do stop this bantering and read my blog each day it will explain what to do
Make it easy on yourself or this will deterioriate into an unfortunate mess
thanks j
talk about ideas not process Read discipline and punish and if you cannot, read the crib notes in the links
do a two page write up and post it here. 500 words double space is only for your papers
comment on the papers when they are submitted this is part of your grade
be specific. be specific be specific
August 25, 2006 at 7:01 am
Ben Basque
Foucault’s Importance to Intellectual History
8/25/06
bbasque@
Human 6 Section 1395
I’m going to take a stab at my Michel Foucault assignment. I’m not a great writer and the topic is a bit confusing, but it certainly generates thought. I figure as the class progresses we will get a better idea of what we are doing.
As far as I can figure out Michel Foucault was important to Intellectual history because his writings gave a new view to how society handles people and things that an individual might do that somehow offends the masses. There is an adage that I heard somewhere that says something about “you have to stand for something or you will fall for anything”. Foucault seems to encourage that thought. Some of his ideas seem a little out there, but they are thought provoking. At least they are if you are willing to look at things from a different angle than your own.
Foucault wrote about the power of being governed and the need to be unique. Foucault wrote that “the most important role a person plays is the role of their true self”. This holds credence for me because if you don’t have a system of beliefs that belong to you, you will jump around and have a hard time defining who you are. It is important to evaluate other views to see how the might fit in with your own views and to question what you thought was true. You need to constantly evaluate what you see around you. That brings use to another Foucault belief: He believed order in society was impossible. I see how this could seem true, because when you look at society as a whole there is absolute chaos, but when you break it down there are factions of order. If you stay in the factions and work with in their parameters you can make some order. To expect all of society to work with in those parameters is unreasonable, because everyone has different ideas about what constitutes order, and what is right or wrong. What people believe can be influenced by dialog, but sometimes it can not be changed. Foucault belief, that when you created order you also created an equal amount of disorder somewhere else. His belief that there is no true order in this world stands to reason.
Foucault also believed that ideas just exist, they are conveyed by people, but they aren’t original and it does not matter who shares them. I can see the value of this thought, but if people are judgmental or somehow prejudiced they will not hear what the speaker is saying, so I believe that it does matter who shares the ideas. If someone respects or relates to the speaker they will be more likely to lend credence to the idea. Again, Foucault has generated thought.
When I read some of Foucault’s beliefs his distain for social order and his regard for being and individual came through loud and clear. I believe that you can keep you individualism while still conforming to some of the basic “norms” in society. Foucault provoked deeper thought about what was the basic norm and what was it’s value. He helped those who took the time to read his writings to seek deeper answers to the societal questions and to look at solutions to ongoing problems. Foucault was clearly looking for answers to how society works and what makes people tick. It does not sound like he found the absolute answers he was looking for. The penal system is a society with in a larger society and Foucault the publics eyes to some of what was wrong with this system. It does not sound like he solved the problem, but his ideas have generated talk and a desire for change or reform. AS with everything, change is a process and it tends b to be slow. There a re no absolute rules and too many variables for it to be a perfect system, but at least Foucault brought the ideas to the forefront. Our prisons are clearly not working and we as a society need to evaluate why not? .we need to look at all the reasons people offend, we should probably even look at what constitutes a crime. Foucault’s importance to all of this is that he has brought up ideas that may or may not ring true, but they open up dialog and through dialog change and improvement can happen.
August 25, 2006 at 8:19 pm
Well i must say your paper seems to be 10 times better than mine and has to do with intellectual history where is mine has to do with ideas of the practices and reflecting on them.
August 25, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Jade Dant
Michel Foucault
8-25-06
italianbooty143@yahoo.com
Class 1395
Sitting in a cell for 20 years, same old thing day after day waiting for your own death with no where to hide, no more pleading. Hundreds of years back sitting a cell for one hour without the presence of a trial, waiting to be tortured till death is the better choice than living at the moment. Michel Foucault takes a look at the past of discipline and torture and how it has made its journey to the birth of the prison.
It seems to me that compared to years ago we have a slacking of the hold on the body, which Michel talks about on page 10 in his book. Michel says, “At the beginning of the 19th century, then; the great spectacle of physical punishment disappeared, the tortured body was avoided; the threatened representation of pain was excluded from punishment (10).” I think that slack caused crime to go up because if you weren’t going to be tortured in front of the public then who cares because anything is better than the scaffold. In the 19th century and now, people think torture is terrible and just barbaric. Well Michel says, “Torture is a technique, its not an extreme expression of lawless rage (33).” I think he is absolutely right; the executioner was trained to produce the correct amount of pain, regulate that pain, and mark the body while entertaining the public. The torture was all planed it never was about revenge or utter hatred, but about causing the criminal to pay their dues to the public and victim.
Jade Dant
Michel Foucault
The executioner was so important that if he were to fail at the torture that was set a certain way he would be punished. Michel for example says, “An executioner in Avignon caused excessive pain to three bandits..whom he had to hang; the spectators became angry; they denounced him; in order to punish him and also protect him from mob violence, he was put into prison (52).” Now that is crazy that if as a executioner didn’t do everything to the tee you could end up on the scaffold. There were also rules regarding torture as a means of getting the truth and if the criminal could withstand the torture the death sentence had to be taken off the plate and a possible drop of charges. So the judges who decided this had to weigh out the evidence that could condemn the criminal to the death sentence or try out torture that could set him free. Now imagine that today, with the crazies we have they would probably love the torture and therefore have their charges dropped.
I think today’s trials have the criminal in a better spot because back in the day in say England the whole trial could be kept secret from the prisoner and he wouldn’t even be there until they come into his cell and tell him whether he dies that day or not. Today you are present for the trial and actually get to defend oneself and only through substantial you would be convicted, where as back then all that was needed is someone saying they saw you do it. Now a days prison as Michel says, “Is a machine for altering minds (125).” Prison is most definitely there to alter ones thoughts and feelings, but does it make someone better? No, I think in a way it makes someone worse, it damages their soul and can lead to more dreadful crimes. Prison is just a holding place for criminals to be kept from society like a secret, where as back in history if you committed a crime you
Jade Dant
Michel Foucault
had to face the public and with that be tortured until the wrong is right, but was it really right? From all that I have read so far I am not convinced that prison was the right thing to make, but I am convinced that if I were to be convicted of a crime in the middle ages I would be far worse off. I think the best thing about the torture though is the symbolic meanings used, for instance Michel says, “ There was the use of symbolic torture in which the forms of the execution referr4ed to the nature of the crime; the tongues of blasphemers were pierced, the impure were burnt, the right hand of murderers was cut off…(45).” In a way in might detour criminals from causing such cruelty to others. I think they should take that practice and put it in today. So if a man rapes little kids a couple of days after conviction that man should be rapped. If some killer stabs someone and strangles them till death then the same should be done to him, but not 20 years later more like a couple days later. I think the threat of torture would scare anyone from a crime if they had to face the same fate as their victims. Michel is important to intellectual history because he takes what is now and takes what was then and breaks it down to how people think. To understand how people think is to understand why things are the way they are or were?
August 26, 2006 at 1:25 am
Hey ben. Like your paper alot. I think you did a good job and gave me alot of ideas for my paper.
Thanks
Jereme
August 26, 2006 at 4:05 am
Ben your paper did help me a lot because as one could see my first attempt at a paper was on a different thinking plane. You helped me realize i needed to research more and connect different ideas. thanks
August 27, 2006 at 2:03 am
Nice paper Jade! You had good points and a lot of information. I do agree with you on how sitting in a cell over time can do harm to a person rather than help or change them.
August 27, 2006 at 5:41 am
Ben, I really like your point of view on Foucault. When writing my synopsis I was not coming from that point of view…It helped me! I was not sure on how to write this…
August 27, 2006 at 6:40 am
Dawn Rash
Michel Foucault
August 25, 2006
dawnkrash@hotmail.com
Humanities 6 online
I think that Foucault was imprtant to the field of intellectual history because the man has brought his immense knowledge of philosophy and psycology int workings of the social institutions of our every day life. According to Wikipedia, Foucault masterd phycology after already mastering philosophy. Apparently he suffered severe depression and sought treatment from a phychiatrist. this spurred his interest in mental health. In addition to his own education, he taught in many places as well as France. His career took him to Sweden, Hamburg, Tunisa and here in the U.S. I think that all of the exposure to other cultures that he received traveling around the world had to have made Foucault the well-rounded insightful man that he seems to be. He wrote book on subjects ranging from humanities, medicine, to sexuality. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy said that Foucault believed that, “At least for the study of human beings, the goals of power and goals of knowledge cannot be separated. In knowing we control and in controlling we know.” Also the phrase, “punish less, but better” came up time and again in writings on Foucault.
It is uncomprehensible to me that there would ever be a time where public torture wa the norm. I can’t imagine the horror of watching a live human whose limbs ae tied to four horses being pulled in four different directions. Or worse, cut open and having his guts pulled out before his own eyes. I see torture as torture, not a technique to find truth about a crime or restore powere to the sovereign. Sorting out the undesirables was probably easy because nobody else in the general public wanted to be the next person on the scaffold. The production of the public torture was a constant reminder of where the power was held. I did enjoy the thought of the public uprisings in the case where the public was unaimously outraged enough to become a voice greater than royalty.
The reformation of punishment throught torture of the body to the opening of the penitentiary opened the door to viewing cases as individuals, with different circumstance. It was meant to treat and rehabilitate through the three means of disciplinary power: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and examination. Bentham’s Panopticon had a major effect on the discipline process because the inmate is constantly observed and documented. The prisoner may not be tortured physically, but the mental stress of having every move dictated is it’s own kind of hell.
Foucault makes the point that it’s not just prisons that have the Bentham brand of power. School and factories, as well as hospitials and malls are all home to the “tower”. The powerof the government monitors our lives through ues of social security numbers right down to the supervisors running large groups of people on an assebmly line.
As for X, it is a symbol for where the high point is in the epistemological linear framework of any system designed to measure a person’s worth. Unfortunately, the criteria for most of what society measures is not determined by me. Critera for wat is good, bad, right or wrong is determined by society and the powers that be. The framework is the fabric of our everyday life. It is taken for granted sometimes. However, the hierarchy dosen’t always remain the same. From time to time a group of disgruntled citizens, who like the people in the era of public torture have had enough and remake the stucture of hierarchy.
August 27, 2006 at 11:03 pm
Jana Churich Week 1 Foucalt
8/27/06
jana.churich@gmail.com section 1395
Why was Foucault important to the field of intellectual history?
Michael Foucault was a very distinguished French philosopher that influenced hundreds, almost thousands, of future writers and thinkers through his many controversial written works. Although he is most known for his work on the prison system, psychology, and medicine, he also influenced different subjects such as humanities, history, art, and science. He studied the major ideas of knowledge and power as a cohesive trait as well as human sexuality, social behavior and over all very complex relationships between people and those that watch or look over them. Essentially this man went against the grain of the philosophers that preached the Enlightenment theories and developed his own reasons for why human behavior in a social society causes people to act and react in very different ways.
In Discipline and Punish, his famous writing about the penal system there are lots of complex facts about where torture, punishment and control originated and how they were used different in the past present and future. However there were four main guidelines to his study. My interpretation of these guidelines are as follows: 1) “ regard punishment as a complex social function”. In essence punishment cannot be solved or ignored, nor can we ever hope that it does not exist. When many people are put together in a society of different ages, races, cultures, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations we are bound by Foucault’s theorizes that it is impossible to assume everyone will get along, or not commit crimes. 2) We should regard punishment as a process or technique that illustrates how we use power. In other words, those who are powerful, punish those that they believe have committed or will commit a crime. And punishment cannot be defined to a life sentence in jail, or the death penalty but also as more severe or less severe functions of any individual or society. A teacher might punish a first grader by not letting them participate in dodge ball, or one man’s plight on the Jews could wipe out an entire race. Foucault suggests we do not generalize it but “regard punishment as a political tactic”. His third guideline is tricky. He suggests that the development of POWER over time should explain, in so many words, the history of the penal system as well as “humanization”. And by humanization I interpret that as being the development of behavior, etiquette, rules, regulations, morals, what’s right, and what’s wrong. Furthermore, we should talk about these two things as one and the same, not different events that happened at the same time. Lastly, his fourth guideline, as interpreted by me, is the most difficult to understand, but here it goes. The fourth guideline is his appropriation as to how we, the readers, should understand why his message is so important. The introduction to the “soul” into the penal system, and the change of punitive methods (torture and punishment) over time should show us that all of this is a technique of showing power and we should study it as a scientific behavior.
After understanding the guidelines of Discipline and Punish I have a better understanding of why Foucault had such an impact on intellectual history. His ideas and theories offer answers as to why humans behave and react in a certain way and how the penal, judicial, and legislative systems have accommodated to the “powers” that be, rather than the society at large.“ Ultimately what presides over all these mechanisms is not the unitary functioning of an apparatus or institution, but the necessity of combat and the rules of strategy.” (pgs 307-308)
August 27, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Dina McCarty
Foucault’s Importance to Intellectual History
08/26/2006
dmccarthy5@sbcglobal.net
American Cultures 1395
I believe that Foucault was important to intellectual history because he explained the history of the modern penal system and analyzes punishment in its social context. He looks at how changing power relations affected punishment. Foucault analyzes the situation before the eighteenth century, when public execution and corporal punishment were key reprimands, and torture was the main part of criminal investigation. Punishment was traditional and directed at the prisoner’s body through torture. It was a way to force a confession and make sure that the criminal paid for his crime. Public execution and torture validated the authority and power of the King.
The need for punishment without torture was first formulated as a need to recognize the humanity of the criminal. (p. 91-92). The main focus of the penal process becomes the reform of the soul, rather than the punishment of the body. As a result of this, Foucault became an important role in the prison reform movement.
Another important component of Foucault’s discussion is Bentham’s Panopticon, a building that shows how individuals can be supervised, controlled efficiently, and it demonstrates disciplinary power. Disciplinary power contains three elements: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment and examination. Foucault believed that disciplinary power extends throughout all society. “The ideal point of penalty today would be an infinite discipline…” Foucault writes, “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, and hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” Schools, hospitals, and military institutions all control the time and movement of the individual. The goal of these organizations is to force the individual to conform to a norm by defining what is acceptable within society. (p. 227-228)
The Panopticon has become a symbol of Foucault’s argument. Whatever use one may wish to put it to, it produces homogeneous effects of power. From the center of the Panopticon, the controller can see each individual’s room or cell. Its effects are homogenous because, whether the building is used as a school or a prison, power operates in a certain way within it. Each individual held within it is isolated, permanently exposed to the gaze of the observer; by looking at them, the observer controls them. It is a building that makes examination easy: it is remarkable because it allows one person to have power over many. (Wikipedia).
Foucault tries to show that society not only molds its treatment of criminals to aid certain trends in state and economical development, but that society’s methods of punishment are themselves molded by these trends.
Foucault makes us painfully aware of the hierarchical powers that control many areas of our daily lives; supervisor and employee, teacher and student, government and community, etc… There really is no way around it. We as a society typically conform without question because we know this to be the “norm”, and the people who don’t follow the appropriate structure, are the ones who fall outside the “norm”, and may face repercussions from the powers that be.
August 28, 2006 at 12:31 am
Ryan McGraw
Foucault
8.27.06
ryan.mcgraw@gmail.com
AH 1395
“…Power and knowledge are inextricably linked.” 1
Foucault’s modern philosophies stem from the great minds of human existence to examine the unfolding layers of a human object when power and knowledge are subjectively separated. The more I read about concepts to punish and discipline people in the past the more I can understand where the relationship and importance of knowledge has in Foucault’s theories. It seems to me that punishment should fit the crimes but as he rounds the facts, crime is determined by a single entity or organization of thoughts, thus punishment of a crime would be the conclusion of a situation that should have been negative and thus have a negative outcome applied to themselves; “the prisoner”.
To dive a bit deeper the institution of a prison was set up for the purpose to demoralize and break down a person mentally for the situation that they committed. This is the concept of solitary confinement, and as it relates to his work, the lack of visibility leads more power. His abstract thinking on the matter of visibility paved the way for many more artists and thinkers and even the concept of new prison design. He determined that colors and lights had a lot to do with the way prisoners reacted and thought about themselves. This was ultimately his work, from what I understood, the relationship of a prisoner to his life in prison was determined by these features. This I believe relates to the study done at Stanford University involving students who were arrested and held in an artificial prison, where the study was cut dramatically shorter then expected because both the student “guards” and student “prisoners” were fitting the roles so well.
The real question I got out of his critiques was is the penal system truly affective? Foucault suggested that “carceral contimuum” runs through modern society. So technically the prison system continually runs through modern society then that would mean everyday people are subject to the same extremities that prisoners are; light, visibility, and discipline? This means that some of his theories apply to everyday life for you and I such as work, school and entertainment.
On page 93, I found the statement “One must punish exactly enough to prevent repetition”, incredibly profound in summing up the relationship between Foucault’s studies of pre modern punishment and today. Foucault truly theorized the foundation for creation and establishment of the intimate prison system and punishment right down to its social function.
1: (http://www.egs.edu/resources/foucault.html)
August 28, 2006 at 1:47 am
Page 1 of 4
Todd Eastman
Foucault
08/27/06
todd.eastman@comcast.net
HUMAN 6 American Cultures, Section 1395
According to the online encyclopedia “Wikipedia” (http://www.wikipedia.org), Intellectual history refers to the history of the people who create, discuss, write about and in other ways propagate ideas. In that context, I believe the answer to the question “Why do you think Foucault was so important to the field of Intellectual History?” is very simple. Foucault’s writings and ideas forced people to think and to re-evaluate their ideas. Many of the ideas that Foucault brought forth were, and still are, very controversial. But because these ideas struck at the very heart of our society and civilization, the subject matter itself gave importance to the ideas.
After researching Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish: The birth of the Prison”, I found his ideas fascinating, thought provoking, and insightful. I also personally found his overall philosophy to be full of inconsistencies and convenient but incomplete propositions.
Page 2 of 4
Todd Eastman
Foucault
Apparently, Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” is the first and primary book he authored where he describes in great detail his thoughts on how the elite of society dominates and
controls the rest of society. Foucault believed the prison system was nothing more than a means for the upper class to continue and expand their subjugation of the lower class and completely debunks the concept of prison being a system designed to decrease crime through punishment and determent.
Foucault seems to focus on the struggle for self-freedom from discipline, suggesting that the sole purpose of existence is to be true to your own nature, regardless of how that nature may affect the rest of society. According to Ann Cahall, author of “Foucault, Rape and the Construction of the Feminine Body” (2000), Foucault proposed that rape was no different than any other form of physical assault. Foucault was quoted as saying, “It isn’t a matter of sexuality, it’s the physical violence that would be punished, without bringing in the fact that sexuality was involved”.
My difficulty with Foucault’s philosophy is his fixation on the rights of the one, at the expense of the rights of all others. Perhaps Foucault didn’t have a clear understanding of exactly what the “society” is that he frequently criticizes. The definition of “society” by
Page 3 of 4
Todd Eastman
Foucault
various dictionaries all seem to include the concepts of “commonality”, “shared interests” and “common cultures”. When Foucault groups everyone together and tries to suggest that society is doing one thing or another to an individual, he is mistakenly assuming
there are only one society and one individual. In fact, there are numerous societies that interact and coexist with each other.
Foucault points to the use of prison as a way for the upper class to dominate and control the lower class. What he fails to consider is the fact that the “upper class” and the “lower class” are by definition, societies themselves, and that by placing a person in prison, the act is not categorizing the imprisoned as lower class, but the person himself has committed a crime that categorizes him as a non-law abiding individual. In other words, the lower class society is not composed of criminals, nor is criminality restricted to the lower class. If it were, people like Martha Stewart and others of the “elite” class would
Page 4 of 4
Todd Eastman
Foucault
never have been sent to prison, and once sent there, should have then become a member of the lower class, but didn’t.
If rape is nothing more than a form of physical assault, why is it that victims of physical assault rarely suffer from the same psychological ramifications that rape victims do? If the government’s role is to oppose individual behavior and impose conformity, then who is responsible for an individual’s own behaviors and identity? Ideally, each individual would take responsibility, but we obviously don’t live in an ideal world. The suggestion that we each have the right to be who we want to be, regardless of how it affects the rest of the people we must co-exist with, seems very narcissistic and self-serving.
None of this is to suggest or imply that the prison system is ideal, or even adequately functional. I find many of Foucault’s ideas to be very insightful and worthy of contemplation. But I find his overall philosophy, based on my admittedly limited exposure to it, to be simple anti-social idealism with an unhealthy dose of anarchism thrown in.
August 28, 2006 at 2:12 am
Donna Blanchard
Michel Foucault
August 27, 2006
moxiedonna@gmail.com
HUMAN6 – Section 1395
Michel Foucault attempted to explain why and how forms of discipline and punishment changed so drastically in such a short time. He compared modern punishment to the so-called archaic forms of punishment. Foucault’s writings and beliefs are very important to modern society’s evaluation of its current penal system. As Bentham’s Panoptican evolved into the modern prison system, power ratios shifted. Instead of controlling just one offender, those in power had control over sometimes hundreds. But did the element of power stay the same? Are those many people being watched feeling the power that is exerted over them?
17th century and older forms of punishment relied on those watching the executions to deem the punishment effective. Executioners played to the audience and were fueled by the reactions they received, both positive and negative. If an execution went badly, the public revolted and the executioner was often punished. The public used to be involved in the punishment of an offender. Now the course of punishment is usually played out in the more private arena of a courtroom unless the crime was especially heinous or either the victim or offender is a public figure. Public sympathy or ridicule of the criminal is hard to come by and public embarrassment is a thing of the past. Unfortunately that also means that the criminal cannot play upon the public’s sympathy in hopes of gaining his freedom and the possible punishment of those who sought to punish him.
Foucault focused on the similarities between ancient and modern societies and demonstrated how the penal system is not just for criminals, but for the entire society. Criminals who are punished and sent to prison for their crimes are not the only ones being punished; the families of the people they harmed are punished with the loss of their loved one; society is punished by paying for the criminal’s prison stay; the criminal’s own family is punished by being deprived of their loved one.
In modern society those who seek to keep law and order are often ridiculed by the public. Law enforcement officials are subjected to childish name-calling and the wrath of the public. Instead of trusting in the hierarchy of justice, the public believes that justice is not blind but racist and prejudiced. Police are brutal and unnecessarily cruel to criminals ad the public revels in hearing how law enforcement broke its own laws.
While discipline and punishment evolved by society’s standards it devolved by the punishers’. As punishment became less severe and more humane, people felt less threatened and crime rates rose. People were not frightened by jail time and often their standards of living improved with imprisonment. For while being incarcerated, criminals are given three meals a day, shelter, a place to sleep, clothing to wear; more often than not they are also given cable television and access to a library and gym. Society suffers for the sins of the criminal by paying for a lengthy prison stay while the criminal is often treated to an education that most people cannot afford.
People have become unafraid of punishment, knowing that even if they were to be sentenced to death they still have another twenty or so years of life while their victims’ own lives were cut short as a result of a ruthless act. The surviving family members have to live out their own death sentence of a sort because they no longer have their loved one around and have to rely on memories that fade with time.
The power of punishment transferred over time from the hands of a few people to the hands of many as the prison system was established. it evolved from just one person being responsible for the execution of punishment to the more democratic process of society claiming that responsibility. But in the process the fear and threat of punishment decreased rapidly as the criminal was given more control over his own life. Thus the hierarchy of power shifted into society’s hands and society eventually slid into chaos. Somewhere along the line the respect and fear for those in positions of power degraded into ridicule and suspicion.
Power of punishment changed even more as forms of physical labor as punishment became less popular to use. Instead of being forced to sweat off their punishment, many prisoners today sit inside the prison walls. Honor farms and chain gangs became out-dated and were deemed too extreme. The irony of this concept is not lost. Society becomes more accepting of the criminal and sees him as someone to reform. But how is the criminal reformed? How can we reform a criminal who may not fully understand the impact of his crimes? And, how can we seek to reform a criminal if we do not see and understand his crimes and punishment?
Is languishing in a prison cell really more humane than execution? And for who? The criminal? What about the victims of the criminal’s act? Will they ever feel that justice was served and their assailant punished properly? Even if the criminal is on Death Row, they still have the ability to do things their victims can do no longer – something as simple as living and breathing.
Foucault’s thoughts and beliefs on discipline and punishment are widely adopted in American society today. Throughout his life he visited prisons in America and France and sought to understand the distribution of power within. He also spoke out on prison conditions and was possibly responsible for some modern forms of prison reform. His views were received both positively and negatively. Some philosophers and historians feel that Foucault chose to overlook bodies of work that he felt did not apply to his beliefs. Yet because Foucault refused to be categorized as believing one certain thing, he allowed society to think for itself and to develop its own ideas and beliefs. Giving each person their own voice and means of expression is just one example of how Foucault is important to Intellectual History. His writings on the penal system and society’s paralleling slide into chaos as punishment became less threatening is a fitting example of today’s judicial system.
August 28, 2006 at 2:53 am
Gillian Betz
Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault
Aug. 27, 2006
Gbetz85@yahoo.com
Humanities 6 Sec. 1395
Foucault was, and still is, important to the field of intellectual history because he opened many doors and makes room for hundreds of questions. He forces us to take a look at what may seem “normal” to many of us, and to question how our society works, who’s running the show, and who is affected by the power of a select few. He opens our eyes to the way we are all perceived by our state and our nation. He forces us to see that we are looked upon as numbers, statistics, names on a list, and not as individuals.
My understanding of what Foucault is opening our minds to is the concept that prisons are not the only place that we segregate people, based on many aspects -although prisons are his main focus- and that this segregation is a newly developed idea. Segregation of those who deviate from the norm started with the plague, when people who were infected were taken from their homes and forced to stay in one area together. Along with this, others were checked on everyday, when they would stay at a specific window, at a specific time, and be put onto a list as just another number. This is the same idea of a prison -confined to a cell with a small window, no name, just a number, and no contact with anyone else. This segregation was started with what we know as hospitals, and has spread to schools, military institutions, and prisons.
Torture was used as a means to gain a confession in the Eighteenth century. If you were tortured and did not confess, you must not be guilty of the crime. No one took into account pain thresholds, mental stability, or any other aspects of what makes us human when employing these torture tactics. To make matters worse for the “delinquent” they were made a public spectacle as they were tortured and put to death. This public execution was supposed to be a deterrent for people; if they saw what could be done to them, they would be less likely to commit the crime. The same can be said for the death penalty today, but it is my opinion that it was never, and is not, a deterrent. People became outraged at the torturous methods used, and thus the limelight went from the actual execution to a public trial and sentencing. It is my opinion that extreme interrogation tactics can sometimes be considered torturous; and they are used for the same reason: confession.
This is when Foucault states that the penal system became about reforming the soul rather than punishing the body. Panopticism played a huge role in the effective segregation of prisoners. From the way the tower was set up, all the prisoners could be segregated from any contact with each other while one person in the tower could keep an eye on all of them. This made it harder for prisoners to know if and when they had any time to make a move either to escape, trade things, etc. With panopticism, the person in the tower was always being watched; it is part of the hierarchy.
Discipline comes in many forms; taking away all rights, and putting the convicts in small enclosures without access to each other, or anyone else. Every aspect of their lives is controlled -what time they wake up, when and what and how much they eat, when they can shower, what constitutes a visit to the doctor or dentist, what privileges they can attain, etc. They spend all of their time, except maybe an hour a day, in a cell that is no bigger than some people’s closets. Is this discipline or is it punishment? To me, it seems worse than being executed, at least then they’re not just sitting around waiting.
August 28, 2006 at 3:32 am
Donna Blanchard
Michel Foucault
August 27, 2006
moxiedonna@gmail.com
HUMAN6 – Section 1395
(this is my revised assignment. i was unable to log in from work to delete my other posting)
Michel Foucault attempted to explain why and how forms of discipline and punishment changed so drastically in such a short time. He compared modern punishment to the so-called archaic forms of punishment. Foucault’s writings and beliefs are very important to modern society’s evaluation of its current penal system. As Bentham’s Panoptican evolved into the modern prison system, power ratios shifted. Foucault called the Panoptican “…a marvelous machine, which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogenous effects of power”. As society adopted the Panoptican as power, it became a standard method in justice, education and even the workplace. Instead of controlling just one or offender, those in power had control over sometimes hundreds. But did the element of power stay the same? Are those many people being watched feeling the power that is exerted over them?
17th century and older forms of punishment relied on the people watching the executions to deem the punishment effective. Executioners played to the audience and were fueled by the reactions they received, both positive and negative. If an execution went badly, the public revolted and the executioner was often punished. The public used to be involved in the punishment of an offender. Now the course of punishment is usually played out in the more private arena of a courtroom unless the crime was especially heinous or either the victim or offender is a public figure. Public sympathy or ridicule of the criminal is hard to come by and public embarrassment is a thing of the past. Unfortunately that also means that the criminal cannot play upon the public’s sympathy in hopes of gaining his freedom and the possible punishment of those who sought to punish him.
Foucault focused on the similarities between ancient and modern societies and demonstrated how the penal system is not just for criminals, but for the entire society. Criminals who are punished and sent to prison for their crimes are not the only ones being punished; the families of the people they harmed are punished with the loss of their loved one; society is punished by paying for the criminal’s prison stay; the criminal’s own family is punished by being deprived of their loved one.
In modern society those who seek to keep law and order are often ridiculed by the public. Law enforcement officials are subjected to childish name-calling and the wrath of the public. Instead of trusting in the hierarchy of justice, the public believes that justice is not blind but racist and prejudiced. Police are brutal and unnecessarily cruel to criminals ad the public revels in hearing how law enforcement broke its own laws.
“If the penalty in its most severe forms no longer addresses itself to the body, on what does it lay hold?” (16) While discipline and punishment moved away from Foucault’s description of a “…country of tortures dotted with wheels, gibbets, gallows, pillories…” it devolved by the punishers’. Punishment became less severe and more humane and people felt less threatened and crime rates rose. People were not frightened by jail time and often their standards of living improved with imprisonment. For while being incarcerated, criminals are given three meals a day, shelter, a place to sleep, clothing to wear; more often than not they are also given cable television and access to a library and gym. Society suffers for the sins of the criminal by paying for a lengthy prison stay while the criminal is often treated to an education that most people cannot afford.
People have become unafraid of punishment, knowing that even if they were to be sentenced to death they still have another twenty or so years of life while their victims’ own lives were cut short as a result of a ruthless act. The surviving family members have to live out their own death sentence of a sort because they no longer have their loved one around and have to rely on memories that fade with time.
The power of punishment transferred over time from the hands of a few people to the hands of many as the prison system was established. it evolved from just one person being responsible for the execution of punishment to the more democratic process of society claiming that responsibility. But in the process the fear and threat of punishment decreased rapidly as the criminal was given more control over his own life. Thus the hierarchy of power shifted into society’s hands and society eventually slid into chaos. Somewhere along the line the respect and fear for those in positions of power degraded into ridicule and suspicion.
Power of punishment changed even more as forms of physical labor as punishment became less popular to use. Instead of being forced to sweat off their punishment, many prisoners today sit inside the prison walls. Honor farms and chain gangs became out-dated and were deemed too extreme. Foucault wrote “…crimes seemed to lose their violence while punishments lost some of their intensity, but at the cost of greater intervention”. (75) The irony of this concept is not lost. Society becomes more accepting of the criminal and sees him as someone to reform. But how is the criminal reformed? How can we reform a criminal who may not fully understand the impact of his crimes? And, how can we seek to reform a criminal if we do not see and understand his crimes and punishment?
Foucault stated “people know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what they do do does.” Is languishing in a prison cell really more humane than execution? And for who? The criminal? What about the victims of the criminal’s act? Will they ever feel that justice was served and their assailant punished properly? Even if the criminal is on Death Row, they still have the ability to do things their victims can do no longer – something as simple as living and breathing.
Foucault’s thoughts and beliefs on discipline and punishment are widely adopted in American society today. Throughout his life he visited prisons in America and France and sought to understand the distribution of power within. He also spoke out on prison conditions and was possibly responsible for some modern forms of prison reform. His views were received both positively and negatively. Some philosophers and historians feel that Foucault chose to overlook bodies of work that he felt did not apply to his beliefs. Yet because Foucault refused to be categorized as believing one certain thing, he allowed society to think for itself and to develop its own ideas and beliefs. Giving each person their own voice and means of expression is just one example of how Foucault is important to Intellectual History. His writings on the penal system and society’s paralleling slide into chaos as punishment became less threatening is a fitting example to today’s judicial system.
August 28, 2006 at 3:33 am
After perusing several websites and leafing through Foucault’s, Discipline and Punish, it has become quite clear to me that he was thought of as one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. I have yet to form my own opinion of his theories and philosophies. I could side with the general consensus and agree, or I could take my time to read his book thoroughly and research more of his ideas, thoughts and philosophies. One of Foucault’s major philosophies was to be your true self, so that is what I am going to do.
According to a website on Foucault, Scott McGaha wrote that Foucault believed that the losing of ones own identity to the discipline of the state is the real crime. I hold this to be very true. So many people in our world today conform to what they think society wants them to be. Girls and women starve themselves to fit into a size four, and men take steroids to try to be the biggest and buffest guys around. It’s not only self image, it also goes into material things, religion and sports. For example, when the new Razor phones came out, everyone had to have one, I even bought one, but now that everyone has one what’s the fun in that? And it’s the same with religion. Religion used to be a sacred thing that people held close to their hearts. Now people are trying religions like they are a new trend or something. For example, people starting to become Scientologists because of Tom Cruise, or learn Kabbalah because of Madonna. I personally think it is ludicrous. A person should join a religion because they want to and because they believe in it, not because some superstar thinks it’s the cool thing to do.
I will be the first person to admit that I follow trends. I secretly feel jealous of all those artists out there who create their own clothes, and wear safety pins for earrings, and they have a flagrant disregard for what other people think about them.
Another one of Foucault’s beliefs was that order in society was impossible (McGaha). I think that he is right on the money with that one. No matter how many rules, regulations and laws we have, people will always be committing crimes and disrupting the world. Unfortunately that is just how our world has always been and probably always will be. Societies do not learn from past mistakes. That is why to this day there are murders, rapes and wars everyday. I mean look at the leader of our nation, President Bush, he has led us into a war that his father had started when he was in the presidency. Bush did not learn from his father’s mistakes and look how many soldiers have lost their lives because of it. It’s sad to think that that is the world we live in, but how obviously there is nothing that can change it, or else it would already be done by now.
After reading about these two theories of Foucault’s I can see why he has been so influential to the world of academia. He helped people believe in things again. He forced his readers and followers to take a look inside them and ask themselves why they are who they are. He wanted people to realize that not everything or everybody is perfect, that there are things out there that we cannot fix, or change. I think that he made people re-examine themselves and ask themselves is this who I really want to be? Am I doing what I know is right? Or am I doing what I think society wants me to do? At least this is what I think he was trying to say. Foucault’s writing’s was very complex and a little difficult to comprehend, but this is what I came up with and if nobody likes it, well too bad, I am just being me.
http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/foucault.htm
August 28, 2006 at 4:11 am
Okay this is my real paper that i am turning in.
Jade Dant
Michel Foucault Intellectual History
8/27/06
italianbooty143@yahoo.com
Class 1395
This is my second attempt at this assignment and I hope I fully understand the writings of Michel Foucault. Michel Foucault is important to the world of intellectual history because he took was then and what is now and broke it down to what people think. Then to know what people think is to know how they act and came to the conclusion of today. From what I have read Michel is “against the man” a.k.a the government and the rich having power over the lower class.
Foucault’s central topic in this book and many of his writings is the struggle of individuals against power, whether by committing crimes or daring to be different. Prisons to Foucault were not there to fix anything, but to enslave and dominate with the power of the government over people. For instance Foucault says, “Prisons do not diminish the crime rate: they can be extended, multiplied or transformed, the quantity of crime and criminals remains stable or, worse, increases…(265).” Foucault is absolutely right in his idea, because if you look at how long prisons have been around and look at the crime rate one would notice it has never gone down, but steadily up. This is an example of his line of thinking in intellectual history, because who would think to question and produce thought as to what prisons really do.
Foucault opens is book with a torture scene, but what lays between the lines of the horrific tortures is who controls this pain and who controls the people? The rich do of course, namely the King. Foucault states that, “during this time the right to punish was directly connected to the authority of the King.” This idea may seem offset, but was torture really about the punishment or was it about fear? The King would use torture to place fear in is public to control them and put them into discipline, because your fate always balanced on who you know and how rich you are.
Foucault displays his knowledge of intellectual history by breaking down the saying, “It is good for you.” Well Foucault says they say is the best for you is really a way to control you. Foucault believed that prison as gone on for so long despite its setbacks because it benefited the ruling class to keep those under supervision to prevent revolts. I think it is true is some ways and then not, because sometimes prison could hold the complete psychos who don’t deserve to breathe, but it also used to hold union leaders, black liberalists, anyone that wanted to change the government for the good. Prison to Foucault was a place to deny liberty and create a ‘docile body’. Foucault says, “Work on the prisoner’s soul must be carried out as often as possible. The prison, thought an administrative apparatus, will at the same time be a machine for altering minds”(125). I agree that it is a place to alter the prisoner’s mind to bow down to discipline and to become more productive and submissive when they come out. That is the way the upper class thought of prison, not as a holding cell, but a place for installing discipline. Foucault’s thought process clearly shows in depth thought of the intellectual history of prisons and the rich.
Foucault is all about people being their own person and just being unique. He believes that societal rules prevent the escape of the human spirit where no one is free to be different. Foucault believes that humanity has not gotten better just our technology to control and think.
August 28, 2006 at 4:13 am
Crystal Pardo
Foucault Response – Week 1
August 26, 2006
Pardofam4@sbcglobal.net
American Cultures Section 1395
I would like to start off first by saying how confusing the two presentations on Michel Foucault were. The presentation titled “Torture” was a little hard for me to understand because of how it was worded, but what I got out of it was mainly how punishment was dealt with many years ago. Hopefully as this class moves on I will have a better understanding of who Michel Foucault was and what his influence is on discipline and punishment.
When I think of how I feel about the death penalty I don’t know if I am for it or against it, but one thing I do know is that I am disgusted of how discipline and punishment was dealt with many years before my time. There are no other words to better describe it than cruel and unusual punishment. Some people may believe that the death penalty is just the same as being cruel, but I believe that there is a huge difference between how a person is executed now compared to how a person was tortured or dealt with back in the 1800’s.
In speaking of execution that does not mean that I am for it, I am simply trying to clarify the difference in how our judicial system dealt with decisions for punishment many years ago. These days citizens have more rights which seems fair, but sometimes they have too many rights which makes it unfair to the people that they may have hurt in committing their crime. So who is to say what is right? Is this what people live by just because some other people made it that way and we don’t have a choice? How would you feel if you were up against the death penalty and did not believe in? For myself I would feel stuck and without rights, would you?
So where does Foucault fall into this subject? Foucault’s life and his dedication to his work plays an important role in the field of Intellectual History in the way that he has a big impact on the way the world views discipline and punishment for all humans over time. Foucault has made his thoughts and opinions clear for anyone to understand. So he was not the actual person responsible for how the world changed over time, but with his knowledge and opinions on humans he has opened peoples eyes on a better way to view the world and to understand others.
Foucault’s knowledge has given myself and many other people views of the world and the changes that have been made, but have these changes been for the better? I would say that Foucault may believe so. Or have these changes given humans a reason to commit more crimes? With punishment not as severe today as it was in the 1800’s, humans seem to be less afraid of being punished. Would you agree?
Crystal Pardo
Foucault Response – Week 1
Foucault was obviously someone who had a passion for history and really took his time to clearly research his information so that he could be educated with hopes of educating the rest of the world on what he knew and believed. I don’t believe that Foucault had any intention to brainwash people into believing only
what he believed was right, but rather than to educate people to be open minded and to listen to what he had to say.
Foucault spoke of how a prisons goal was to reduce crime by punishing the criminal, but according to him prisons made the criminals worse. I agree with this deeply because I have seen people go into prison and be released back into the community with a different view of the world therefore they have a difficult time being part of society and end up going back to prison. While a person is in prison there are so many more privileges now than there was over two hundred years ago that I have heard of some people saying that the life in there is better. Yes the inmates are closed in and can not leave when they want, but they live in a place that is free and they don’t have to do much. Once a prisoner is institutionalized the life in there is not as bad as we outsiders may see it.
So will our system continue to change over time as it already has? Is it changing for the better though or is it getting worse? Foucault’s information has been helpful in understanding these questions to some, but what actions will be taken in the future to make any changes if there are even any to be made? All I can do is wait and see, but I am curious what discipline and punishment will be like after my time especially if any of my family will have to deal with the judicial system, but hopefully they will not have to.
In conclusion, although I do not have a complete understanding of who Michel Foucault was I did get a good understanding of what his passion was in the history of discipline and punishment and his dedication to his interests and passion on researching information so that he could provide information to other people.
August 28, 2006 at 4:17 am
Ray Hill
Week 1: Michel Foucault
8/27/06
ray_hill4ever@hotmail.com
Human 6 Section 1395
The fact that Michel Foucault challenged people to think about the many different issues surrounding them is probably the biggest reason why he played such a vital role within the field of Intellectual History. Foucault challenged people of his day (and even the people of today) to take a deeper look at issues in society as well as a deeper look at their own personal beliefs.
One issue that Foucault felt was important for people to evaluate was the prison system. In his book “Discipline and Punish-The Birth of the Prison”, Foucault writes about the history of punishment and how the prison system, as we know it, came to be. In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, there was a substantial change in how a person was punished (7). Punishment went from being a public spectacle to being a private event. “…so it keeps its distance from the act, tending always to entrust it to others, under the seal of secrecy” (9). The mind frame of the judicial powers of this time began to shift. Instead of simply physically punishing in hopes of deterring future acts of the same crime, sentences were being passed in hopes of reforming the accused. “…do not imagine that the sentences that we judges pass are activated by a desire to punish; they are intended to correct, reclaim, ‘cure’…” (10). I feel that this is what a good criminal justice system
would do. A person would be sentenced to a punishment that would allow him time to figure out why he committed the crime as well as time to learn how NOT to re-offend.
It was with this idea of “curing” the accused that the “slackening of the hold on the body” (10) began to take place. On page 11 Foucault writes “The body now serves as an instrument or intermediary: if one intervenes upon it to imprison it, or to make it work, it is in order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is regarded both as a right and as property”. So although punishment was no longer a purely physical act (hanging, quartering, etc), it still had a hold (albeit a lesser hold) on the accused persons body. Freedoms were taken away, physical labor was mandated and fines were enforced. Although public executions were less “popular” during this time that in no means they were they abolished permanently (14).
On page 82 Foucault talks about reform of the judicial system being “not…that of a new sensibility, but that of another policy with regard to illegalities.” He writes about not punishing less but punishing better … “to insert the power to punish more deeply into the social body” (82). He reiterates his previous thoughts that crimes should be looked at on an individual basis (asking why the person committed the act, how he can be rehabilitated, etc).
On page 125 Foucault writes (in regard to the Walnut Street Prison) “Work on the prisoner’s soul must be carried out as often a possible. The prison, through an administrative apparatus, will at the same time be a machine for altering minds.” This implies that through prison (a well run prison, I’m assuming) an offender can be rehabilitated and thus be let back out into society as a productive member.
After reading the two presentations and (attempting to read!) “Discipline & Punish”, I strongly believe that Michel Foucault’s ability to make us each think for ourselves is what led him to being such a renowned scholar. Each of us will take from these readings a different thought, a different idea, a different way of looking at the world and that is precisely what makes this book (and this man) important. So often in society we are forced into one way of thinking and looking at the world but Foucault has helped us remember that we are all individuals and that there is no one correct way of looking at any subject matter.
August 28, 2006 at 4:17 am
Shalome Atkinson
Discipline and Punisment
8/27/06
isisonafullmoon@hotmail.com
Human 6 ONLINE
If I am to be completely honest I, have found this assighnment failry difficult. I will not try and process that to much however I found it frustrating to have vague instructions of what is expected other than the amount of words. Ok, enough of the processing.. I did find much of this matrial interesting and full of things I had absolutely no idea ever exixted at least on a consious level.Being as I myself have been to jail and had a mother whom did two prison terms. After reading this material
much of what is true which I will get to later. But, what we thought we had was bad? Was it really?When I think of the torture that people endured for their crimes in comparison to complaining abouta bologna sandwich for breakfast and lunch. Is that really as bad?
In the begining when they talk about Damians the regicide was condemmed (pg 1)is he really running from his execution? When they finally get to the execution was it notone of the most burtal thing you could really imagine? Did you close your eyes and think about it trully?Can you imagine watching an execution as a sort of pass time? I felt that the change of times in the ninetinth century (which is talked about on page 8 paragraph 2) of, public specitical of disipline became less popular. If you think about where we are today really only very few people are allowed to watch the execution. dont you think in readung this book that Foucault made it seeem like things change so quickly in the judical system? And in my opinion yes it did,
The Body an awesome thing for someone to acually talk about and write about? After all the body we live in is borrowed for the time we are here. But, then when a crime is commited by a body the body no longer belongs to we whom are borrowing it but, theownership turns to the legal system. Which is like wow? Is that fair? Not saying people should not pay for crimes! But wow now there are two oweners and the one that lives in the body is the co- sighner now? And now the Soul that went along with the crime? Was it a vingeful soul? Was it a scared soul? Was it a soul that was troubled? All these thing now come into play as in the very past in did not. Foucault love to study the past because thatt is how we get to the present. That is exactually why he was important to the feild of intelectuall history! How much would we not have put together yet had, Foucault not done what he did? I do not beieve he hated crime. I think he wanted to understand and commuincate that to those of us to follow.
Helping us realize what a prison is and what it is for and what the body looses when out in prison, It is less likely to lose your life these days to loose your life for you crime. However look at the things that are lost by the prisoner such as the following: Freedom! Freedom of voting! Freedom of education! Freedom of meals! This one really gets me cause I did not know the this Freedom of religion! Yeah we think religion! have you thought of that? Yes religion my friends is “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.” Freedom of religion as a legal concept is related to but not identical with religious toleration, separation of church and state, or laïcité (a secular state).
Religious toleration is the condition of accepting or permitting others’ religious beliefs and practices which disagree with one’s own.
In a country with a state religion, toleration means that the government permits religious practices of other sects besides the state religion,
and does not persecute believers in other faiths. Historically, toleration has been a contentious issue within many religions as well as between one religion and another.
At issue is not merely whether other faiths should be permitted, but also whether a ruler who is a believer may practice or permit tolerance. In the Middle Ages, toleration of Judaism was a contentious issue throughout Christendom. Today, there are concerns about toleration of Christianity in Islamic states (see also dhimmi). For individuals, religious toleration generally means an attitude of acceptance towards other people’s religions. It does not mean that one views other religions as equally true;
merely that others have the right to hold and practice their beliefs. Proselytism can be a contentious issue; it can be regarded as an offense against the validity of others’ religions, or as an expression of one’s own faith. I legal concept! I learned this from futher reading into information on Foucault quoted in the Webinary under prisoner freedom losses “religion” , I found so amazing. But it is nesscary
that we learn these affects to contiually show society what happens and what we are working for.. Though we do not hang at the galllow as much we do still kill inhumanly?
Foucaault trying to explain I felt that the punishment should fit the crime? But does it? What about in the times when the person who did not confess got a dimissed case? What about those who confess to crime they did not commit to basically have a bed and three meals? As stated in j’s paper Foucault did not see the end of thing as well as he might have and he is not the only source of understabding although he was fierce in his grasp of proccesses.
Though There is much more to write about on this these were the things That really made me analize and think. I have faith that their is much more to learn and experience. I am unsure to write more cause I am over 500 and I am not sure if we can write more. Because ther was more I wanted to cover. Well, It is the first paper it can only get better:)
August 28, 2006 at 4:55 am
This is my second attempt at the assignment. It was difficult for me, but I hope this is a bit better than my first.
After perusing several websites and leafing through Foucault’s, Discipline and Punish, it has become quite clear to me that he was thought of as one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. He paved the way for thinkers to ask questions, and want to seek the answers to those questions. He influences his readers to step outside the common consensus and really take a look at how our society acts as a whole and as individuals. He takes us into a world that many of us are not familiar with, the world of crime, punishment and torture.
Foucault states that “The public execution is now seen as a hearth in which violence bursts again into flame. Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process” (9). Before the gas chambers, and lethal injections, people were publicly tortured, by way of the guillotine, flogging, tarring and feathering or executions, as a way of showing the other citizens what could possibly happen to them if they stuck a toe out of line. At the turn of the 19th century “the great spectacle of human punishment disappeared; the tortured body was avoided; the theatrical representation of pain was excluded from punishment” (14). I believe that the idea of hiding punishment in the penal system still exists today. When a prisoner is sentenced to death, they sit on death row for years before they are set to die. Then when it is there time to die, they only allow a few people into the death chamber to watch the death. It is not a public display that people get the chance to witness, like before when they had public lynching.
“The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body” (30). I agree completely with Foucault on this. If a condemned prisoner is sitting on death row with specific rules that he must follow everyday, with no life outside his smaller than a closet sized cell, all he has to do is think about his horrible crimes. Growing up in a Catholic family I know that God is forgiving if you ask for his forgiveness, but sometimes you need your own forgiveness before you can let God forgive you. These prisoners know that they are sitting in there cell because of something there body did. However, will their souls forgive them for their bodies actions? I get the feeling that Foucault believes that the person’s soul and a person’s body are two different, conflicting forces. “A soul inhabits him and brings him to existence, which in itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body” (30). Perhaps Foucault believed that the soul of the condemned would eventually torture and punish the body more than any lynching would.
Foucault’s thoughts on torture and the soul versus the body were widely accepted by the nation, however there were critics. He published his works and encouraged people to read them and take their own opinions. Foucault was a firm believer in being true to ones self.
August 28, 2006 at 5:02 am
I had no Idea where to start this paper. Michel Foucault’s words and ideas provoke a number of implications, all of which are still relevant and very applicable to our world today. It is rather stunning, considering this man died the year I was born, which means that even know this guy’s dead my entire life thus far still fits perfectly within the world that Foucault spoke about. In my attempt to get some ideas I decided to flip on the TV and watch some news. On comes the President of the United States addressing, “the reformers of the region (middle east)” and it hits me. Michel Foucault wasn’t just “important to the field of intellectual history; he’s PROLIFIC! Here I am, watching the President talk about how we cant leave Iraq because ”it would send a bad signal to reformer’s across the region”, and in pops Michel Foucault (in my head of course) talking about “The body is directly involved in a political field: power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, TO EMIT SIGNS… bound up… with its economic use” (Foucault pgs25-26) Brilliant! Foucault’s words couldn’t be anymore applicable than in today’s times. The endeavor our administration is currently undertaking (pun intended J) in Iraq is simply an application of the well chiseled out American penal system a.k.a PRISON. After all, the discipline instilled upon the prisoners was based upon military life, as is clearly shown with Michel Foucault’s detailing the timeline of a prisoner’s day (pgs 6-7). Michel Foucault’s words speak volumes about the use of power. He explains the different usages and abuses of power, how it is taken from or submitted to another. “…power is possible only if it is caught up in a system of subjection in which need is also a political instrument meticulously prepared, calculated and used; the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body.” (Foucault pgs 25-26) Here, I look at “a system of subjection” as the key phrase. We are entering a future that is to be filled with more and more subjection. In an age when the human genome has been entirely mapped out and identified, our very code of existence, we must think carefully to Foucault’s chronicling of the” different modes by which, in our culture human beings are transformed into subjects.” (Foucault) Where could that be more exemplified than in the possibility that one day we will be asked to submit a seemingly meaningless drop of blood before we are approved for health care insurance. In this drop of blood can be identified whether you are a “threat” to the human population. It reveals that you may carry the gene for breast cancer and ding! “Sorry, we can’t afford you in the gene pool any more” Okay, maybe not, but hey its worth taking a second thought to Foucault’s words, “By solemnly inscribing offences in the field of objects susceptible of scientific knowledge, they provide the mechanisms of legal punishment with a justifiable hold not only on offences, but on individuals; not only on what they do but also on what they are, will be, may be”. (Foucault pg.18)
August 28, 2006 at 5:10 am
Jereme Robinson Discipline and Punish Page 1
August 26, 2006
Preludekid212@aol.com
Section 1395
Michel Foucault was very important and a well respected man regarding the life or views on the prison system. Foucault was also a well respected French philosopher who wrote over 15 books that were recognized as high noble writings. Michel Foucault book, Discipline and Punish, which was writing in 1975, explained why prisons continue to be popular even when they are not successful. Foucault believed prisons serve a greater purpose than just incarcerating criminals. He described how prisons really enslave everyone to a life of government-imposed discipline.
Foucault book really goes into depth on how the elite in society dominate and control the rest of society. Foucault believed no societal advancements have occurred since the Renaissance; only technology has grown, further enslaving the human spirit. One of Foucault belief that I agree with is that: order in society was impossible. To me I think this is 100 percent true. If you just look at the world as a whole and what is going on you will see that it’s true. When you have countries at war with each other because they believe in a different god and violence in our community on an every day basis, you will see what Foucault is talking about in that statement. I think one quote Foucault would say today to the American people is that world peace will never come.
Foucault talks about how discipline and torture that started way back in the 1600’s made its way into our prison. When you look at the 1600 and 1700 hundreds there was no such thing as a jail. People that commit some type of crime were tortured
Jereme Robinson Page 2 Discipline and Punish
and killed by hangings. I think Foucault tries to relate that in terms of today we know take criminals and put them to death by a type of torture which is lethal injection and the electric chair.
Foucault saw the effect prison had on him by discipline. Foucault said, “Constant supervision and forced discipline broke the will of the criminal and made him into a “docile body”. A “docile body” is French for a person that is easily controlled by people in authority. Foucault wasn’t a firm believer that the prison system took criminals and rehabilitated them to be released back into normal world. On page 265 he says a quote that I believe in and support: “Detention causes recidivism; those leaving prison have more chance than before of going back to it; convicts are, in a very high proportion, former inmates; 38 per cent of those who left the maisons centrals were convicted again…”
I think you can see what he is getting at by this statement. For me working in law enforcement I see the same criminals over and over again returning to prison to just get out again and continue there path of being a criminal.
In Michel Foucault book, Discipline and Punish, he talked about some point of view I have never looked at before. Some that I agreed with and others that I did not. He has the experience in this topic to know what he is saying is true.
August 28, 2006 at 5:29 am
Jonna Edwinson
The Importance of Foucault’s Ideas
August 27, 2006
Babyjb820@netscape.net
Human 6/Sec 1395
Michel Foucault’s non acceptance of the order of dominance during his time period formulated into a specific kind of reasoning that enabled people to adopt his way of approaching the controversial issues of social power. Upon reading his material, the ideas he introduces are broken down in a way that are clever, persuasive, and easy to relate to. Foucault brought forth an opposing view that went against his own society’s belief system. This attracted listeners because it was a new way of thinking. It was also his intent to share the fact that social power was going to affect everyone individually. For this reason, Michel Foucault contributed new and unforgettable theories on Western society.
In a website by Scott McGaha: Theorist Web Project, I found that Foucault’s distrust in superiority was extreme. Not only did he not believe in God, but there was no consideration to a society. In his mind there was no purpose for one. I don’t see how this is possible because the world we live in today needs to provide boundaries to protect and secure us. This brings up Social control. We need organization to live comfortably with others. We as a society choose to be part of the dominant ideas, and we give permission for others to dictate what is in our best interest. There are those who choose not accept the majority (like Foucault) and they formulate their own way of understanding their existence. Foucault’s rejection to power is intense. To me there is no wrongness to power. This is how we conduct our lives. I found a website by David Gamlett: theory.org talking about Foucault’s idea on power. He thought of it as a technique, and was not something that could be achievable by someone without the influence of social status. So instead of giving our consent to those we see fit to hold power and make decisions for us as a whole, Foucault would rather all of us focus on our individuality and fend for ourselves, even if that means devastating consequences.
Punishment is the last point I wanted to hit. Foucault’s theory on imprisonment was one that has been argued with. In a website by Scott Mcgaha:Theorist Web Project Foucault questioned the prison systems as to why after all these years of activity why the crimes have not dissolved? Foucault had no desire to work with punishment. A person’s intention to improve and better himself is an individual motivation that cannot be instilled by exterior forces. That’s why crime remains on the streets. But at least we can set an example of right and wrong to those who are exposed to crime. Foucault’s experience has allowed him to facilitate his ideas on a world with no society, power, and punishment. I can’t agree completely with that, but then again I’m still collecting my own personal thoughts from this book.
August 28, 2006 at 5:30 am
Matthew Phillips
Foucault
8/27/06
bobomrp@yahoo.com
American Cultures 1395
Foucault’s work is definitely hard to grasp without some breakdown into simple, or “layman’s” terms. What I understood was that his work followed and explained how people have been reduced to subjects over time. Individualism has been lost in society and people have become units in a larger system. As subjects people can be measured, rated, compared, and divided. This is apparent in all aspects of society and Foucault talks about different driving forces. He says that there is both coercive power and non-coercive power. Coercive power is an overt use of force, such as physical force. Non-coercive power is more of the way society as a whole tends to make people subjects by grouping and controlling them. Hegemony is explained as voluntary conformity by people because they want to be normal and not differentiated from other people. Pastoral power is obtained when people are given aid and guidance from some body of power, such as church or state. Foucault explains that what appears to be help and generosity is also an indication that the body providing the help is dominant over the subject receiving it. The panopticon is an idea and a physical design that allows people to be watched, always in view, while separating people from each other. It is a design that has been used from industrial facilities to prisons and I liken it to the eye in the tower in Lord of the Rings. It sees all. Dividing practices are used to separate people for the good of society. People are made subjects by removing names and replacing them with numbers, such as social security numbers or inmate numbers, and segregated by different characteristics that may be labeled as good or bad. Finally there is Self Referential Power. This is similar to hegemony in that people make themselves subjects by placing themselves into categories or labeling themselves based on criteria that is given to them by society.
I have to agree with Foucault that society has really homogenized people and removed true individualism. People have become so used to being subjects that they don’t even realize that they are in fact subjects. An example is how people take the word of the government and its leaders as if it was gospel. People just assume that people in power must always be right and that they have everyone’s best interest at heart when they make decisions. That is the pastoral power that government has. You can’t even take water on an airplane anymore, but somehow people are better off and safer, or so we are led to believe. New categories that people are placed into today are either “terrorist” or “potential terrorist.” Everyone is a potential terrorist I guess. Or at least in the eyes of government we are.
I think that self referential power is also very apparent today. There are so many different categories, sub-categories and labels out there and people are eager to place themselves in them. People even promote and defend each other based solely on the fact that they “belong” to the same category. Be it race, gender, sexuality, occupation, or whatever, people lend themselves to causes based on these differentiating criteria. An example is someone of one race defending someone of the same race, who say was accused of committing a crime, just because they see themselves as the same.
There are so many other examples of how people have become subjects, but I don’t necessarily think that it is all negative. I don’t think that society, or at least democracy, would really work if people were not subjects of it to some degree. I think it is natural for people to look for similarities in each other and align themselves for a common goal.
August 28, 2006 at 6:24 am
Sarah Bellomo
A8006@aol.com
Section#1395
Assignment#1
8/27/2006
I am not too sure still on how we post our blogs to this particular site so I have cut and pasted it here. I have also submitted it to the inbox….not sure which one is right but here it is….
So, first off I start with the questions in regard to the death penalty. Let me first state that I am for the death penalty all the way, 100%. I feel that if someone contributed or committed a crime as heinous as murder they deserve just as they put out. However, the question still stands as to how we are considered better than the person whom initially committed the crime and or crimes. If I was to be the person whom executed the person, who has committed any of the types of crimes stated in our now revised penal code, am I not held responsible for the same crime? A murder of someone, which was planned with malice aforethought. Not necessarily the same crime as the perpetrator but still in the same category. As I stated before, I do believe in the death penalty. Not because of the many factors that I think should be reconsidered, but because I believe that you do onto others as you want don’t to yourself. “ An eye for an eye” they call it. I believe an eye for an eye is what you should get.
When Foucault starts off in his book, he writes about many different types of executions. Tearing people apart at the limbs, quartering them, making them a public display, so that everyone can see them die. Now, in my personal opinion, making the crime visible to the victims should not be a gratifying experience, nor a capability for the
Sarah Bellomo
Assignment #1
Section #1395
Victims to watch. Somehow, the public display of these acts was supposed to make a deterrence of crime. But what I see is that the system is making a display of immoral gratification towards this subject of murder. Telling one that it is not right to kill, but then publicly displaying a torturous killing. In fact, something that might be more heinous than the actual incident itself. Foucault later reflects upon the changes that our countries have endured over the years. Limiting our public display of these types of executions. But as he tells it, it is still the same, just a different day, different tactic. And I do believe that he is right. If you look at our society today, nothing has really changed other than the way that they go about it. There still lays the undeniable act of execution, but now it somehow is not suppose to be torture? This does not really make sense to me, being that the person whom is going to be executed already knows that they’re going to die. Now if one person can sit here and tell me that if you KNEW that you were going to die, regardless of the pain level that you actually encountered, wouldn’t you feel agonizing pain on a mental level regardless? With so many people sitting in the “hot seat” that have not even committed crimes, some people get what they deserve, some get more than they ever accumulated. The person whom has to commit to the accommodations of the execution is no winner in this case. Mental anguish that would haunt them forever. Or should I say, should haunt them because if it doesn’t what does that say about the person who handles the task? However, our system remains the same. A different style, different day.
Sarah Bellomo
Assignment #1
Section#1395
Foucault made many observations that a lot of other people were not looking at. He looked outside the box, at the big picture. For this book, being written so many years ago is still evolving today. The torture has now evolved from the outside to the inside of our being. So our society has not only found a way to punish prisoners physically but also mentally in a way that they will never erase. The knowledge of these acts will sit upon our societies minds forever.
August 28, 2006 at 6:26 am
oh and by the way are we going on London time or something because it is not even twelve o clock yet here!!lol
August 28, 2006 at 6:40 am
Anna Johnson
Response to Michel Foucault
August 23, 2006
Madrocky25@yahoo.com
Human 6, Section 1395
Michel Foucault was truly an individual thinker and individuality was what he influenced. His ideas, thoughts, and concerns for human society developed through his fascination with the prison systems of the past and present. He looked at the history of discipline and punishment to discover the reality of human’s necessity for control, observation, regulations. Foucault linked this essential jurisdiction first seen in the French prisons to the structure and existence of our societies as we know them today. He believed in the body’s ability to become an individually unique person but saw the restraints held by modern society. His importance came from the controversy of his theories and the capacity to bring new ideas to the people.
Foucault discusses the change in the penal system; the change from public displays of execution to private forms of punishment. “A whole new set of assessing, diagnostic, prognostic, normative judgments concerning the criminal have become lodged in the framework of the penal system” (19) This was the beginning of his belief that the dominant class was heading toward total social control. In the new prisons, the offenders were punished in a different form. They were kept in cells, separate from all society, given rules to follow, activities and tasks to complete. Everything they became involved in was directed by a higher force. This higher force was the control of the dominate class. The group of society which felt it necessary to protect themselves from people committing crimes in which they saw jeopardizing to the communities well being. They were afraid of reform by the lesser class and afraid that their power could be taken
Anna Johnson
Michel Foucault
away. Foucault raised questions about the intent of the prison system and the way it was run. He questioned something that was becoming a standard in society. Most saw the prison system as a functioning benefit to their community, a place to hide all the deviants from the ‘normal’ citizens.
He brought light of new views to the reasons and affects the prison system was having on the individuals themselves. He believed this was a new way to control the thoughts and actions of the public. This was preventing the people from being unique, expressive, creative and individual. The prisons became a place to prepare the inmates for a new life in the outside world; prepare them to act and live differently, to be more normal as far as their standards. The prison systems new goal was to “punish with more universality and necessity, to insert the power to punish more into the social body” (82). Foucault questioned whether or not this system was working or making the crimes worse.
Foucault grew to be very important to Intellectual History by encouraged self thought. He encouraged the people to think for themselves, have their own beliefs and their own opinions. Without this there would hardly be any intellect involved in history. He didn’t see the point of society becoming a written manual to follow and obey. Foucault believed in the free human spirit. “The prison as an administrative apparatus will at the same time be a machine for altering minds” (125). His idea was that the prison system arose and produced all these other institutions to keep a watch on people and to guide them into a way of life respected by those of the leading class. Society itself turned into a giant prison, watching, judging, and analyzing everything a person did.
Anna Johnson
Michel Foucault
Prisoners and civilians were being transformed into what a ‘normal’ member of society was expected to be.
Foucault raised many questions and debate among other philosophers. This is what he was struggling to protect. The human brain needs the opportunity to think, discover, question and learn new ideas and aspect of life. The systems being created by those of the upper class were controls on these actions. Foucault strongly believed that the prison system prohibited the most important aspect of the culture and its members: the human spirit.
August 28, 2006 at 6:50 am
Melissa Cook 1
Foucault
8/27/06
eskimomissy@comcast.net
Human 6 section 1395
Foucault Response:
I picked up the book and proceed to read it. It was interesting but hard to read. I read a lot of fiction or text books relating to dental hygiene, so this topic was not an easy one. I did not get far into the book when I realized that I could read the two presentations that Judith Thorn posted on the web. I was happy to read the condensed form of the book. Foucault had a lot of interesting ideas on the subject of power and prison. I have not given a lot of thought to prison until this class even though my ex-step father was a prior inmate. And, No prison did not change him. And as far as I know, since my mother finally divorced him after many abuse filled years he is now back in prison for another offense that he was found guilty of.
When Foucault talked about the history of punish on the body and the transformation to punishment on the soul, I found this to be interesting. I have a four year old daughter and I often have to discipline her when she acts up and misbehaves. I firmly believe that spanking is not a good form punishment (especially with the abuse I saw imposed upon my mother by my ex-step father) and stick to the time outs and try to talk to her through the given situation and work out her problems. I guess I never correlated the time outs to be a punishment on the soul. I guess you can say by the enforced solitude period that I am coercively forcing her into a period of (hopefully) reflection on her upsetting behavior and changing it into a positive behavior. At times she just still needs a nap.
In part 2: punishment Foucault describes “the changing approach toward not only punishment, but of what constituted crime and the (class) of people considered criminal.” This to me leads me to believe that he is starting to think about the different classes of people especially when the class is divided by wealth and the power that comes along with it. The other day I watched most of Oprah’s show “What Class are you? Inside America’s Taboo Topic.” During the show Jamie Johnson one of the heir’s to Johnson & Johnson talked about a documentary that he had filmed “The Top One Percent.” He exposes the world of old money and shows us the exclusive world of the richest people that we would otherwise never see. It seems to me that they contain most of the power in the industrialized world and they will continue to hold the power as long as they control the riches. The show also address the topic of moving up in class and if it is possible to do this. I for one grew up poor. I thought that my mother got paid on the first and fifteenth of every month. I did not realize until later in life that this is when her checks from public assistance came each month. I have received my AA, AS degrees and my Registered Dental Assistant license, and I am now on the road to receive my AS in Dental Hygiene and Registered Dental Hygiene license. So, I feel that due to education I will definitely be able to move up in class, especially from the one that I grew up in.
Okay, back to Foucault. The last subject I would like to touch on is the examination. According to Foucault “The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgment” (184). Since I have been at the SRJC from 19995 on and off again until present time, I have taken my full share of examinations. I never thought of them as someone placing their power over me, but I can see his point, especially now that I am in the Dental Hygiene program. I started the program in the Fall of 2005 and will graduate in Spring of 2007. We are closely watched by our instructors during practical hands-on examinations and are given a lot of weekly written examinations. I for one am glad that someone is watching me closely and that I am actually learning how to work with the instruments correctly and that I am actually learning the material so that I can do my job in the future and (hopefully) have a successful career in Dental Hygiene. But there are definitely times that I feel like I am being trained and honed how to be a little machine that dose not deviate form the norm of school and dental hygiene in particular.
I don’t know if I fully grasped what Foucault was trying to tell me but I did my best and tried to apply his work to my everyday life. In the future I would like to read more of his works and take a longer time to study his ideas.
August 28, 2006 at 6:59 am
“Evil is as Evil Does”
What good does it do to kill someone that has taken a life from another; purposely or not? “The expression you are what you eat” reiterates the idea that “two wrongs do not make a right.” Is it justifiable to sentence a person to death only to put them out of his or her own shame of what ever justifiable crime that was committed only to leave shame to those who decided the punishment? After spending some time thinking about my true feelings on the death sentence and reading some of Foucault’s ideas and processes, I discovered that I had several questions that I needed to answer in order to evaluate my opinions.
Law is supposed to be based on the behaviors on that of a “reasonable person.” Now many people think you must be a little crazy to be “normal.” What I would like to know is what makes you a reasonable person and by whose standards are these reasonable people considered reasonable? My point is that everyone is different in their own unique way. Someone that practices sacrificing animals due to religious beliefs gets punished because a person from a different group of reasonable people finds it to be unreasonable, but of course they did it for a reason. If the sacrifice was done for no reason then there would still be a reason; perhaps because the person is mentally ill. In today’s society there are so many loop holes in the justice system making it possible for even OJ Simpson to be a free man; however it still seems to only filter specific groups of people. People are defined by groups and groups make up the census and the census makes society.
In the Book “1984” by ….. I noticed several links concerning Foucault’s processes. For instance when someone knew of someone that committed a crime or broke the law according to “Big Brother,” they were punished with torture by electrocution with varying voltage sessions, thus producing a certain degree of pain, the production of pain was regulated, and ritually marked the victim or criminal in order to make a spectacle of him or her to set an example of what life would be like if “Big Brother” was under minded. (33-4) People are judged every minute of their lives whether it be them judging themselves or those of another group or even referent other. To judge is to predetermine.
Genealogy is the root of Foucault’s reasoning. Predetermination is what genealogy really is. If you think about it when people say “it’s in my jeans” they are not speaking of the blue jeans they are wearing and have control over, they are speaking of that little building block in the long strand of their DNA. The mixture of two DNA (sex) predetermines the genealogy of the offspring to have blue eyes, and blonde hair or what ever genes that are magically mixed create. I also see the society in which a child is brought up as part of his or her genealogy. He or she did not choose to be born into the situation they ended up in. Some are spending jail time right now because of their background and profile. A persons profile can tell a lot about someone but does not make them guilty because there are many people with similar profiles and not all of them ended up the same or committed all the same crimes due to hardships in their bringing up. “[T]he prison indirectly produces delinquents by throwing the inmate’s family into destitution” (268). As discussed in class if you tell someone they are stupid they just might start to believe it and not only will the victim believe it but those around the person have now made a profile of that person in their mind and he or she including the family and everyone involved now has a reputation which creates destitution.
So my main question is what really is justice and how is it defined per individual and by what reasonable persons decision? Are the decisions based on the persons profile if so why? Ignorance, laziness? What?
Discipline and Punish
Michel Foucault (trans. Robert Hurley)
August 28, 2006 at 9:18 pm
I totally agree with Crystals point that many people become so institutionalized after they have been in prison, that is almost impossible for them to adjust once they get out, and lord knows they don’t get any professional help. I aslo agree with Todd that in a perfect world people would be resposible for their own actions, but often this isn’t the case. We could solve so many problems if we could teach people to be more aware of how their actions impact the rest of the world around them.
August 29, 2006 at 1:03 am
Sarane Collins
Michel Foucault
August 27, 2006
Sarane@sbcglobal.net
Human 6 1395
My reaction to Michel Foucault’s book “Discipline & Punishment” was one of interest, but also of confusion. It was an very hard text to read. Actually if Foucault had not repeated himself as often as he did, the book probably would have been half as long. I also read both of the texts on the website, which helped quite a bit in understanding what Foucault was trying to say. It also would have helped if I had started reading his book long before Wednesday, it didn’t leave me enough time to try to process what Foucault was trying to say, but here is what I understand. If people believe that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, they ought to read the history of executions. I know we all have seen movies of the English decapitating someone for committing blasphemy against the King, but in the middle of the 17 century, the way Foucault describes in detail how Damiens was tortured before the towns people was completely disturbing. They tied him to a wheel at four points, used heated molted lead and oil to pour over him and burn his skin. The flesh was then torn away with pincers, especially designed for this. Then they tied all four of Damiens limbs to four horses, one to pull in each direction. When this wasn’t successful they severed his limbs with a knife at each joint, then had the horses pull, thus he was quartered. The body was then burned till nothing was left but ashes, hence the saying “ashes to ashes.“ I agree that hangings, electric chairs, and gas chambers are in the category of cruel punishment, but they can’t begin to compare to that. I also found the history Foucault describes on punishment moving from public exhibitions, to private executions, to no executions, and the new awareness of the “soul”, and who was going to save it, and actually who was going to own it very interesting. I was impressed with the early prison system, which was very proactive in giving every inmate an education, although I could have done without the religious teaching. I found the correlation he points out between knowledge and power very interesting . I can’t count how many times I have heard this saying with no thought of where it came from, or what was meant by it. I was amused by the fact that in the mid 1800s, when capital punishment had not been used in several decades, that the crime rate actually went down, attributed to the fact that the economic status of all society was more even than it had been in the decades before. Pretty much a no brainier! So by today’s standards you’d think we could find a way to not only educate everyone, but also prepare people to a perform an actual job, that they can turn into a decent economic living. With all the educational budget cuts, out went the ROP training that use to be available to students who weren’t college bound, but gave them a resource so they could find a quality jog after graduating. Now all these kids can find is a way into the criminal system. It would also be money well spent to train convicts while they are incarcerated, so when they are released they can find a job that will pay them a living wage, not a minimum wage job, where they will be back in jail in 6 months. I probably agree with Foucault the most in his depiction of how mental health entered the picture in the late 1800, and
continues to be a problem in our judicial system today. I found it interesting how Foucault described the churches role in the judicial system, setting themselves up as sanctuaries, a concept that we even use to this day. When the state took over the role as governing body, and the mental hospitals then became the sanctuaries, where people could hide to avoid prosecution, a practice that is still around today. I have met many people who work at Napa State Hospital that use to be for the mentally ill, but now is inundated with criminally insane patients, who have caused career ending injuries to the staff that work there. The hospitals are not set up to deal with the physical aggressions of these patients, nor do they have the security in place to keep their employees safe. The last thing I would like to comment on is my understanding of the X theory. X is all about perspective in my book. It depends on where you are, what your doing, when your looking at an object, whether it be a law, a moral, or a social subject. What might have looked like a good idea one minute, might not look so good the next. My last comment is it’s a shame Mr. Foulault died in 1984, I think he would have really enjoyed the movie the Shaw Shank Redemption. It’s the tale of a prison which not only thought they owned a man’s soul, they also preached the “good book“, and did exactly the opposite of what they preached. The warden and his guards were the most corrupt of all, but in the end they got their just rewards.
August 29, 2006 at 1:11 am
I caught the time thing too Sarah. I hoped that when I submitted my assignment last night that it was still counted as being on time.
Back to my comment on inmates being institutionalized that Sarane pointed out…. Shouldn’t inmates have to take classes or counseling sessions that relate to their problem? I have seen a judge order as a parole condition and the task never being completed so what went wrong there? An inmate should be doing this while incarcerated.
August 29, 2006 at 1:46 am
This comment is in regards to Sarah’s assignment…..
I am not against you for supporting the death penalty because I do not judge people on their opinions and I don’t know really how I feel about it all, but my question to you is how do you feel about the people that may have been executed and are innocent?
August 29, 2006 at 3:40 am
So i think everyone’s paper had something great and insightfull to add. I liked Dawn Rash’s comments about society and security and how we are always being watched. Prison is not the only place where someone is watched at all times and is punished into being disciplined. It is quite scary to think that our library books and conversations are watched and heard.
Jamie Danford-
August 29, 2006 at 3:44 am
So i think everyone’s paper had something great and insightfull to add. I liked Dawn Rash’s comments about society and security and how we are always being watched. Prison is not the only place where someone is watched at all times and is punished into being disciplined. It is quite scary to think that our library books and conversations are watched and heard.
Jamie Danford-
I really enjoyed your essay even if i we don’t have level views. I like the quote of “evil is as evil does” I have always wondered why should we be the ones to desides someone else’s fate for the crimes they have committed, but then how would you feel if a loved one of yours was tortured raped and then killed by some crazy guy. Personaly i would wish the same fate upon that evil person. Now what is crazy are the people that are in jail because of the injustice of society and unbalance in wealth where some become gang members or drug dealers just to make money. Jail creates monsters and so does society.
August 29, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I really enjoyed reading all the papers because they were each very different. I think the one thing that we can all agree on so far is that “Discipline & Punish” was (is) a very hard read! I’m sure over the duration of this class we will gain a better understanding as to what Foucault was talking about.
I agree with the comments made by Crystal and Sarane in regards to prisoners becoming so institutionalized while serving their time that they can’t readjust once they are out. So often inmates are put in jail and simply forgotten about. And a lot of people are ok with that…it’s the whole “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality. But what people don’t think about is the fact that at some point most of these prisoners will be released back into “normal” society. They will not have received adequate help while in prison and, for the most part, will come out angrier then they were when they went in! While there is schooling offered in jail is it really available to all? When the prisoners are making very little money and have to pay for classes, is that really what they will use their money for?
I liked Jamie’s point that society plays a big role in a persons “genealogy” and that we do not choose the life that we are born into. Just yesterday in the PD Chris Coursey’s column talked about this (in a way). He wrote about Georgia Moses, a young girl who was born into a life that not many of us have ever had to experience. Sadly it was because of this that she died. She most definitely did not choose to be born into that life. But where was society during those few years that she was alive? Why weren’t we out there offering help to her and her family? For those children born into families in unfortunate situations (parents addicted to drugs or to a life of crime for instance) there does not appear to be much hope…chances are those children will either imitate their parents actions or they will get lost in the system. If society were to step in a little more and help lead these children in a better direction, perhaps our jails would not be quite as full.
And while, as pointed out in Todd’s paper, ideally each of us would take responsibility for our own actions, how can a child who is never taught what is right and what is wrong be responsible for their actions? These same children who are never taught that it is wrong to steal or that they shouldn’t kill, all too often grow up into adults who still don’t know that. As the African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child”.
August 30, 2006 at 1:49 am
I made the comment that I thought Foucault would have enjoyed the movie the Shaw Shank Redemption in my paper, and Judith asked that I post why I thought this on the blog, so here goes. The movie had just about every philosophy that Foulcault talked about in his book. The worden and his gaurds under him had all the power (heirarchy). The worden used the inmates to work, bidding on government projects, undercutting other companies because of the cheap labor. He then had another inmate who was an accountant launder the money into many false accounts so the income couldn’t be tracked. This was all done while the worden preached relgion, and how to follow the good book. Many inmates were beaten, some killed to protect the worden’s intrests. They were treated like his personnal property, he very much thought he owned their souls. Some inmates had been in the prison so long that when they were finally peroled after forty years, they were so institutionalized, some committed suicide, or thought of breaking parole just to go back to prison where they felt safe. The inmate who was the accountant did his best to educate the other inamates by opening a decent library, and helped them get their GEDs. He realized that knowledge was power and the only way out for some of these inmates. It showed just how corrupt the whole system was back in the 30’s, not that some of the same corruption doesn’t exist today.
August 30, 2006 at 5:29 am
Jade, I agree that you have a very interesting paper. One part from your first submission that really stood out for me is in regards to the executioner being punished if they do their job incorrectly. That is still true in today’s penal society. As we all know from stories in the media, if law enforcement personnel fails to do their job correctly they are punished – sometimes even prosecuted. There is a strict guideline of rules and punishments set in place that are followed very closely.
I was also interested in Dina’s comments on punishment and torture being used to make a criminal confess. There are still different, more humane levels of “torture” being used today. Police agencies have been known to blast rock music through speakers into the home of a barricaded subject and there are specific techniques that detectives use when interrogating a suspect to make that suspect feel more at home and more likely to talk about his crimes.
Todd, thank you for talking about Foucault’s views on rape being nothing more than a physical assault on the body. I wanted to argue that case but could have written much, much more than two pages. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who believes rape is not merely a physical crime, but a grab at power and control. Most rapists do not rape for the sexual thrill but for the feeling of absolute power. It is the thrill of taking something that does not belong to them, something that gives them total control over the other person – sometimes for the rest of that person’s life.
August 30, 2006 at 3:12 pm
xxxxxx
August 30, 2006 at 6:17 pm
For further clarification regarding my post, I remember reading that US troops blasted rock music to lure General Manuel Noriega out of his hiding place and found another example of the Illinois State Police playing The Beatles and Barry Manilow over loudspeakers to try to calm a mentally disturbed woman (New York Times, November 9, 1997). In regard to law enforcement personnel being punished for not doing their job correctly, as a member of law enforcement I have seen peers written up, suspended and even fired for violating the rules and breaking laws. We have a strict reputation to uphold and set guidelines for what happens if we do not uphold those rules.
August 31, 2006 at 12:49 am
Jade Dant –
Well of course If I myself was put into the shoes of a loved one of such an unfortunate event, then I would hope for the criminal to be punished appropriatly if found guilty beyond reasonable doubt and I knew for a fact that the person did it.
August 31, 2006 at 6:34 pm
I continue to read and re-read Discipline and Punish. In the beginning of the book Leon Faucher drew up rules for young prisoners in Paris. Article 22. States that prisoners must attend at least 2 hours a day of instruction. That instruction consists alternately of reading, writing drawing and arithmetic. (6)
Reading this statement makes me wonder how our prison system has gone backwards. If education was a requirement in 1837, how come it is no longer a requirement? Prisoners can and do get educated, but some do not. Our prisoners are incarcerated for many reasons, but one all to common denominator seems to be poverty and lack of education. How can we expect convicts to make it on the outside when they do not have the tools to be successful in our society? Yes, education is costly, but so to is the convicting and keeping of prisoners. That cost is not only measured in money, but also in loss of life, pain and suffering to the community as well as the offender.
August 31, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Ben,
What an awesome statement you brought up in your paper”you have to stand for something or you will fall for anything” Waht a powerful adage. An I agree that when you think that fuacult seems to encourage that thought. I appreciate that you seem to hold on to words with powerful meaning. Again such as Foucault wrote” The most important role a person plays is the role of their true self” And how you suporrted that by your thoughts of if you dont have a belief system you will have a hard time defining yourself. You think vey deep. That is awesome!
August 31, 2006 at 11:49 pm
All of these papers are interesting to read and see what each opinion concludes about Foucault. Being able to read all the different view points really helped me understand Foucault in more depth. I was also able to look at my own opinion and grow on what I thought of him and his ideas. I have made comments of just a few papers.
Todd- I really enjoyed reading your paper. You looked at Foucault’s work and questioned his theories. It seems like you did a lot of research and you knew what you wanted to say about Foucault. Your ideas written in the paper tied in well together, so it didn’t seem like you were jumping around from thought to thought. I like that you decided to question his work and not agree with everything he said.
Kimberly- I liked how you related the thoughts of Foucault to our modern society. It was interesting to read your views in your first attempt about trends of material possessions and religions. It supported Foucault belief “that the losing of ones own identity to the discipline of the state is the real crime.” It is important to stay true to yourself and explore your own interests but while staying within the provide laws. Although your example didn’t relate to discipline and punishment directly, it still worked in supporting your opinion.
Jereme- Mentioning your own experience with the penal system added to your opinion about criminal returning to the prisons. You stated that you agreed with Foucault and knowing that you have seen this first hand adds validity to Foucault’s and your idea. Using your own familiarity made that portion of your paper very strong. Knowing that you are involved with law enforcement, do you take offense to any of Foucault theories? He talks a lot about the law in a negative light but I am sure you have seen the most positive side of it as well.
September 1, 2006 at 1:14 am
Ben,
September 1, 2006 at 1:16 am
Ben,
I wish they did offer good education in prison, because how are they expected to make it when they can’t formulate opinions or have knowledge of how the outside works especially when it comes to jobs. Maybe if prisoners learned they could use that knowledge to get ahead and maybe find a meaning to their lives.
September 1, 2006 at 5:35 am
Ben Basque
8/31/06
Human 6 1395
Quote Interpretation
Week 2
1. “People know what the do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what the do do does”. My interpretation of this is that action is what counts, not the reason for the action. This quote form Disipline and Punish seems to be saying a similar thing. Hitherto the role of political ceremony had been to give rise to the excessive, yet regulated manifestation of power; it was a spectacular expression of potency, an ‘expenditure’, exaggerated and coded, in which power renewed its vigour. It was always more or less related to the triumph…. Discipline, however, had its own type of ceremony. It was not the triumph, but the review, the ‘parade’, an ostentatious form of the examination. In it the ‘subjects’ were presented as ‘objects’ to the observation of a power that was manifested only by its gaze.(187)
2.” Truth is undoubtedly the sort of error that cannot be refuted because it was hardened in toan unalterble form in the long baking” I interpret this to mean truth is what actually happens not the why or reason just the outcome. This passage from Discipline and Punish seems to fit. The body interrogated in torture constituted the point of application of the punishment and the locus of extortion of truth. And just as presumption was inseparably an element in the investigation and a fragment of guilt, the regulated pain involved in judicial torture was a means of both punishment and of investigation. (42)
3.”I think that it can never be inherent in the structure of things to guarantee the exercise of freedom. The Guarantee of freedom is freedom.” To me this is saying that someone else can not make you free, your decision to act as you chose and your disiciaon to deal with the consecquense of your chose is what truly makes you free.
4. “The relationship between rationalization and excess of power is always evedendt. Whenever I hear about meaning, value, virtue or goodness, I look for stratagies of domination.” I see this to mean that if you must over justify your power then you have an alternative motive. I was not able to find a corralating passage in Disilpine and Punish.
5.“The political significance of the problem of sex is due to the fact that sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population.”My interpretation of this quote is that in prison sex is not availiable to “romatic” reasons it seems to me that sex in prison represents a domination by a more powerful inmate over a less powerful inmate. It does not seem to be truly consential, it apears to me that it is anact of coercion. It seems to represent this passage from Discipline & Punish.What was then being formed was a policy of coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, its behaviour. The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it. A ‘political anatomy’, which was also a ‘mechanics of power’, was being born; it defined how one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, ‘docile’ bodies. (138)
September 2, 2006 at 3:14 am
Hello everyone,
I enjoyed reading everybody’s thoughts and findings. I was was particularly struck by Kimberly’s statement about people conforming to what society wants and losing ones own personal identity to the discipline of the states is a real crime. This hit home for me this week because my 18 year old daughter came home crying her eyes out because society said that she was not beautiful enough to work the make-up counter at Macy’s. My daughter is beautiful and she has been using the skin care line for 2 years. She was sent to another department and overheard the manager detailing how she gave the position that my daughter had origanally applied for to another girl who was beautiful and looked the part. The girl did not even notice that my daughter was sitting next to her throughout the conversation. My daughter was crushed and furious that society deemed her unfit because she does not cake on the makeup and wear designer clothes. The best part of the story was when given the choice, my daughter did not lose her identity to the discipline of the states. She decided that the company was not worthy of her talent and ability.
The other statement that struck me was written by Jana. punishment cannot be solved or ignored, nor can we hope that it does not exist. That statement is so true, but sadly so futile. It raises many more questions.
September 2, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Out of curiosity, how many people did their assignment and didn’t get credit because of some silly format or “blog” error??
Erin Sheridan
Human 6
September 3, 2006 at 5:37 pm
I did get credit for assignment 1, but I am curious how much it was worth. Does anyone know? Also, why does the gradebook have a spot for two different Foucault assignments? Were we supposed to submit more than one? Somebody please help clarify~
September 3, 2006 at 5:42 pm
I just read the instructors blog so I think I answered my own question for the grading assignment, but I am still curious about the Foucault part 2.
September 4, 2006 at 3:17 am
Page 1
Crystal Pardo Foucault Part 2
9/3/06 – Week 2
pardofam4@sbcglobal.net
American Cultures 1395
I am going to try and relate to these quotes and give my own personal thought as to what they mean, but excuse me if I am way off the subject because I too had a hard time understanding them and when I asked for help before on the readings I didn’t get a response from anyone….
“People Know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what they do do does.”
To me this quote means that we as humans are aware of what we do and how our actions may affect ourselves and others, but that we don’t think of is our actions before we actually do them. We think about them after they have been done.
“Truth is undoubtedly the sort of error that cannot be refuted because it was hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history.”
To me this quote means that history and /or peoples actions speak for themselves. What has happened whether it is good or bad is the truth of it’s actions and can not be changed.
“I think that it can never be inherent in the structure of things to guantee the exercise of freedom. The guarantee of freedom is freedom.”
To me this quote kind of speaks for itself in saying that freedom is freedom. Maybe because over time freedom was what everyone wanted and now that it is here it is looked upon differently.
“The relationship between rationalization and excess of power is always evident. Whenever I hear about meaning, value, virtue or goodness, I look for strategies of domination.”
To me this quote means that things have been taken for granted. People want to be more in charge of things and always be recognized for their good deeds even if they are not trying to be good.
“The political significance of the problem of sex is due to the fact that sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population.”
I think on this one it means that our bodies are taken for granted. People are not protective or controlling of their own personal properties.
Examples of Hegemony:
A teacher and a student – A student must do what the teacher asks in order to receive credit and pass the class as needed. A parent and a child – The child must obey the parents in order to establish responsibilities and respect for the parent.
Examples of Pastoral Power:
A higher power or someone we give all of our trust to. In doing so we are expecting that good will come to us.
Page2
Crystal Pardo
Foucault Part 2
Examples of Bio-Power:
Gay marriages – not being allowed to marry who you love or an employer hiring someone based off of their physical appearance rather than what they have to offer or being told what to do even though we do not agree.
Examples of Self Referential Power:
Not believing in yourself to achieve certain goals because you were told you couldn’t or being labeled as something because you have similar characteristics. Society is quick to label people.
Examples of Panopticon:
Using the internet and then receiving e-mails that are linked to a certain website you visited or applying for something and receiving stuff in the mail for other offers. I think we are being watched more than we know. Doesn’t this take away from our freedom?
September 4, 2006 at 3:29 am
Matthew Phillips
Foucault – Part Two
9/3/06
bobomrp@yahoo.com
American Cultures 1395
Coercive Power – Power that uses force and violence to control subjects. Examples are being forced to do something at gunpoint or a parent spanking their kid if they don’t do what they are told. Foucault talks about public torture and executions and I think that would also fall under coercive power.
Non-coercive Power
Hegemony – Foucault talks about how the Ecole Militaire’s use of different colored epaulettes to visually show how different students ranked in their moral qualities and behavior would lead students to voluntarily strive to be better in order to fit it. Another example would be how teenagers will change the way they dress so that they will look like everyone else and fit in or “be normal.”
Pastoral – Obvious examples of pastoral power would be government and religious institutions. They are both perceived to be institutions that offer aid, guidance, and generally created to serve the people, but they also gain power over the people at the same time because people come to rely on them and trust them blindly.
Panopticon – Supermax prisons and office buildings are designed so that people are separated from each other, but everyone can be viewed by a control room or supervisor. Prisons are constructed pretty much with strict adherence to the panoptical design. I the case of offices, they may have cubicles that separate workers and allow the “boss” to watch the entire floor.
Dividing practices – Social security numbers and prisoner numbers remove individual humanity because people’s numbers becomes more important than who they are. It makes it easier to organize and divide people by numbers. Lepers being separated from the rest of the population is also an example of dividing practices. Lepers were not seen as individuals, but as a group that needed to be separated for the betterment of society.
Self referential power – People labeling themselves or identifying themselves with different groups that society has created, like being homosexual or latino or goth.
Quotes
“People Know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what they do do does.” I think that this simply means that people are aware of their actions and the reasons for their actions, but they don’t know what all the outcomes and consequences of those actions will be. An example of this is how prisons are supposed to deter delinquency, but Foucault points out that prisons indirectly create delinquents at the same time by pushing inmates’ families into destitution.
“Truth is undoubtedly the sort of error that cannot be refuted because it was hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history.” This means that things that are believed, or even just promoted to be, truths and facts will ultimately retain their status as truth or fact, even if it is in incorrect, if they are unchallenged over a long period of time. For example, we know the history of our country, as taught to us in school, to be truth, but that does not mean that certain facts were not altered to benefit our country and now we will always pass on incorrect information from generation to generation.
“I think that it can never be inherent in the structure of things to guarantee the exercise of freedom. The guarantee of freedom is freedom.” I think that this means that freedom is not guaranteed in the structure of society and is only guaranteed by freedom itself. True freedom is lack of structure and society is based on structure, rules, hierarchy, and power.
“The relationship between rationalization and excess of power is always evident. Whenever I hear about meaning, value, virtue or goodness, I look for strategies of domination.” I think this goes back to non-coercive power. People conform to different values, as in self referential power, and are told what is good or what things mean, as in pastoral power.
“The political significance of the problem of sex is due to the fact that sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population.” I think this is talking about how sex, or gender, is a label put on the body in order to separate, organize, and control it and it is used in the hierarchy of society. I am not sure what relationship this has to being a political problem.
September 4, 2006 at 5:17 pm
in regards to Crystal’s comment; I do understand what it is that you are stating about the executions of innocent people. I do believe in the death penalty but to a certain extent. In a lot of states there are executions done in a short duration of time without further investigations nor any inference on the real crime. In which case I do not agree with the way that those particular circumstances have been handled. However, not all cases are such, and in the state of california a prisoner is held for numerous years pending these types of investigations. I am not saying that every single man whom has been executed is rightfully done here, but they have a better chance at being exonerated. Not everything in our country is right. When I say that I believe in the death penalty, I am not stating that I believe in every man who is on death row should be killed. I am stating that the guilty parties do deserve this type of consequence. An eye for an eye. Not on any other circumstance. There are faults in our system, as in everything else.
September 6, 2006 at 11:05 pm
After doing the 2nd assignment on Foucault I had re-read the first weeks material for the third time and I have a better understanding now on the material. Also, after reading the posts for the 2nd weeks assignment I understood more of the material with the quotes being defined and examples given for them so thanks to everyone on their posts, it really helped me out!!