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123helpme panopticism by Michael Foucault
123helpme panopticism by Michael Foucault
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In Panopticism by Michel Foucault, Foucault discusses the measures to be taken when the plague appeared in a town. He talked in death about the abnormal individuals that were stricken with the plague and the individuals were lepers and excluded from society. Strict partitioning occurred during the plague, the towns closed and individuals who attempted or left the town were sentenced to death. Stray animals were killed and the town was divided into districts that were governed independently. The syndic was in charge of the quarantine and would walk around to lock the door of each house form the outside (Foucault 282). The plague resulted in a need for order and aimed for a disciplined community. It was important, at this time, to measure and supervise the abnormal individuals. Anyone could become sick and become abnormal. And in this case, abnormal was extremely dangerous to other individuals in the community. Also separated from society were lepers. The leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion (Foucault 284). The aim of separating the lepers was to create a pure community. There was ...
...se of the plague’s presence by delimiting impious behavior according to biblical law, and condemning displays of impropriety. Individuals who failed to adhere to religious dictates regarding frugality and matrimony were blamed for ushering in the disease. Those who ignored social conventions regarding decent dress and gender codes were also accused of inciting God’s wrath and bringing society to ruin. According to excerpts of Rosemary Horrox’s The Black Death, the religious message of 1348 states that human pain and suffering are divine punishment for decadence, licentiousness, and frivolity. It is interesting to note that religious leaders of the 21st century state much the same thing regarding catastrophic events. This leads one to conclude that standards of propriety and decorum will always remain an inherent part of any religious diagnosis for societal ailments.
The anticipated research paper will be taking into consideration the perspectives of the individuals that lived and died as a result of the Black Death, specifically from the year 1348 CE – 1350 CE and in the better known parts of the world during that period, the reactions, preventative measure that were taken to combat the plague, the religious and governmental response. In the collection of primary sources amassed by John Aberth in The Black Death, 1348-1350: the great mortality of 1348-1350 ; a brief history with documents1 he very succinctly provides a condensed description of each document by giving a background of the author as well as the source of the primary source. Aberth manages to do this while remaining impartial, an admirable skill to have especially when it comes to examining primary sources, even in the limited way Aberth does. Aside from those brief narratives before each source, Aberth does not add any additional information or opinions. In his book From the brink of the apocalypse: confronting famine, war, plague, and death in the later middle ages2, he does go in depth regarding the reception to the Black Death. He does not immediately start with what occurred during the Black Death; he details the world before that seemingly apocalyptic event with an examination of the social structure that existed during the Middle Ages, such as the rise of chivalry and the revolutions in warfare and the Great Famine that immediately preceded the plague. In this way Aberth sets the reader up to gain a means of understanding the resulting responses to the plague from the very different yet similar mindset of a person of medieval times. For example, although Aberth considers the primary belief was that the plague was ca...
Although it is simply a website, it provides quotes from people who lived during the plague. The quotes tell about how the plague killed the poor and the rich, ignoring the social constructs of the time. Furthermore, it provides quotes from different people who lived in different areas. This source will be extremely helpful when talking about the plagues disregard for all people.
In the 1300’s, there was an outbreak of a disease known as the Black Death that engulfed all of Europe. This sickness, also know as the Bubonic Plague, rampaged throughout Europe killing over a third of the population. A bacteria known as Yersinia pestis caused the disease. The bacteria, originating in fleas, spread to rats and then to people. Black Death was spread from trade throughout Europe. The large cities were affected first, and then it spread to the less dense and populated surrounding areas. The mortality rate in large cities was near fifty percent of the population, while in more rural areas the rate was lower. This lasting effects of this disease changed Europe both socially and economically. The bubonic plague triggered a loss of faith and generated negative feelings towards the church, but positively affected the masses by creating opportunities that they didn’t have in the past.
According to Boccaccio’s account, civil order broke down during the plague as panic swept Florence. People were terrified by the inexplicable disease and the resulting massive death toll. In this state of distress, Boccaccio notes, “that the laws, human and divine, were not regarded” (Boccaccio 168). It became a mindset of every man for himself, or as Boccaccio states, “every one did just as he pleased” (Boccaccio 168). As people abandoned the laws, and officers—either sick or dead—could no longer enforce them, civil order in Florence turned to chaos.
In Albert Camus’s novel, The Plague, the characters were brought together as a community because of the rat-induced Black Plague. As Dr. Rieux discovered that the gathering of all the dead rats has caused the epidemic to exacerbate, he and the other doctors urged the authorities to place Oran under quarantine; therefore not letting any of the civilians to be able to make contact with anyone other than with the people in the city. Initially, the civilians acted selfish and only cared for his own life, which is evident in the first part of the novel, “In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.” The authorities also chose to ignore this
In his essay “Panopticism,” Michel Foucault introduces the Panopticon structure as proof of modern society tending toward efficient disciplinary mechanisms. Starting with his example of the strict, intensely organized measures that are taken in a typical 17th-century plague-stricken town, Foucault describes how the town employed constant surveillance techniques, centralized a hierarchy of authorities to survey households, partitioned individual structures to impose certain behavior, and record current information about each individual.
