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Prison and its effectiveness
Michael foucault discipline & punishment theory
Michael foucault discipline & punishment theory
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Foucault in his work ‘Discipline and Punish’ (1977) offered a critical approach towards transformations of society. He observed the shift of power that control individuals from sovereign to disciplinary power and warned us not to be misled by the emergence of new systems as humane system of control. His critique of transformations was related to the birth of imprisonment (the new system of penalty). For Foucault, in the old system of penalty, the body is tortured and pain was the central element of punishment. Torture is publicly exercised, everyone could see the power of the punisher and the control over the body lies in the hand of a single man. Torturing the body must be seen by all, and must be carried out in a spectacular manner and openly as a deterrence for crime. On the contrary, under the new system, the infliction of physical pain on the body is avoided however the body is “caught up in a system of constraints and privations, obligations and prohibitions” (1977, p.11). For Foucault, these are systems of surveillance which efficiently and effectively monitor the movement and actions of individuals. These systems do not punish less rather …show more content…
Foucault perceived the punishing of the ‘body’ as well as the rehabilitation of the soul as a political activity. The body is trained and regulated by forms of habits making it docile towards the systems of surveillance. Here, Foucault and Bourdieu similarly talked about the body to be influenced, trained and regulated by forms of habits designated by structures. But, while Bourdieu referred to body hexis as elements of habitus (internalized and embodied), Foucault perceived the body to be constrained, trained and docile to habits that are external to the
Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish. New York: Random House Inc, 1978. Print. 3 May 2014.
The theory of Panopticon by Foucault can be applied in this poem. According to Foucault, there is a cultural shift from the old traditional discipline of inmates to a European disciplinary system (314). In this new disciplinary model, the prisoners always assume that they are under constant watch by the guards and they start policing themselves. Panopticon is the process of inducing inmates to a state of conscious and ...
The essay begins by drawing forth images of Puritan punishment. He cites two instances of punishment, which were particularly torturous and radical in nature. He then draws a comparison between this inhumane punishment and imprisonment by stating with irony that, “Now we practice a more enlightened, more humane way of disciplining wrong doers: we lock them up in cages.” His use of the word “cages” was an attempt to vilify the enclosurement of human beings and to compare this treatment of human beings, to the caging of other animals. Although his position is clear from the first glance at the title, he poses us with a dilemma, he immediately denounces his acceptance of imprisonment with his use of irony and at the same time he proposes a solution which he has radicalized. This early attempt at discounting imprisonment by comparing it with an extreme form of the punishment he is proposing, simply leaves the reader with a negative feeling towards both forms of punishment rather than bolstering his view.
As well as this , the author illustrates how imprisonment has become society’s general form of punishment and has now become outdated. Jacoby proposes that in order to cut costs and prevent future crime within first time offenders the turn to flogging must be taken. Jacoby’s logic to his argument is that since crime rates are rising, keeping prisoners locked up is expensive, and “the penal system is choked to bursting” (Jacoby 1), prisons should be done away with and flogging should take the reins as the new form of corporal punishment. Bearing in mind the above, Jacoby’s argument on bringing back flogging is unconvincing for the reason that his assumptions are incoherent and flogging itself is inhumane and could prove to be ineffective.
Andre, Claire, and Manuel Velasquez. “Capital Punishment.” Our Duty or Our Doom. 12 May 2010. 30 May 2010 .
Foucault once stated, “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests” (301). By this, he means that our society is full of constant supervision that is not easily seen nor displayed. In his essay, Panopticism, Foucault goes into detail about the different disciplinary societies and how surveillance has become a big part of our lives today. He explains how the disciplinary mechanisms have dramatically changed in comparison to the middle ages. Foucault analyzes in particular the Panopticon, which was a blueprint of a disciplinary institution. The idea of this institution was for inmates to be seen but not to see. As Foucault put it, “he is the object of information, never a subject in communication”(287). The Panopticon became an evolutionary method for enforcing discipline. Today there are different ways of watching people with constant surveillance and complete control without anyone knowing similar to the idea of the Panopticon.
(Flynn 1996, 28) One important aspect of his analysis that distinguishes him from the predecessors is about power. According to Foucault, power is not one-centered, and one-sided which refers to a top to bottom imposition caused by political hierarchy. On the contrary, power is diffusive, which is assumed to be operate in micro-physics, should not be taken as a pejorative sense; contrarily it is a positive one as ‘every exercise of power is accompanied by or gives rise to resistance opens a space for possibility and freedom in any content’. (Flynn 1996, 35) Moreover, Foucault does not describe the power relation as one between the oppressor or the oppressed, rather he says that these power relations are interchangeable in different discourses. These power relations are infinite; therefore we cannot claim that there is an absolute oppressor or an absolute oppressed in these power relations.
