like Enlightenment or French Revolution. Foucault here also connects the other 'emergent' structures of Enlightenment era such as the militia schools, education system, systematic working patterns in (manu)factories and other institutions with the ways of social control with this evolving form of discipling the crime and punishment.
"Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"
What started as a erudite historicity of incarceration and penal practices ends with underscoring the problem and the power of normalization in the mass society making it all the more 'undemocratic' and its further production of knowledge and 'disciplines.' Are we all prisoners of this constructed human reality?
Afterall a highly unavoidable read to explore the dynamics of power relations and authority, existing hegemony of the western societies which pretty impact everywhere in these postcolonial postmodern times.
Foucault was a mad Genius with an intriguing biography. His influences from youth communist circle, experimentations with homosexuality, recreational stuffs, BDSM, and Nietzsche, Kant, Heidegger, Althusser, Freud, Sade make his books a weird mix of rich intellectual experience. As for me, this is the most approachable Foucault having tried and dropped many of his works.
Shelved as 'owned-for-years-but-still-not-read'
November 10, 2007I started it. I didn't finish. And unless I one day find myself in a situation with extremely limited mobility and options, with a great deal of time (read: years) on my hands, it's conceivable that I never will.
I'd like to have read this book, since I'm very interested in the topics it addresses, but I don't know that I have the mind, stomach, or patience for Foucault. So while I'd like to have read it, I don't know that I'd like as much to read it, if you get what I'm saying. Well, maybe someday.... It wasn't boring, but it was kind of hard, and as I'm not much of a French Theory type of girl, nor am I particularly Intellectual, every other page I was sort of scratching my little tete and sort of wondering all over again what the point of all this was, and whether it was even possible that there was one.
I bet a lot of people'd love this. Plus, anyone who doubts its relevance completely (and not just periodically) should read about the NYPD's new "Sky Watch" tower program.
Next time I try this guy, if I do, I'll probably go for the stuff on madness.
I'd like to have read this book, since I'm very interested in the topics it addresses, but I don't know that I have the mind, stomach, or patience for Foucault. So while I'd like to have read it, I don't know that I'd like as much to read it, if you get what I'm saying. Well, maybe someday.... It wasn't boring, but it was kind of hard, and as I'm not much of a French Theory type of girl, nor am I particularly Intellectual, every other page I was sort of scratching my little tete and sort of wondering all over again what the point of all this was, and whether it was even possible that there was one.
I bet a lot of people'd love this. Plus, anyone who doubts its relevance completely (and not just periodically) should read about the NYPD's new "Sky Watch" tower program.
Next time I try this guy, if I do, I'll probably go for the stuff on madness.
May 2, 2023
“مجتمعنا ليس مجتمع استعراض، ولكنه مجتمع مراقبة… فنحن لسنا على المدرجات أو خشبة المسرح، بل داخل دواليب الآلة البانوبتيكية” — فوكو.
كتاب يدرس أو يبحث من خلاله فوكو عن التحولات التاريخية الغربية التي طرأت على القوانين والأنظمة العقابية والطرق الجزائية ومختلف الأنظمة القصاصيةالممارسة في الفترة الممتدة من القرن السابع عشر حتى بداية القرن العشرين، و الذي شغل فيه الجسد محور تمثلات الطرق الجزائية. بناءً على وثائق تاريخية في فرنسا. حيث يمكن قراءة تاريخ مشترك للعلاقات السلطوية وللعلاقات الموضوعية. ودور المجتمعات في ذلك وما ترتب عليها من آثار أصابت بنْية المجتمع وإنسانيته.
وما تبع ذلك من ثورة، على مستوى الأجساد ضد جسد السجن بالذات.
" نشأة السجن ضمن النظام الجزائي الفرنسي، والفروقات فيما بين التطورات التاريخية والمؤسسات." من تاريخ من العقاب أو التعذيب العلني الجماهيري- المسرحي، إلى العقاب في السجن ومنه إلى الانفرادي، وما شمل ذلك من اصلاحات ؛ كالتعليم، والعمل، وغيره. أي ثورة وتمرد على ممارسة السلطة الجزائية والمؤسسات لجسد السجن والقوة.
