Some book titles are to be abandoned, like “ReOrient”, “Reassemble the Social;” some to be revised, like “Public Passion” to “Passionate Public.” To the second group falls “Discipline and Punish,” which could be made “Punishment: from Spectacle to Discipline/Surveillance”(a poor one?).
A history of the modern soul on trial, Foucault’s work assumes both a historical perspective and a social-structural one. Historically, he traces the transformation of punishment from the monarchical period to the modern period---turning around 17-19 centuries. On a sociological level, he challenges traditional understanding of modern society as an assembly of individuals cemented together by “contract.” Instead, he proposes that the modern individuals, together with the knowledge of them, are products of power mechanisms.
I. Torture and Intro
The first chapter serves as an introduction to the basic propositions of the book, at the heart of which is what Foucault calls “body politic” or “political economy/anatomy of the body.” Techniques and mechanism to control and shape the body serve as weapon and routes for power and knowledge. Power produces knowledge; power and knowledge directly imply one another. In one word, “it is a question of situating the techniques of punishment... in the history of this body politic.”
Chapter 2 of Part I examines torture as both judicial ritual and political ritual. Punitive punishment aims at “truth,” cruel but not savage, thus criminal’s confession of guilt is pivotal. Correspondingly, the public implementation of penalties serves as manifestation of truth, as an ultimate proof at the end of the judicial ritual. Public execution at the same time functions as a political ceremony by which the imperial power is manifested, by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted. Foucault concludes, “If torture was so strongly embedded in legal practice, it was because it revealed truth and showed the operation of power.(55)”
Part I reveals the “truth-power” relation in monarchical public execution, which, as a spectacle and carnival, arouses feelings of terror among the spectators/participants.
II. Punishment
Part II on Punishment delineates a transformation in both social structure and mechanisms of punishment. During the 18th century, illegality of rights turned into illegality of property, and the right to punish shifts from the vengeance of the sovereign to the defense of society. Accordingly, the punitive semio-technique was superseded by a new politics of the body.
In the monarchical physical torture, punishment is a ceremonial of sovereignty; ritual marks the vengeance to the body of the condemned man; before spectators, effect of terror.
The modern punishment, however, diverges into two model of “punitive city” and coercive institution. The “punitive city” is based on the lesson, the discourse, the decipherable sign, the representation of public morality. (110) It uses not marks, but signs, coded sets of representations. The great terrifying ritual of the public execution gives way to this serious theater(113). In the model of modern prison, punishment is seen as a technique for the coercion of individuals, training the body---not sign---by the traces left in the form of habit, in behavior.
Here lies the essential argument of this work---three mechanisms of punishment in two phases of historical development:
sovereign and his force---social body---administrative apparatus;
Mark---sign---trace
Ceremony---representation---exercise
Vanquished enemy---judicial subject---individual subjected to coercion
Tortured body---soul---body subjected to training
These three types are modalities according to which the power to punish is exercised: three technologies of power. Finally, modern prison prevails over the rest. Foucault asks, “How did the coercive, corporal, solitary, secret model of the power to punish replace the representative, scenic, signifying, public, collective model?” In other words, “Why did the physical exercise of punishment replace the social play of the signs of punishment and the prolix festival that circulated them?” Did Foucault give an answer? Does the answer lie in the third part on discipline?
At the end of the first two parts, Foucault brings up the core topic of this book---prison, and asks why it prevailed. Before directly engaging with prison, however, he inserts a whole part III on discipline. To understand this book, it is essential to understand that Part III on Discipline must be read not as parallel to Part I-II, but an a reply to them. That is to say, Part III on discipline and Part IV on Prison proper answers the questions posed in Parts I-II, on different levels.
