Foucault argues that “in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality” (216). He, then, explains how he understands discourse as being controlled. First, we have principles of exclusion: (1) what is prohibited, which determines what we can say as well as when, where, and who can say it; (2) division between reason and folly, which determines what counts as common discourse; and (3) division between true and false, which determines what counts as true discourse and links to what counts as knowledge. “[T]his will to truth, like the other systems of exclusion, relies on institutional support: it is both reinforced and accompanied by whole strata of practices such as pedagogy” (219). There are also internal rules, or “rules concerned with the principles of classification, ordering and distribution” (220): (1) commentary, which reiterates, expounds, and critiques primarily (finalized) texts; (2) “the author as the unifying principle in a particular group of writings or statements, lying at the origins of their significance, as the seat of their coherence” (221); and (3) a discipline, which is “defined by groups of objects, methods, their corpus of propositions considered to be true, the interplay of rules and definitions, of techniques and tools” (222). Finally, there are “rules serving to control discourse...[or] the conditions under which it may be employed” (224): (1) ritual, which “defines the qualifications required of the speaker...; it lays down gestures to be made, behaviour, circumstances and the whole range of signs that must accompany discourse; finally, it lays down the supposed, or imposed significance to the words used” (225); (2) “fellowship of discourse, whose function is to preserve or to reproduce discourse, but in order that it should circulate within a closed community, according to strict regulations, without those in possession being dispossessed by the very distribution” (225); (3) doctrine, whose numbers are not limited like they are in fellowship; and (4) the social appropriation of discourse as “every education system is political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it” (227).
0 Comments
Foucault discusses how discipline makes docile bodies; this discipline exists in institutions ranging from the military to schools. Docility “joins the analysable body to the manipulatable body. A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved” (136). Docility increases the aptitude of the body while simultaneously increasing the domination over the body (138). The discipline associates the body with four characteristics: “it is cellular (by the play of spatial distribution), it is organic (by the coding of activities), it is genetic (by the accumulation of times), it is combinatory (by the composition of forces)” (167). Discipline encloses and partition bodies; typically, the space is “divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed” (143). Each individualized space becomes functional as each body is given a specific task, and this means the body is easily supervised and assessed. This also means that each body is interchangeable within the space/task (i.e. the specific body is unimportant). Discipline assigns the body to complete specific actions at specific times (each action takes precisely a given amount of time), meaning that gestures are used to their utmost efficiency. The day, then, is broken into specific segments of time (down to the minute or second) and each segment is given an action to be completed. In terms of education, discipline ranks bodies, deciding the kinds of knowledge that it has and places the body in a particular rank. Each chunk of knowledge is set linearly, and bodies progress through the chunks, given examinations at the completion of each chunk. Finally, each body must know its command given only a signal: “This carefully measured combination of forces requires a precise system of command. All the activity of the disciplined individual must be punctuated and sustained by injunctions whose efficacy rests on brevity and clarity; the order does not need to be explained or formulated; it must trigger off the required behaviour and that is enough” (166).
Education moved from master/apprentice to “a learning machine, but also a machine for supervising, hierarchizing, rewarding” (147). Foucault argues, "Discipline may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising the whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, target." In this piece, Foucault discusses the discipline of the panopticon. The panopticon works in all institutions, such as prison, madhouse and school building. It is "a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men." In the panopticon, each watched actor is separated from others: "The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately." He is able to be seen but cannot see those who watch him. This means that the watched actor will discipline himself because he is always under the threat of being watched (whether he actually is at that exact moment or not). This also means that "it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour." The observer is implicated in this surveillance too because he can be observed along with his operation.
More, the mechanism "automatizes and disindividualizes power. Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes...Consequently, it matters not who exercises power...Similarly, it does not matter what motive animates him." This method of discipline optimizes its effects while minimizing costs. |
Tags
All
|