" فالعنصر المعتمد في ظهور السجن هو تحويل السلطة العقابية إلى مؤسسة، أو بصورة أدق: إن سلطة العقاب ( مع الهدف الاستراتيجي الذي اتخذته لنفسها في آخر القرن الثامن عشر، وهو تقليص ( اللاشرعيات الشعبية) تتأمّن بصورة أفضل حين تتخفى وراء وظيفة اجتماعية عامة، داخل ( المدينة العقابية)، أو حين تتوظف داخل مؤسسة إكراهية، ضمن المكان المغلق، في ( الإصلاحية) ؟" -( ص181/182)
و يطرح بهذا الصدد فوكو عددًا من الأسئلة: كيف حل النموذج الإكراهي، الجسدي ، الانفرادي، السري لسلطة العقاب، محل النموذج التصوري، المسرحي الدلالي، العلنيّ، الجماعيّ؟ لماذا حلت الممارسة الجسدية للعقوبة ( و التي ليست هي التعذيب) مع السجن الذي هو قوامها المؤسسي، محل اللعبة الاجتماعية للدلالات العقابية، ومحل الاحتفال الصاخب الذي كان يروجها؟
الكتاب يصور بشكل أو بآخر رحلة الأخلاق في التاريخ البشري، ويطرح أمثلة من تاريخ الظلم الذي مارسته السلطات على الجسد بالقوة والعنف، والذي تجلى في كافة مؤسساتها من مثل؛ السجون، والمستشفيات، والثكنات العسكرية، وغيرها. ومن قرأ له "تاريخ الجنون في العصر الكلاسيكي"، سيلمس ذلك وبشكل جليّ.
كتاب مؤلم نفسياً وجسديًا وفكريًا.
كتاب يدرس أو يبحث من خلاله فوكو عن التحولات التاريخية الغربية التي طرأت على القوانين والأنظمة العقابية والطرق الجزائية ومختلف الأنظمة القصاصيةالممارسة في الفترة الممتدة من القرن السابع عشر حتى بداية القرن العشرين، و الذي شغل فيه الجسد محور تمثلات الطرق الجزائية. بناءً على وثائق تاريخية في فرنسا. حيث يمكن قراءة تاريخ مشترك للعلاقات السلطوية وللعلاقات الموضوعية. ودور المجتمعات في ذلك وما ترتب عليها من آثار أصابت بنْية المجتمع وإنسانيته.
وما تبع ذلك من ثورة، على مستوى الأجساد ضد جسد السجن بالذات.
" نشأة السجن ضمن النظام الجزائي الفرنسي، والفروقات فيما بين التطورات التاريخية والمؤسسات." من تاريخ من العقاب أو التعذيب العلني الجماهيري- المسرحي، إلى العقاب في السجن ومنه إلى الانفرادي، وما شمل ذلك من اصلاحات ؛ كالتعليم، والعمل، وغيره. أي ثورة وتمرد على ممارسة السلطة الجزائية والمؤسسات لجسد السجن والقوة.
" فالعنصر المعتمد في ظهور السجن هو تحويل السلطة العقابية إلى مؤسسة، أو بصورة أدق: إن سلطة العقاب ( مع الهدف الاستراتيجي الذي اتخذته لنفسها في آخر القرن الثامن عشر، وهو تقليص ( اللاشرعيات الشعبية) تتأمّن بصورة أفضل حين تتخفى وراء وظيفة اجتماعية عامة، داخل ( المدينة العقابية)، أو حين تتوظف داخل مؤسسة إكراهية، ضمن المكان المغلق، في ( الإصلاحية) ؟" -( ص181/182)
و يطرح بهذا الصدد فوكو عددًا من الأسئلة: كيف حل النموذج الإكراهي، الجسدي ، الانفرادي، السري لسلطة العقاب، محل النموذج التصوري، المسرحي الدلالي، العلنيّ، الجماعيّ؟ لماذا حلت الممارسة الجسدية للعقوبة ( و التي ليست هي التعذيب) مع السجن الذي هو قوامها المؤسسي، محل اللعبة الاجتماعية للدلالات العقابية، ومحل الاحتفال الصاخب الذي كان يروجها؟
الكتاب يصور بشكل أو بآخر رحلة الأخلاق في التاريخ البشري، ويطرح أمثلة من تاريخ الظلم الذي مارسته السلطات على الجسد بالقوة والعنف، والذي تجلى في كافة مؤسساتها من مثل؛ السجون، والمستشفيات، والثكنات العسكرية، وغيرها. ومن قرأ له "تاريخ الجنون في العصر الكلاسيكي"، سيلمس ذلك وبشكل جليّ.