III. Discipline
Part III starts with a definition of discipline: a “modality” of an uninterrupted, constant coercion, a system of “methods”, which made possible the meticulous control of the operations of the body. Discipline must be the major feature of modern punishment, in particular the prison. “The historical moment of discipline was when an art of body was born.(137)”
Discipline creates out of the bodies four types of individuality: cellular(by spatial distribution); organic(coding of activities), genetic(accumulation of time), combinatory(composition of forces). It draws up tables; it prescribes movements; it imposes exercises; arranges tactics. Tactics, the highest form of disciplinary practice.(167)
Chapter 2 of Part III examines the means of correct training, including hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement, and examination which combines former two techniques. Examination is at the center of the procedures that constitute the individual as effect and object of power, as effect and object of knowledge. This is a moment when “a new technology of power and a new political anatomy of the body were implemented: the transition from historico-ritual mechanisms for the formation of individuality to the scientifico-disciplinary mechanisms.”
Up to now, Foucault has examined the mechanism of modern discipline. Then Foucault continues to situate this abstract description into history, both intellectual and political. Foucault presents an understanding of history as the birth of “individuality”: “If from the early Middle Ages to the present day, the adventure is an account of individuality, the passage from the epic to the novel, from the noble deed to the secret singularity, ...it is also inscribed in the formation of a disciplinary society.” As a blueprint, Bentham’s panopticism links mechanisms of discipline and the birth of modern prison.
In Chapter 3 of a historical description, Foucault starts with a scene of plague-control in the Middle Ages. He concludes this chapter with two images of discipline: discipline blockade, enclosed institution; Panoptocism, discipline-mechanism. He generalizes on the historical development of mode of discipline, “The movement from one project to another, from a schema of exceptional discipline to one of a generalized surveillance, rests on a historical transformation: the gradual extension of the mechanisms of discipline throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries---the formation of what might be called in general the disciplinary society.” The essential feature of such a disciplinary society is a mechanism of panopticism. ---Should we consider moving this chapter to the last part to go with Prison?
Foucault continues to cite Julius who saw “as a fulfilled historical process that which Bentham had described as a technical program.” According to Julius, antiquity had been a civilization of spectacle. With spectacle, there was a predominance of public life, the intensity of festivals, sensual proximity. The modern age poses the opposite problem: the principal elements are no longer the community and public life, but on the one hand, private individuals, and on the other, the state. Foucault further points out that the Napoleonic period is at the point of junction from the monarchical, ritual exercise of sovereignty to the hierarchical, permanent exercise of indefinite discipline.
In one word, “our society is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance.”
IV. Prison
Finally Foucault comes to prison, leaving the reader too exhausted to read carefully. But we may simply glimpse through this part to see how modern prison exemplifies the realizes the power mechanisms Foucault has described before.
V. Conclusion
All in all, Foucault is studying the prison as a modern form of punishment, behind which he explores the birth of panopticism as the modern type of power mechanism. With this transformation accompanied the transformation from sovereignty to society, from community to individuals, from historico-ritual mechanisms for the formation of individuality to the scientifico-disciplinary mechanisms, in sum, from a society of spectacle to one of discipline. “Punish” refers to social institutions; “discipline” refers to power mechanisms. The factor that links institution, mechanism and humans is the “body”. Once the object of physical punishment, it later gave way to the soul, but finally comes back to be the basis for the production of the individual and its knowledge, and to be the nexus of power mechanisms. Thus, power, knowledge, body, history.
Two theme loom as implicit backgrounds Foucault argues against. The first is his challenge to the traditional understanding of society, as I wrote in the beginning. A second one is the challenge against the myth of “ideology.” He calls for abandoning the violence-ideology opposition, or the model of contract/conquest. Power is everywhere, not only in violence, but also the more “human” way of punishment. Wherever there is knowledge, there is power; vice versa. I’m not sure though, how Foucault makes the jump from discussion of punishment to a discussion of “knowledge” in general. For example, how should we read his discussion of knowledge here with that in The Archaeology of Knowledge?
Knowledge-power might serve as a path toward an understanding of early and late Foucault.
VI. Connections
Through my reading of his work, many topics jump out to offer connections with other sociologists. In very simple words, Foucault criticizes Durkheim for merely studying “general social forms.” Weber explains how society comes into being when individuals assemble at a [religious] sign. Foucault might see such a theory as same to the social-contract model. If I’m not convinced by Durkheim, neither am I by Foucault’s use of “discipline” of the “body” as a pivotal concept. Anyway, why body, and what does Foucault mean by “body”? The physical body? How does he place this concept in the philosophical history upon body/soul/person/individual?
