muthuvel's Reviews > Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

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.