كتاب مؤلم نفسياً وجسديًا وفكريًا.
June 3, 2008
This book is terrible. Is it history? Is it philosophy? It is neither, both, and blows. I will let Foucault in on a little secret: when you write a book in which you are presenting an argument, the readers should not be made to have their eyes start bleeding as they try to pinpoint and tack down exactly what your argument is. Yes, many women will be impressed by your colorful, flowery language and you will get laid. However, no one will ever understand what you are on about. Hmm, maybe that was your angle. After all, you can't criticise an argument that you don't understand...
May 30, 2015
Finally reading Foucault after reading a ton of stuff that was (supposedly) inspired by Foucault made me realize I like Foucault a LOT more than I like people who like Foucault.
May 23, 2024
This reads like a dystopian novel, albeit with foucault's famously (infamously?) difficult language.
First I have to admit that I was probably provoked to read this because Steven Pinker said it was 'unconvincing' in his particularly unconvincing book 'The Better Angels of our Nature'. I was also a bit perplexed how such an apparently unconvincing book (this one) could get over 33, 000 citations on google academic. Also pretty great reviews by the goodreads non-scholars. So you know that strange combination kinda got my notice.
Anyhow, on to a quick review...
SO Foucault's take on the increasing levels of civilization that pinker toots about is that it actually ain't so civilized. Although institutions of 'social care' have expanded immensely they also increased repression of the inmates. But not physically violent repression (that's about as far as Pinker and Foucault agree). But rather rigorous psychological and moral bloodsucking of dignity, freedom, and individuality. Everywhere: military parades, schools, factories, hospitals, workhouses. Necessity of efficiency is the rationale.
But Foucault realizes that 'liberal' politics go hand in hand with this regimentation and unending labour. Work is the most efficient form of social control. Nietzsche also said that ( Foucault is most certainly Nietzschean). Foucault realizes here (and apparently in his other works as well) that basic human drives are now considered taboo and he calls us out on our hypocrisy. Modern times are repressed times. Virtually everything is determined by power. Not only are most of us too well 'disciplined' and 'punished' but we are isolated in our cells of various hues and colours and so pervertedly repressed.
A veritable dystopia of uncannily real proportions. I can only reccommend you struggle through the language, stop and think about what is being said. Slow down, this one isn't just another notch on your bookshelf: it's that worth it.
First I have to admit that I was probably provoked to read this because Steven Pinker said it was 'unconvincing' in his particularly unconvincing book 'The Better Angels of our Nature'. I was also a bit perplexed how such an apparently unconvincing book (this one) could get over 33, 000 citations on google academic. Also pretty great reviews by the goodreads non-scholars. So you know that strange combination kinda got my notice.
Anyhow, on to a quick review...
SO Foucault's take on the increasing levels of civilization that pinker toots about is that it actually ain't so civilized. Although institutions of 'social care' have expanded immensely they also increased repression of the inmates. But not physically violent repression (that's about as far as Pinker and Foucault agree). But rather rigorous psychological and moral bloodsucking of dignity, freedom, and individuality. Everywhere: military parades, schools, factories, hospitals, workhouses. Necessity of efficiency is the rationale.
But Foucault realizes that 'liberal' politics go hand in hand with this regimentation and unending labour. Work is the most efficient form of social control. Nietzsche also said that ( Foucault is most certainly Nietzschean). Foucault realizes here (and apparently in his other works as well) that basic human drives are now considered taboo and he calls us out on our hypocrisy. Modern times are repressed times. Virtually everything is determined by power. Not only are most of us too well 'disciplined' and 'punished' but we are isolated in our cells of various hues and colours and so pervertedly repressed.
A veritable dystopia of uncannily real proportions. I can only reccommend you struggle through the language, stop and think about what is being said. Slow down, this one isn't just another notch on your bookshelf: it's that worth it.
