Foucault’s Discipline and Punish

Spring 2006

About the AuthorTo the extent that Foucault fits into the philosophical tradition, it is the critical tradition of Kant, and his project could be called a Critical History of Thought. This should not be taken to mean a history of ideas that would be at the same time an analysis of errors that might be gauged after the fact; or a decipherment of the misinterpretations linked to them and on which what we think today might depend. If what is meant by thought is the act that posits a subject and an object, along with their possible relations, a critical history of thought would be an analysis of the conditions under which certain relations of subject to object are formed or modified, insofar as those relations constitute a possible knowledge [savoir].

This text was first written by Foucault as a retrospective view about his work for the introduction to his book "History of Sexuality", it was then given by Foucault, under the pseudonym "Maurice Florence" as the article for the entry "Foucault" in "Dictionnaire des philosophes" 1984, pp 942-944.

http://foucault.info/foucault/biography.html

Faces of Michel Foucault

Again, about himself…

'My role - and that is too emphatic a word - is to show people that they are much freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as evidence, some themes which have been built up at a certain moment during history, and that this so-called evidence can be criticized and destroyed.‘

'Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault October 25 1982', in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault Eds Luther H. Martin and Patrick Hutton,

Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988, p.10

[http://www.qut.edu.au/edu/cpol/foucault/quotes.html accessed 12 April 12, 2000]

Personal Biography

• Born in 1926 in Poitiers, the son of a surgeon. Teenage years in occupied France. Educated in the very competitive French academic system finally winning a place at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. First successful writings in the 1960s. Died in 1984.

Intellectual Biography• “Foucault, like many began his philosophical career considering psychological

phenomena. In Mental Illness and Personality(1954), he developed an existential phenomenology within the boundaries of Marxist thought.

• His interest in philosophical science and history led him to write extensively on the middle ages and the "archaeology of knowledge." Shifting to a more genealogical explanation of the transitions between major stages of human development led him to consider the causal effects of non-related causes upon the development of new thought.

• His major works also include: History of Madness in the Classical Age(1961), The Birth of the Clinic(1963), The Order of Things(1966), and The Archaeology of Knowledge(1969). His later works dealing with sexuality and religion, as well as modern thought include Discipline and Punish(1975), History of Sexuality(1976), The Confessions of the Flesh(unpublished), The Use of Pleasure(1984), and The Care of the Self(1984).

• His later works clearly show the major thrust of his thought: he sought the liberation of man from contingent conceptual constraints masked as unsurpassable a priori limits and the adumbration of alternative forms of existence.”

• [http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/phils/foucault.html accessed 12 April 2000]

Intellectual Biography (cont’d)

• Major works also include: History of Madness in the Classical Age (1961), (1963), The Order of Things (1966), and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). His later works dealing with sexuality and religion, as well as modern thought include Discipline and Punish (1975), History of Sexuality (1976), The Confessions of the Flesh (unpublished), The Use of Pleasure (1984), and The Care of the Self (1984).

• His later works clearly show the major thrust of his thought: he sought the liberation of man from contingent conceptual constraints masked as unsurpassable a priori limits and the adumbration of alternative forms of existence.”

• [http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/phils/foucault.html accessed 12 April 2000]

The Books

Our Book Today

Discipline and Punish, from the outside in

• Is this the structure of the book?

I. Torture

II. Punishment

III. Discipline

IV. Prison

Or is it this…

Torture Punishment Discipline Prison

Or is it this…

Torture

Punishment

Discipline

Prison

Or this?

Torture

Punishment

Discipline

Prison

Can we even say, before we’ve “defined” what Foucault means

by each section title?

Torture

• Mid-18th century

• Spectacular (literally) assault on body

• Intentional pain

• Marking the body

• Person as “mark-able”

Punishment

• “‘Let penalties be regulated and proportioned to the offences, let the death sentence be passed onl on those convicted of murder, and let the tortures that revolt humanity be abolished.’” (73)

• 19th century penal reform• Punishment as “reformatory” in which the

offender is re-trained as an obedient subject, a compliant signatory to the social contract.

• Person as repairable.

Discipline

• Making soldiers. Break down, build up.

• Close order drill.

• This idea can be transferred to other activities – can make lawyers, activists, MBA, etc. – molding people.

• You can build the rules into people.

• Person as docile, programmable, trainable.

Prison

• Prison is an invention but one that has come to be completely taken for granted.

• All control reduced to single “cash” nexus of “time”

• Generalized control is normalized, made to be a part of “how things are” rather than self-consciously “the law of the king”

• Control embedded in knowledge.

• Society as complex network of power

And so, look at page 7

• “We have, then, a public execution and a time-table. They do not punish the same crimes or the same type of delinquent. But they each define a penal style. Less than a century separates them. … Among so many changes, I shall consider one: the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle. …

• “…it has been attributed too readily and too emphatically to a process of ‘humanization’,….”

