One of Foucault’s contributions to the body of knowledge is his idea that subjectivities are not simply the natural order of things. Rather, they are products of relations between what he calls power-knowledge dynamics and scientific discourse that perpetuates that link.
In Foucault’s works, knowledge, rationality and objectivity which are the hallmarks of the Age of Reason, are challenged and questioned.
Foucault argues that scientific knowledge far from being disinterested is actually implicated in power relations. Foucault’s fresh approach to investigating the power/knowledge relationship reveals the complicity of social institutions and the human sciences in objectifying abnormal categories such as insanity and criminality against which the rational and the law-abiding subjectivities which are amenable to social control are constituted. The human sciences have not simply responded to pre-existing societal needs but actually helped produce the very objects over which they seek control.
Docile Bodies
In Discipline and Punish, Foucault examines how a disciplinary power strategy which is informed by knowledge and heavily invested in the body, established itself in the West at the end of the 18th century. For Foucault, the critical shift in power relations occurred when the “soul” replaced the body as the true target of penal repression.
This displacement introduced a new form of subjecting the body to power informed by knowledge. Now, the body is no longer the object of punishment but the instrument of punishment. If the body is incarcerated, the aim is not to inflict physical pain but to deprive individuals of their rights. Foucault argues that although reforms aimed at correcting the arbitrariness and excesses of the monarchical penal system, their true objective, far from being humanitarian, was the establishment of a technology of power which is reliable and cost effective.
Disciplinary power was made possible through the creation of “docile bodies.” According to Foucault, although the notion of “docility” was present before the turn of the century, it underwent three types of transformation that made the “meticulous control of the operation of the body” possible. First, the scale of the control put on the body increased; second, the technique of the control became much more sophisticated; and third, the coercion of the body became constant.
Foucault defines “disciplines” as the totality of methods which produced “subjected and practised” docile body ready for “utility.” And docile bodies were to be found not only in prisons but also in schools, factories, hospitals and the military.
Instruments of Disciplinary Power
Discipline treats individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercises, and Foucault identifies “hierarchical observation,” “normalizing judgment” and “examination” as the three instruments of exercising disciplinary power. The first refers to structural designs and organization of individuals — whether in schools or prisons — which allow for maximum surveillance.
Normalization of judgment aims at correcting the slightest deviation from the rules through a combination of rewards for compliance and punishment for infraction. Examination, which is the combination of the first two, identifies, observes, classifies documents and analyses individuals. Foucault singles out “examination” as central to the procedure that constitutes the individual as effect and object of power-knowledge.
The Panopticon
Foucault recognizes the panopticon, Bentham’s ideal form of the reformatory, as symbolizing not only the prison system but as characteristic of disciplinary practices in schools, hospitals, factories and the army. Students, patients, workers and soldiers may not be incarcerated, but the idea of the panopticon where subjects are divided, classified and constantly observed is as much applicable in hospitals or schools as it is in prison.
Furthermore, in all instances subjects are visible while power remains invisible. Those who are constantly subjected to a field of visibility will become self-regulating, thus rendering the actual exercise of power unnecessary. The panopticon, says Foucault, “is a marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.”
The Disciplinary Society
Foucault associates the emergence of the disciplinary society with a historical conjecture involving the articulation of specific economic, political, legal and scientific practices. The 18th century was marked by high accumulation of capital and industrialization, a huge population growth, the establishment of secular legal system and the human sciences.
The politically discreet and economically cost-effective disciplinary method was best suited to smoothly manage the high population growth with its resultant effects in schools, factories, hospitals, and the army. It was possible to regulate and control the human population in these civil institutions, the army, as well as prisons through the disciplinary techniques of hierarchical surveillance, continuous registration, perpetual assessment, and classification.
The disciplinary method reduces the individual to a “case study.” It makes it possible for the human sciences like psychology, psychiatry, pedagogy and criminology to engage in a “science of man,” which in turn informs power and thus maintaining the inter-connection between power exercise and knowledge formation.
Sources:
- Foucault, Michael. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage, 1988.
- The History of Sexuality. Volume 1. New York: Vintage, 1991.
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