October 20, 2022
فوکو، فیلسوف پدوفایل فرانسوی، این کتاب را در نتیجۀ همکاریاش با گروهی افراطی از اکتیویستهای حامی اصلاح در زندانها نوشت. ایدهی بنیادی کتاب این است که نظارت اجتماعی در جوامع مدر��، در مقایسه با دنیای قدیم، فراگیرتر شده و به نحو شریرانهتری اعمال میشود. این ایده به گوش نسلی که مخاطبان کتاب بودند، حرف چندان تازهای نمیآمد. با این حال اگر فوکو ذرهای درک اقتصادی و تاریخی داشت و اینقدر هم مزور* نبود، شاید میشد کمی بر حرفهایش تامل کرد. ولی او تنها قصۀ فلسفی میبافد. جالب است که تاثیری که کتاب در جهان انگلیسیزبان و به تبعش در کشورهایی با فرهنگ دنبالهرو، مثل ایران، گذاشت، هیچ وقت در خود فرانسه نداشت
*هنوز سه سال از انتشار این کتاب نگذشته بود که صدای انکرالاصوات انقلاب اسلامی ایران در جهان پیچید. فوکو که از تجسم خشونتبار ارادۀ ج��عی، مثل بچهای، به شوق آمده بود، دو بار به ایران سفر کرد و از آنجا که شیفتۀ تمامقد "معنویت" خمینی شده بود، به دستبوسش در نوفل لوشاتو شتافت. فوکو خشونت تروریستهای اسلامگرا را "روح جهانی بیروح" میدید، آنوقت برای غربیها منبر میرفت که مدارسشان، در عمل، حکم زندان را دارد
*هنوز سه سال از انتشار این کتاب نگذشته بود که صدای انکرالاصوات انقلاب اسلامی ایران در جهان پیچید. فوکو که از تجسم خشونتبار ارادۀ ج��عی، مثل بچهای، به شوق آمده بود، دو بار به ایران سفر کرد و از آنجا که شیفتۀ تمامقد "معنویت" خمینی شده بود، به دستبوسش در نوفل لوشاتو شتافت. فوکو خشونت تروریستهای اسلامگرا را "روح جهانی بیروح" میدید، آنوقت برای غربیها منبر میرفت که مدارسشان، در عمل، حکم زندان را دارد
September 7, 2017
Το Πανοπτικόν, ως η αποτελεσματικότερη μέθοδος ελέγχου. Απαραίτητο για την κατανόηση της εποχή μας.
January 24, 2022
کتاب بسیار ارزشمندیست، شاید در فصل هایی نگاه سختگیرانهای دارد به خصوص در باب انضباط در بیمارستان. در مجموع نگاه شخص من به مقوله مراقبت (که حالا بیش از هر زمان دیگری درگیرش هستیم) را تغییر داد.
نگاه سراسربینی که به دنبال تربیت و ساخت و مهندسی انسان هایی است که خودشان پلیس خودشان باشند. خودمراقبتی: به راستی چقدر از اعمالی که انجام میدهیم را با پیش فرض دیده شدن، منضبط بودن، شهروند مطیع قانون بودن انجام میدهیم؟
• چرا یک ستاره کم دادم؟ دلیلش مستقیما ربطی به خود کتاب ندارد، بلکه من به هر شخصی که دل در گرو انقلاب ۵۷ داشت نمیتوانم نگاه بدون سوگیری داشته باشم. من جمله فوکو که تکلیفش روشن است.
نگاه سراسربینی که به دنبال تربیت و ساخت و مهندسی انسان هایی است که خودشان پلیس خودشان باشند. خودمراقبتی: به راستی چقدر از اعمالی که انجام میدهیم را با پیش فرض دیده شدن، منضبط بودن، شهروند مطیع قانون بودن انجام میدهیم؟
• چرا یک ستاره کم دادم؟ دلیلش مستقیما ربطی به خود کتاب ندارد، بلکه من به هر شخصی که دل در گرو انقلاب ۵۷ داشت نمیتوانم نگاه بدون سوگیری داشته باشم. من جمله فوکو که تکلیفش روشن است.
August 24, 2008
completely unoriginal and not positive or progressive in the slightest. foucault's analysis suggests nothing, encourages nothing, discourages nothing. it is neutral in the worst possible way. neutral like the color baige or milk. the book amounts to very little. its inflated status is symptomatic of the inability for anyone to identify real talent in an academic environment which equates obfuscation with intelligence.
August 4, 2017
Non lento, non pesante. Anzi, semplicemente IMMOBILE e UN MACIGNO (come quasi sempre è, anche se nessuno lo dice, Foucault).
Eppure, come sempre è un'opera di Foucault, una lettura piena di interesse, illuminante, arricchente.
Da leggere assolutamente.
Eppure, come sempre è un'opera di Foucault, una lettura piena di interesse, illuminante, arricchente.
Da leggere assolutamente.
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