And page 9

• “Punishment had gradually ceased to be a spectacle.

• “Punishment …become[s] he most hidden part of the penal process.

• “It…enters [the realm] of abstract consciousness

• “[I]ts effectiveness…result[s] from its inevitability, not from its visible intensity….”

Part I. Torture

Damiens

http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/602/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens

The Assassination of Louis XV by

Damiens

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/1/9/5/11956/11956-h/11956-h.htm

Damiens Being Broken on the Wheel

http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/602/

http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/602/

Eighty years later, Faucher drew up his rules "for the House of

young prisoners in Paris"

• Art. 19. The prayers are conducted by the chaplain and followed by a moral or religious reading. This exercise must not last more than half an hour.

• Art. 20. Work. At a quarter to six in the summer, a quarter to seven in winter, the prisoners go down into the courtyard where they must wash their hands and faces, and receive their first ration of bread. Immediately afterwards, they form into work-teams and go off to work, which must begin at six in summer and seven in winter.

• Art. 21. Meal. At ten o'clock the prisoners leave their work and go to the refectory; they wash their hands in their courtyards and assemble in divisions. After the dinner, there is recreation until twenty minutes to eleven.

• Art. 22. School. At twenty minutes to eleven, at the drum-roll, the prisoners form into ranks, and proceed in divisions to the school. The class lasts two hours and consists alternately of reading, writing, drawing and arithmetic.

• "Art. 17. The prisoners' day will begin at six in the morning in winter and at five in summer. They will work for nine hours a day throughout the year. Two hours a day will be devoted to instruction. Work and the day will end at nine o'clock in winter and at eight in summer.

• Art. 18. Rising. At the first drum-roll, the prisoners must rise and dress in silence, as the supervisor opens the cell doors. At the second drum-roll, they must be dressed and make their beds. At the third, they must line up and proceed to the chapel for morning prayer. There is a five-minute interval between each drum-roll.

“The Body of the Condemned”

Damiens’ Torture1757

Faucher’s Timetable1830s

Change? Humanization?

Change in Objective

Body as Object for power to crush, leave mark on

Body as subject for power to inhabit, colonize, take

over from inside

…a relationship between power and the body…[24-30]

What I want to do is write a “correlative history of the present” (31)

Punishment provides additionallabor force, and separates "civil"slaves from war booty

slave economy

feudal economy

mercantile economy

industrial economy

Increase in corporal punishments-- body is the only property

Penitentiary, forced labor, prisonfactory

Need for free labor market corrective detention

QUESTION: What transformations does Foucault take note of here?

• A whole series of parallel transformations. If we can line them up we might be able to see some of his logic.

unbearable sensations suspended rightseffect by visibility effect by inevitabilitytorture of body imprisonment of bodyjudging crimes judging soulswho did it? how to understand

the authorship?

• This last suggests that we now ask "what did this?" We want to know what sort of thing this criminal amongst us is and how we should treat him.

What are we to make of the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle?

• Answer: Let's not be too hasty to attribute it to a process of humanization... [7]

– What “disappeared”? What should we make of this transformation? The body as major target of penal repression (8.3).

– Two processes were at work (8.4)• Disappearance of punishment as spectacle – punishment become

hidden part of penal process. (8.5-9.5)• Punishment as everyday perception punishment in abstract

consciousness (9.5)

– Publicity shifts to the trial – judgment separated from punishment– “slackening hold on the body” (10.6)

What are we to make of the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle? (cont’d)

• Art of unbearable sensations economy of suspended rights (11.5)

• Executioner warders, doctors, chaplains, psychiatrists, educationalists (11.6)

• Real body juridical subject as point of application of law

• But despite all the changes there remains a “trace” of torture in how we think about punishment – “prisoners shouldn’t have it easy” we say (16.4-5)

SO, HOW WILL HE WRITE THIS

HISTORY?

Four general rules:1. Regard punishment as a complex social function.

2. View punitive methods one body techniques among the various ways of exercising power. Regard punishment as a political tactic.

3. Don't see history of penal law and history of human sciences as separate. Ask whether the "technology of power" is not a common principle behind the "humanization of punishment" and the "knowledge of man."

4. Is this double trend -- soul into penal system and scientific knowledge into legal practice -- result of a change in the way in which the body is invested with power relations?

Thus,

by an analysis of penal leniency as a technique of power, one might understand both how man, the soul, the normal or abnormal individual have come to duplicate crime as objects of penal intervention; and in what way a specific mode of subjection was able to give birth to man as an object of knowledge for a discourse with a 'scientific' status. [p.24] There comes to be a "proliferation of authorities" who get to have a say in whether the guilty man "deserves" this or that punishment and there is a body of TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE with which such decisions can be made and a group of EXPERTS who get to make this determination.