Introduction Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman’s work was centralised around two different concepts of how your identity is formed through the process of power and expert knowledge. This Essay will discuss the ideas of Michel Foucault, a French Social Theorist. His theories addressed the relationship between power and knowledge and how both of these are used as a form of social control through society. The essay will look at Foucault’s work in The Body and Sexuality, Madness and Civilisation and Discipline and Punish, which displays how he conceptualised power and identity on a Marxist and macro basis of study. The Essay will also address the Ideas of Erving Goffman, a Canadian Born Sociologist who’s key study was what he termed as interactional order, that is how the functions of ritual and order of every individual member of society, in everyday life, interact to form social order.
Michel Foucault may be regarded as the most influential twentieth-century philosopher on the history of systems of thought. His theories focus on the relationship between power and knowledge, and how such may be used as a form of social control through institutions in society. In “Truth and Juridical Forms,” Foucault addresses the development of the nineteenth-century penal regime, which completely transformed the operation of the traditional penal justice system. In doing so, Foucault famously compares contemporary society to a prison- “prison is not so unlike what happens every day.” Ultimately, Foucault attempts to exemplify the way in which disciplinary power has become exercised in everyday institutions according to normalization under the authority network of individuals such that all relationships may be considered power relations. Thus, all aspects of society follow the model of a prison based on domination. While all aspects of society take the shape of prison, most individuals may remainignorant of such- perhaps just as they are supposed to. As a result, members of society unconsciously participate in the disciplinary power that aims to “normalize,” thus contributing to and perpetuating the contemporary form of social control. Accordingly, the modern penal regime may be regarded as the most effective system of societal discipline. [OK – SOLID INTRO]
This essay will analyze and critique Michel Foucault’s (1984) essay The Use of Pleasure in order to reveal certain internal weaknesses it contains and propose modifications that would strengthen his reading of sexuality as a domain of moral self-formation. In order to do so, it will present a threefold critique of his work. Firstly, it will argue that that his focus on solely the metric of pleasure divorced from its political manifestations underemphasizes state power as a structuring principle of sexuality. Secondly, it will posit that his attention to classical morality privileges written works by male elites and fails to account for the subtexts that would demonstrate other forms of morality. Finally, it will argue that the nature of actors’ resistance to moral codes, explicated through Butler’s concept of iterability and signification, is an important factor that should also be considered. As a result of this critique, this essay
2nd ed. of the book. 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14.4RN, Routledge. Foucault, M. (1995) Discipline and Punishment. The Birth of the Prison [online].
There are many explanations for what punishment characterises. For Emile Durkheim, punishment was mainly an expression of social solidarity and not a form of crime control. Here, the offender attacks the social moral order by committing a crime and therefore, has to be punished, to show that this moral order still "works". Durkheim's theory suggests that punishment must be visible to everyone, and so expresses the outrage of all members of society against the challenge to their collective values. The form of punishment changes between mechanic (torture, execution) and organic (prison) solidarity because the values of society change but the idea behind punishing, the essence, stays the same - keeping the moral order intact not decreasing crime. Foucault has a different view of the role or function of punishment. For Foucault, punishment signifies political control. His theory compares the age of torture with the age of prison, concluding that the shift from the former to the latter is done due to changes in society and new strategies needed for the dominance of it by the rulers. Punishment for Foucault is a show of power first brutal and direct (torture), then organised and rational (prison). Punishment does not get more lenient because of humanitarian reasons but because the power relations in society change.
Foucault outlines the progression of the punishment of criminals and how it developed into the current system. From the early regime of tyranny, to our current political environment, the ruling entity has always tried to find more efficient ways of punishing those who opposed their rules. Torture, humiliation and imprisonment are among the top forms that were and are used. As political environments shifted, so did public opinion and power. The accumulation of shifts is what this book looks and to understand how the transition from kings ordering torture and execution to our modern judiciary system of due process.
Punishing the unlawful, undesirable and deviant members of society is an aspect of criminal justice that has experienced a variety of transformations throughout history. Although the concept of retribution has remained a constant (the idea that the law breaker must somehow pay his/her debt to society), the methods used to enforce and achieve that retribution has changed a great deal. The growth and development of society along with an underlying, perpetual fear of crime are heavily linked to the use of vastly different forms of punishment that have ranged from public executions, forced labor, penal welfarism and popular punitivism over the course of only a few hundred years.
Foucault wrote a book called Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison explaining his thoughts on how he discipline should be taught. Discipline and Punish is a book about the emergence of the prison system. The conclusion of the book in relation to this subject matter is that the prison is an institution, the objective purpose of which is to produce criminality and recidivism. The system encompasses the movement that calls for reform of the prisons as an integral and permanent part. Foucault states that The more important general theme of the book is that of “discipline” in the penal sense, a specific historical form of power that was taken up by the state with professional soldiering in the 17th century, and spread widely across society, first via the panoptic prison, then via the division of labor in the factory and universal education. The purpose of discipline is to produce “docile bodies,” the individual movements of which can be controlled, and which in its turn involves the psychological monitoring and control of individuals, indeed which for Foucault produces individuals as