People were doing their own part to take care of their lives. Rumors of the Black Death began to spread, and some even hurt the markets. Back in 1665, an English naval bureaucrat Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary, "For nobody will dare to buy any wig, for fear of infection, that the hair had been cut off the heads of dead people of the plague." (DOC. 13) Doctors, in addition, contributed to other superstition acts which obviously did not work. In 1647, A French physician H. de Rochas said “Plague-stricken patients hang around their necks toads, either dead or alive, whose venom should within a few days draw out the poison of the disease.” Those who were part of the church also help those who were sick and couldn’t help themselves. Lisabetta Centenni, an Italian housewife documented in a legal deposition, “My husband Ottavio had a malignant fever. We were sure he would die. Sister Angelica de Macchia, prioress at Crocetta, sent me a little piece of bread that had touch the body of St. Domenica, I fed it to my husband and suddenly the fever broke.” (DOC. 7) Those who were around the middle, believe that if they took care of themselves to the fittest and wouldn’t think about the plague, they wouldn’t catch it. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote down while the Black Death was occurring. “Taking refuge and shutting themselves up in those houses where none were sick and
When the plague hit Europe in the 14th century, thousands of people were seemingly dropping dead. Christians determined that the cause of these fatalities was an act of God’s wrath and punishment for the sinners. Unfortunately, dense populations of peasants in cities allowed the disease to spread quickly, yet elite such as priests and physicians often fled for their own wellbeing. Thomas Dekker addresses his thought that these elite should be obligated to remain in the cities to aid the sick peasants rather than leaving them for dead in the piece A Rod for Run-awayes. Dekker argues that the rich peoples who fled could have helped those that were left behind both by providing for them directly in addition to demonstrating to God the sense of community with the virtue of dealing with this issue together. During this time, priests and physicians should have felt
The Black Death outbreak in 14th century Europe is an example of how quarantines were justly applied by the governments in order to handle an epidemic. Overall, the deadly disease wiped out 30-60% of Europe's population, instilling fear within the population as there seemed to be no stopping the disease (Stenseth, Plague: Past, Present, and Future, 0009). The Black Plague presented itself in forms of bubos, hard boils that formed under the armpit, the groin area, or the neck and persisted into headaches, vomiting of blood, stench, coma, and death (Horrox, The Arrival of the Plague, 24). In an attempt to stop the Plague from completely decimating the human population, they government implemented a 40-day quarantine on ships sourcing from countries
It cannot be argued that the Black Plague was detrimental to every aspect of Europe’s communities. It was a powerful epidemic that wiped out a third of the continent’s population. Out of the midst of all its terror, however, positive after effects presented themselves. Some of these effects included revolutions in the church and society, eventually leading to the separation of church and state. Feudalism was also challenged as peasants demanded wages and revolted. Along with social changes came technological innovations, new inventions, and an attention to hygiene and the beginning of modern medicine. The plague may have devastated Europe, but it also gave way to a new era.
Before the drastic spread of the plague, almost all things were under the authority of the Church such as daily routines engaged in prayer and Church instruction on what is right and wrong (The Black Death. N.). When the plague arrived in Europe, many people turned to the Church asking questions and expecting answers. However, the Church had no response to the cause of many deaths because they were unaware (The Black Death. N.). In response to this, the Church lost its influence on followers and follower’s views on the Church shifted (The Black Death. N.). During and after the plague, of all the Church members lost, not all were sufferers of the disease. Most turned away because the Church they had always assumed was all powerful, could provide no answers or guidance in the time of this drastic crisis (The Black Death. N.). There were three primary aspects leading to the decrease of followers. These aspects were a failure to aid to suffering, the inability of new priests, and the Church gaining fortune while everyone was in distress (The Black Death. N.). The Church was able to gain all of this wealth by charging money for services (The Black Death.
Suddenly, M.Michel develops a fever that eventually kills him. He is the first victim of this plague unknown to the city at this time. His death marked the “end of the first period, that of bewildering portents, and the beginning of another, relatively more trying, in which the perplexity of the early days gradually gave place for panic,” (page 23). Soon after, a few other people die, causing panic in the town, especially because illness isn’t common. Dr. Reiux and Dr. Castel proposes that the
The lepers are separated through “binary division”, they are separated from those who do not suffer from leprosy; those suffering from the plague experienced “multiple separations”, there was a hierarchy system of order and surveillance where each person answered to someone else (183). This also contributed to a differing “political dream” which “first is that of a pure community, the second that of a disciplined society” (183). The first political dream refers to the lepers, they were separated from society in an attempt to cleanse the population and eradicate the features of leprosy. The second political dream refers to that of the plague where the people are segmented and obey the authority to form a disciplined
There was very little or no shipping of excess crops to the other regions as the trade was limited. Further, due to the poor living conditions of the rural people, their life expectancy was on the lower side and the infant mortality rate was also high. The issues of plague or black death used to create a rift in the society as the people used to shun out the members of their neighbours in order to protect themselves. In the times of the plague the ill people were generally out casted from the villages and were also not given food. In such situations there was little or no support from the aristocrats. Additionally, children born with defects were also given up by their parents as they were believed to be unproductive in the future.