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An essay on violence
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An essay on violence
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Anthony Bevilacqua #0880428 Foucault’s conception of power differs from the Critical theorists conception of criminal violence in the fact that Foucault believes that power is used as a deterrent against crime and is used to keep people in order due to the fear that they are constantly being watched from the “viewing tower” and that power is everywhere. However critical theorist conception of criminal violence is that, “Both crime and the criminal law are shaped by the structure of the political economy, with particular emphasis on the importance of class, ethnicity, race, and gender.” This meaning that unlike Foucault’s power, the power in the Critical theorists is controlled by a select few and its creates crime rather then deter it and
Foucault starts out the first chapter, The body of the condemned, by contrasting Damiens gruesome public torture with a detailed schedule of a prison that took place just eighty years later. Foucault is bringing the reader’s attention to the distinct change in punishment put in place in less than a century. It gets the reader to start thinking about the differences between how society used to punish people and the way that we do today. Foucault states that earlier in time the right to punish was directly connected to the authority of the King. Crimes committed during this time were not crimes against the public good, but a personal disrespect to the King himself. The public displays of torture and execution were public affirmations of the King’s authority to rule and to punish. It was after many years when the people subjected to torture suddenly became sympathized, especially if the punishment was too excessive for the crime committed.
Power, what our society is entirely based upon, is needed for man to act as gods but hidden truths are revealed. Many books and poems use power as a moral, but there are always poems and books the are different and standout. In Viva la Vida and The Count of Monte Cristo, the writers' use of symbolism and imagery conveys the idea that power over others reveals hidden truths.
Sciences360.com. 2014. Crime according to Marxism and Functionalism by William Menna | Sciences 360. [online] Available at: http://www.sciences360.com/index.php/crime-according-to-marxism-and-functionalism-16145/ [Accessed: 10 Jan 2014].
(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.
All people have power, some people are just more powerful than others. Having power is the ability to create change. Examples of power being used wrongly is during the French revolution, and the residential school crisis. During the French revolution, two examples were shown of people abusing their power. King Louie XVI raised taxes so that he could buy things that he and his wife Marie Antoinette wanted, and took away rights from the third estate. In the residential schools crisis, the teachers, priests and nuns had power over the students and abused the students in different ways. Superior people take away the rights from those who are below them, but they end up corrupt.
Theory: Michel Foucault argues a number of points in relation to power and offers definitions that are directly opposed to more traditional liberal and Marxist theories of power. Foucault believed that power is never in any one person's hands, it does not show itself in any obvious manner but rather as something that works its way into our imaginations and serves to constrain how we act.... ... middle of paper ... ... Giddons, A. (2007). The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'.
Unlike other theories of power, Foucault (1998: 63) argues, “power is everywhere and comes from everywhere”, it is distributed throughout society and not held by the dominant class. He also states that power makes human beings who they are. Foucault’s theory is particular in that he doesn’t just viewed power negatively, but rather acknowledges it to be productive and a positive element that “produces reality” (Foucault 1991:194). These ideas contrast political economy, which suggests that the dominant class do hold power and influences the media. The idea of power producing reality reflects in the reality TV show Big Brother. Big Brother demonstrates how Foucault sees power as an everyday phenomenon, which produces reality. Big Brother is a show consisting of housemates who are everyday people living in the Big Brother house together. Big Brother produces the positive side to power that Foucault suggested, as watching over the housemates becomes a productive way to monitor their behaviour, without coercion. Foucault’s theory on discipline and disciplinary power hold a special quality. Foucault (1977: 201) contrasts other theorists stating that discipline can be produced through surveillance and “permanent visibility”, causing people to discipline themselves, with the absences of violence. He (Foucault 1977) suggests this can be used in prisons, schools and workplaces, through the idea
Sarah Snyder Professor Feola Gov’t 416: Critical Theory Assignment #2 On Foucault, “Truth and Juridical Forms” 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 Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power by Sandra Bartky, the writer examines the disciplinary practices which produces a body that gesture and appearance is feminine. Bartky challenges the social construction of femininity by revealing how feminine serves the interest of domination. She talks about apparatus of discipline, the disciplinarians that discipline. According to her, it is a system of micro power that is essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical. Taking into consideration one of the concepts of her analysis, feminine bodily discipline is something imposed on subjects and at the same time something that can be sought voluntarily. I will base my analysis on these dual characters and I will demonstrate that the production of femininity is more like something imposed
At this point we can determine the purpose of Foucault’s question, “what is critique”? Foucault’s definition of critique provides a tool to find cracks in power-knowledge relationships by analyzing the genealogy of a power knowledge relationship. Foucault states “we have to deal with something whose stability, deep rootedness and foundation is never such that we cannot in one way or another envisage, if not its disappearance, then at least identifying by what and from what its disappearance is possible” (65). Foucault believes that using his method of critique a power and knowledge relationship is not permanent. Questioning and knowledge can be used to remove the leash from authority.
Some theorists believe that ‘power is everywhere: not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere… power is not an institution, nor a structure, nor possession. It is the name we give to a complex strategic situation in a particular society. (Foucault, 1990: 93) This is because power is present in each individual and in every relationship. It is defined as the ability of a group to get another group to take some form of desired action, usually by consensual power and sometimes by force. (Holmes, Hughes &Julian, 2007) There have been a number of differing views on ‘power over’ the many years in which it has been studied. Theorist such as Anthony Gidden in his works on structuration theory attempts to integrate basic structural analyses and agency-centred traditions. According to this, people are free to act, but they must also use and replicate fundamental structures of power by and through their own actions. Power is wielded and maintained by how one ‘makes a difference’ and based on their decisions and actions, if one fails to exercise power, that is to ‘make a difference’ then power is lost. (Giddens: 1984: 14) However, more recent theorists have revisited older conceptions including the power one has over another and within the decision-making processes, and power, as the ability to set specific, wanted agendas. To put it simply, power is the ability to get others to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do. In the political arena, therefore, power is the ability to make or influence decisions that other people are bound by.
Similar to Marx, Foucault believed the state’s role was to use its power as violence as a means of social control over the population. Furthermore, his theory better examines modern power as it states, modern power can be understood as techniques rather than rights, modern power works by normalization instead of law, and modern power works to control the population rather than punish them. Furthermore, with advancements in technology and science, truth and knowledge could only be accepted and understood if it met the scientific criteria which was only accessible to few. In terms of Westray, the power was imposed on the workers by people like Clifford Fran and the managers who simply wanted to control their workers and normalized the work they were doing even though it was unsafe. Furthermore, even though Foucault does not address workers experience and disqualifies their voice, this is what happened to the Westray miners because they were aware that their working conditions were unsafe and that it was tremendously affecting their health but because they were not considered experts their knowledge was ignored. Additionally, the knowledge was accepted by Albert Maclean, who was an inspector, even though he had never worked in a mine before and told workers that even with the examples of unsafe working conditions they provided him he was not able to shut down the mine, which was
(Foucault, 1977:201) as far as the inmate is concerned they are under constant surveillance this means they believe that they are constantly visible and Foucault claims that this is how power is
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
in any group of people, and there will be struggle to achieve it--be it a