The Spectacle of the Scaffold [32-69]

• Review of penal practices in pre-rev France (1670-1790) – torture as technique [32-35]

• Visibility, pain, body, truth [35-42]

• How the body produces and reproduces the truth of the crime [42-47]

The Spectacle of the Scaffold [32-69]

• Execution as socio-political restoration of the injured sovereign (“it reactivated power” (49.6)) [47-54]

– Spectacle all out of proportion so as to give impression of imbalance – suggest a “god” on earth (49.3)

– Cf. Touching the ark of the covenant – instant death – scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”

– Cf. What terrorists do (blow up big buildings, for example) and how the state reacts to terrorists. Important to react viciously to make the point that “states” still rule the world.

The Spectacle of the Scaffold [32-69]

• Why did public torture survive so long? Not retaliation but a ritual of power. [54-57]

• The public was important part of spectacle of torture but also dangerous to sovereign because at the same time it felt its own power. Execution days as social control holidays (cf. riots during parades, e.g., after sports victories). Thus public spectacle gives way to “more humane” more controlled techniques. [57-65]

• From apocryphal “gallows speeches” to crime literature in which the criminal is the cunning hero [65-69]

Leading Questions

1. What is the picture you get of the earliest form of torture that Foucault describes at the start of the book?

2. What does Foucault mean by “humanization” at 7.8?  What is the “it” of the next sentence?  Put into your own words his claim that “perhaps it has been attributed too readily and too emphatically to a process of ‘humanization’, thus dispensing with the need for further analysis”?

Leading Questions3. At 18.9-19.1 Foucault writes of the legal system’s

consideration of the offender’s mental state (or soul) that it is only apparently “limitative” and “explanatory.”  What does he mean by this?  What does he mean when he says, in the same paragraph, “judging something more than crimes, namely, the ‘soul’ of the criminal”? 

4. A common theme in writers like Foucault is that of “inscription.”  At 18.8, for example, we read “Psychiatric expertise … find[s] one if [its] precise functions here: by solemnly inscribing offenses in the field of objects subject to scientific knowledge, they provide the mechanisms of legal punishment with a justifiable hold not only on offences, but on individuals; not only on what they do, but on what they are, will be, may be.”  What do you understand this metaphor of inscription to mean here?  

OLD WAY

Convict is king'sproperty

Mark Effects of King's

power

NEW WAY

Convict is society'sproperty

Sign Useful appropriation

Public WorksCommunity Service

Labor

Sign

crime punishment

Leading Questions

5. Foucault says, on page 20, that the sentence implies "judgements of normality, attributions of causality, assessments of possible changes, anticipations as to the offender's future."  What does he mean by this?  

6. There is a useful summary paragraph on p. 23:   This book is intended as a correlative history of the modern soul and of a new power to judge; a genealogy of the present scientifico-legal complex from which the power to punish derives its bases, justifications, and rules, from which it extends its effects and by which it masks its exorbitant singularity.   What do you understand by “correlative history, genealogy, scientifico-legal complex, singularity”?

Can we come up with a paraphrase of this paragraph to tell ourselves what this book is about?

Leading Questions

7. At 24.3 the author writes “penal leniency as a technique of power….”  What does this mean?

 

8. What initial definitions of “power” can we derive from the paragraphs between 26.6 and 27.5?

Robert-François Damiens(1715-1757) was a Frenchman who attained notoriety by unsuccessfully attempting the assassination of Louis XV of France in 1757. He was the last person to be executed in France with the traditional and gruesome form of death penalty used for regicides.Damiens was born in a village near Arras in 1715, and early enlisted in the army. After his discharge, he became a menial in the college of the Jesuits in Paris, and was dismissed from this as well as from other employments for misconduct, his conduct earning for him the name of Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil). During the disputes of Pope Clement XI with the parlement of Paris, Damiens' mind seems to have been excited by the ecclesiastical disorganization which followed the refusal of the clergy to grant the sacraments to the Jansenists and Convulsionnaires; and he appears to have thought that peace would be restored by the death of the king. He, however, asserted, perhaps with truth, that he only intended to frighten the king without wounding him severely.On January 5, 1757, as the king was entering his carriage, Damiens rushed forward and stabbed him with a knife, inflicting only a slight wound. He made no attempt to escape, and was at once seized. He was then tortured so as to have him denounce his accomplices or those who had sent him, to no avail. He was condemned as a regicide by the Parlement of Paris, and sentenced to be torn in pieces by horses in the Place de Grève. He was first tortured with red-hot pincers; his hand, holding the knife used in the attempted murder, was burnt using sulphur; molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. Horses were then harnessed to his arms and legs for his dismemberment. Damiens' joints would not break; after some hours, representatives of the Parlement ordered the executioner and his aides to cut Damiens' joints. Damiens was then dismembered, to the applause of the crowd. His trunk, apparently still living, was then burnt at the stake. He is viewed by some people as the Guy Fawkes of France since both of these men tried to kill their kings but failed and were brutally executed.After his death his house was razed to the ground, his brothers and sisters were ordered to change their names, and his father, wife, and daughter were banished from France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens