Discipline and Punish Part III Discipline

Foucault, Michel.  1975.  Discipline and Punish.  Penguin Books Ltd.

Phew!  I've finally conquered the Discipline section of Foucault's Discipline and Punish.  Well, started to conquer it anyway; but it still deserves a "phew!".  

In this section he begins to discuss the evolution of Discipline and how it begins with the availability of a malleable society and develops into a orderly and unified society all working towards the greater good because of constant indoctrination.  

Individuals are first sorted through to distinguish what types of actions they should take on in order to benefit society the most.  Then they are trained to take on specific roles through establishments like schools, churches, or boot camps.  This training internalizes specific actions from the simple to the highly complex to the extent that they become second nature.  Once these actions have become internalized so deeply society becomes what Foucault calls panoptic, or all seeing.  Every action that an individual makes or chooses not to make is seen by someone else and it is that pressure that causes us to conform to actions that work toward the greater good.  

It's my own feeling that these expected actions become so internalized that we don't even care that anyone is watching anymore, we just continue to do them because we feel that that's the only way there is to do things.  For example, I wake up every morning and get dressed before I leave the house.  I do not get dressed because I worry about the looks I would get if I didn't, I get dressed because that's what I've always done.  It's difficult for me to even imagine what it would be like to leave the house naked.  The panopticism has grown to such a level that we are the ones watching ourselves, so now there is truly no escape from the eye of society because it has been internalized.

Discipline and Punish Part I

Foucault, Michel.  1975.  Discipline and Punish.  Penguin Books Ltd.

I must preface this by saying that this is the first time I've read any of Michel Foucault's work. While his use of language is incredibly poetic and beautiful, I must admit that it is incredibly difficult to digest. That said, here is my account of the first section of his book, Discipline and Punish.

In this portion of the book, Foucault juxtaposes the types of discipline and punishment that were practiced in the 18th century with those that emerged in the 19th century, some of which are still practiced today. He begins with a graphic account of torture that was inflicted upon a man accused of regicide in 1757 and goes on to describe the daily activities of prison life some eighty years later. Foucault's argument is that while we may believe one form of punishment to be more civilized than the other we are still exercising enormous amounts of control over those who we feel are deviants in our society. In fact we are showing even more control in scheduling out every aspect of their day year after year than we once did in inflicting upon them grave tortures in the public square.