Durkheim starts his discussion of social solidarity with law---punitive and restitutive. Law and morality are two main ways to produce social solidarity. To Foucault, however, law, accompanied with punishment, is but the mechanism of power relations.
Accordingly, when Durkheim sees hope of liberation of individual personality with modern division of labor, Foucault only sees individuals produced in chains and cages.
Foucault cites Marx when talking about the composition of forces in discipline, which can be neglected.
At one point Foucault talks about “exhaustive use of time” as a way of discipline. He sees time as “counted by God and paid for by men”, and sees waste of time as “moral offense and economic dishonesty.” This might lead us to Weber’s discussion of the protestant asceticism. While Weber sees God in the ethics of modern working, Foucault sees only power.
VII. Questions
1. What is the relation between punishment and discipline? Foucault generalizes three types of punishment, but discipline seems to belong only to the third one of prison. What, then, would he call the plague-control system in the Middle Ages?
2. What can we make of the second type of punishment which is based on codes, representation and theater? Foucault mentions theater in panopticism. In other words, how would Foucault understand the role of media and symbolic discourses in punish and discipline?
3. How to understand the relation between punishment, discipline and modernity?
?。O(jiān)獄出現(xiàn)之前 - 以懲罰為主的的司法制度史
??抡f之前人們通常研究的是法律的歷史(history of law),而不是像他研究司法制度的歷史(history of judicial system)?!兑?guī)訓與懲罰》的前半部分,也就是第一章和第二章,講述的是監(jiān)獄出現(xiàn)之前法國乃至歐洲的司法制度歷史,重點在“規(guī)訓和懲罰”的“懲罰”上。其中涉及到法學和倫理學的一些概念邏輯,以及十八世紀法國社會經濟的一些變化。這對說明監(jiān)獄的出現(xiàn)的在司法史上的“斷裂”性質和厘清權力的在現(xiàn)代新的運作方式的歷史背景都是必要的。這里簡單說明一下??玛U述的幾個重點。它們和本書的主題,權力,也許沒有直接的關系,但被我作為邏輯的完整性保留下來。
“The eighteenth century invented, so to speak, a synaptic regime of power, a regime of its exercise within the social body, rather than from above it.” 39 Surveillance是隨著現(xiàn)代化出現(xiàn)的一項發(fā)明。當這項發(fā)明被應用在刑罰中時,君主的暴力消失了,司法懲戒的宗旨被毫無懸念的放棄了。因為“it was more efficient and profitable in terms of the economy of power to place people under surveillance than to subject then to some exemplary penalty.” 38 至此,??禄苏鞍氡緯亯|提出的問題算是有了答案:監(jiān)獄的誕生是隨著現(xiàn)代surveillance技術的發(fā)明而發(fā)生的。
回到回歸宏觀的問題上來,??略诔晒o出了監(jiān)獄誕生這一司法歷史的意外轉折的解釋后,有意避免特指任何利益集團或階級作為這一變化的策劃者和受害者。但從他對十八世紀犯罪情況的描述中,不難看出他暗指新的監(jiān)獄制度針對的是流浪漢、乞丐等城市貧民。而在很多別的場合,尤其是68年五月風暴后他和法國毛澤東主義者對話的記錄中,??旅鞔_指認資產階級(bourgeoisie)和無產階級(proletarian)作為18世紀末19世紀初新的權力關系的主客體?!癟o make the proletariat see the non-proletarianised people as marginal, dangerous, immoral, a menace to society as a whole, the dregs of the population, trash, the 'mob'. For the bourgeoisie it is a matter of imposing on the proletariat, by means of penal legislation, of prisons, but also of newspapers, of 'literature', certain allegedly universal moral categories which functions as an ideological barrier between them and the non-proletarianised people.” 15 這里,流動勞動力,包括無產階級的不安定分子和離開農村的農民,都是資產階級新的權力機制規(guī)訓的主要對象。資產階級要通過監(jiān)獄這個組織,輔以別的宣傳和意識形態(tài)工具,把他們(流動勞動力)由無產階級革命的領導者,離間為無產階級主體的敵人。我們后邊會談到,福柯在本書的最后一章對此有精彩的闡述。
