Power In Discipline And Punish By Foucault

“Knowledge is power!” Or is it? The consumption of knowledge may result in an individual internalizing the notion that they have the capacity to be influential and effect change, whether it be on a situation or another person or group of people. The more knowledge these individuals gather, the more powerful they think they become in molding their subjective life experience. Foucault took issue with this assertion and proposed an alternative hypothesis regarding the relationship between power and knowledge. Foucault argued that power is transmitted through knowledge—via discourse and language—which individuals then internalize. This affects both their thinking and their behavior. Knowledge is in service to power; it is one of the mechanisms

Certain discourses have informed the thinking and behavior during different “epistemes” throughout history. Foucault examines how thinking changes and provides a different argument from many social theorists. Foucault suggests that punishment is linked to a system of production. Many years ago, punishment was a public spectacle. Today, punishment is no longer about having a corporeal effect and making a public spectacle. Instead, codes have been put into place which analyze the crime in question and detail the punishment to fit the severity of the injustice. Similarly, sexuality is not treated how it once was in the regard of control. There was a time when sexuality was swept under the societal rug, and people did not openly make reference to it or analyze it. In modern times, sexuality is at the forefront of multiple discourses, meaning that various institutions in society share and acknowledge a common view about

Contrary to common belief, Foucault argues that society’s new form of punishment did not emerge out of the inhumanness associated with torture. Rather, the concept of punishment changed because the social structure in itself was changing. When new codes, laws, and regulations were put into place, capitalism was emerging and this resultant evolved social structure changed the way the body was vested as a political entity. In Feudalism, the body was the only form of property that one possessed; to punish an individual’s body was efficient in establishing social control. In the new era of Capitalism, this totality of bodily control was ineffective for the social requirements of one’s body. Disciplined bodies are an integral component to facilitating the production of Capitalism. To achieve disciplinary power, the power of discourse changed. Instead of a torture spectacle, where there was a unity of discourse in perceiving this type of punishment as “normal,” there was an abrupt break in people’s thinking, and this is what caused this shift in punishment. Discipline and punishment is all in the name of greater social control and more efficient ways of controlling society. Rather than aiming to hurt the body, the overall discourse changed, and punishment shifted to a disciplinary power aimed at controlling the subjective body through diverse political regimes,