總之,福柯的權力-肉體二元結構是他獨特的微觀-宏觀的結合機制。權力的作用是毛細的(capilary)、微觀的,權力關系“不是固定在國家與公民的關系中,也不是固定在階級分野處” 29 而肉體卻是可以在宏觀層面觀察的,權力的作用結果也同樣如此,雖然“the bourgeoisie is blind to the basic relations and real processes”。
監(jiān)獄:過濾社會不安定分子的安全閥
??聦ΡO(jiān)獄在當代社會中的運作機制有及其精辟的解讀。監(jiān)獄不是用來消滅犯罪,而是吸收犯罪,并將其轉化為控制社會的有效手段。它像是社會的一個排毒器官,進去的是與社會系統(tǒng)不相容的因子(“spearhead of popular rebellion”16),出來的則都是過失犯。這些過失犯被貼上標簽,再也不可能回歸普通人影響大眾興風作浪、反對社會機器,而成了人民公敵。Johny Depp飾演的“public enemy”[]的反叛的英雄時代一去不復返了,所剩下的全是小偷、毒販子、皮條客這樣的小人物。他們和警察狼狽為奸,共同扮演著社會的陰暗面,為司法暴力和當局侵犯人權的監(jiān)視正名。??伦约旱囊欢卧捵钅苷f明這一精巧的設計:”At the end of the eighteenth century, people dreamed of a society without crime. And then the dream evaporated. Crime was too useful for them to dream of anything as crazy – or ultimately as dangerous – as a society without crime. No crime means no police. What makes the presence and control of the police tolerable for the population, if not fear of the criminal? This institution of the police, which is so recent and so oppressive, is only justified by that fea. If e accept the presence in our midst of these uniformed men, who have the exclusive right to carry arms, who demand our papers, who come and prowl on our doorsteps, how would any of this be possible if there were no criminals? And if there weren’t articles every day in the newspapers telling us how numerous and dangerous our criminals are?” 47 參照911之后布什政府已反恐怖為借口的非法審判和竊聽等種種違憲行為,在七十年代的和平時期就警惕我們珍貴的自由人權被偷偷侵犯的??戮透@得像一個自由斗士和革命先知了。
福柯的理想國是什么樣的?在《規(guī)訓與懲罰》中,??虏]有給出答案。似乎離理想最接近的,是前半本書里法國改革法學家們的“懲罰之城”?!兑?guī)訓與懲罰》成書與1975年,在更早的七十年代初,當整個歐洲都在激烈的討論著中國的文化大革命時,??乱苍鳛樗痉v史的專家對人民法庭 (people's court)在中國的出現(xiàn)和在法國的有可能的應用提出評論和意見。??聢詻Q反對任何形式的法庭在階級斗爭中被中心利用:“…I'm not so sure that afterwards it will be so absolutely necessary for there to be a state judicial apparatus in order for the people to perform acts of justice. The danger is that a state judicial apparatus would take over acts of popular justice.”32 那時他似乎暗示一個更激進的司法公正的形式,那就是回到舊君主時代的最簡單的仲裁機構(court of arbitration)。這個仲裁機構沒有武力執(zhí)行的能力,甚至沒有意識形態(tài)的權威性來組構法庭,只有一定的調查和澄清真相的能力?!啊?it seems to me that a certain number of habits which derive from the private war, a certain number of ancient rites which were features of 'prejudicial' justice‘, have been preserved in the practices of popular justice…”6 沒有任何的強制執(zhí)行能力,??滤f的這種公正機構在工廠暴動和土地改革中的規(guī)范和教育作用顯得格外的不切實際,而在革命之后的執(zhí)政階段就簡直近似與無政府主義。可以說,只破不立是??铝钊艘苫髤s又一直堅持的一個原則。
facebook belong to the mass communication which have nothing to do with panoptcism, more like omnipticon your idea stay at a enclosed discipline of panoptcism , try think about the extendible one, the discipline is everywhere, the language, the way we write, the form and the operation of the social structure...everything, is in the discipline, cause the purpose of efficiency and accuracy.