Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

by Michel Foucault, Alan Sheridan (Translator)

Librarian note: alternate-cover edition of 9780679752554.

Barely two hundred and fifty years ago man condemned of attempting to assassinate the King of France was drawn and quartered in a grisly spectacle that suggested an unmediated duel between the violence of the criminal and the violence of the state. This groundbreaking book by the most influential philosopher since Sartre compels us to reevaluate our assumptions about all the ensuing reforms in the penal institutions of the West. For as he examines innovations that range from the abolition of torture to the institution of forced labor and the appearance of the modern penitentiary, Michel Foucault suggests that punishment has shifted its locus from the prisoner's body to his soul--and that our very concern with rehabilitation encourages and refines criminal activity.

Lucidly reasoned and deftly marshaling a vast body of research, Discipline and Punish is a genuinely revolutionary book, whose implications extend beyond the prison to the minute power relations of our society.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Sociology, Psychology, Nonfiction, France, Academic

333 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas. He held a chair at the Collège de France with the title "History of Systems of Thought," but before he was Professor at University of Tunis, Tunisia, and then Professor at University Paris VIII. He lectured at several different Universities over the world as at the University at Buffalo, the University of California, Berkeley and University of São Paulo, University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. His writings on power, knowledge, and discourse have been widely influential in academic circles. In the 1960s Foucault was associated with structuralism, a movement from which he distanced himself. Foucault also rejected the poststructuralist and postmodernist labels later attributed to him, preferring to classify his thought as a critical history of modernity rooted in Immanuel Kant. Foucault's project was particularly influenced by Nietzsche, his "genealogy of knowledge" being a direct allusion to Nietzsche's "genealogy of morality". In a late interview he definitively stated: "I am a Nietzschean."

Foucault was listed as the most cited scholar in the humanities in 2007 by the ISI Web of Science.

Reviews

[Ahmad Sharabiani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison = Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a 1975 book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France.

Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists.

He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Prison used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و ششم ماه آگوست سال 1999میلادی

عنوان: مراقبت و تنبیه: تولد زندان؛ اثر: میشل فوکو؛ ترحمه: نیکو سرخوش؛ افشین جهاندیده؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، نشر نی، سال1378، در391ص، مصور، شابک9789643124328؛ چاپ دوم سال1378، چاپ چهارم سال1382، چاپ ششم سال1385، چاپ هشتم سال1388، چاپ یازدهم سال1392؛ کتابنامه به صورت زیرنویس، نمایه دارد، موضوع زندان، انضباط، ثواب و عقاب از نویسندگان فرانسه - سده 20م

با عنوان فرعی: «زایش زندان»، عنوان کتابی از «میشل فوکو» فیلسوف فرانسوی است، «فوکو» در سالهای1972میلادی و1973میلادی، سخنرانی‌هایی در «فرانسه»، و «برزیل»، شامل «بررسی جامعهٔ جزایی و قدرت قضایی» انجام دادند؛ همان پژوهش در سال1975میلادی به انتشار کتاب «مراقبت و تنبیه: زایش زندان» انجامید؛

در این کتاب، «فوکو» دودمان شکل گیری کالبد و ذهن را، در چارچوب نظام‌های مراقبتی، و انضباطی قدرت، مورد پژوهش قرار می‌دهند، و مدعی هستند، که در نهادهایی همچون «مدارس»، «زندانها»، «بیمارستان‌ها»، و «کارگاه‌ها»، تکنیک‌های انضباطی ویژه، به کار می‌رود، و در چهارچوب آنها، مقررات حاکم بر رفتار، و سلوک، اقدامات مراقبتی، و شیوه‌ های نظارت بر آنها تدوین، و به اجرا درمی‌آید؛

زندگی «دانش آموزان»، «سربازان»، «بیماران»، و «زندانیان»، در معرض مراقبت و نظارت، و تهیه ی گزارش قرار می‌گیرد، و رفتار بهنجار مورد تشویق، و رفتار نامطلوب، با اقدامات تنبیهی، مواجه می‌شوند؛ هدف غایی مراقبت و نظارت و انضباط، بهنجار نمودن فرد، و از میان بردن ��ی انضباطی‌های اجتماعی، و روانی، و سرانجام تربیت انسان‌هایی مطیع، و سودآور، برای جامعه‌ است؛

فوکو می‌گویند: (در شیوه‌ های مراقبتی، و کیفری ماقبل مدرن، روش‌های وحشیانه شکنجه، و آزار بدنی، به کار می‌رفت؛ اما به تدریج از سده ی هیجدهم میلادی به بعد، مجازات‌های بدنی، جای خود را، به مجازات‌های ظریف روانی داد؛ از آن تاریخ مجازات‌های جدید، روح را آماج یورش خود قرار داد، مجموعه ی کیفرشناسی جدید، به سوی مراقبت فراگیر، بازگردانده شد؛ از آن تاریخ به بعد، زندان‌ها، مدارس، و آسایشگاه‌ های روانی، به منظومه‌ هایی از نظارت فراگیر، تبدیل شدند، که فرد را، در معرض مراقبت دائمی، و بدون وقفه، قرار می‌داد، و به تهیه پرونده، و گزارش‌هایی تفصیلی، از رفتار فرد، و تدوین شناخت شناسانه از آن داده‌ ها، یاری می‌رساند)؛ پایان نقل

در این منظومه که «فوکو» آنرا «میکروسکوپ قدرت» می‌نامند، گفتمان علمی، اجتماعی، و کیفیات سیاسی قدرت، و ذهنیت فردی، با هم تلاقی می‌کنند، و به صورتی ظریف، و پیچیده، بر یکدیگر تأثیر می‌گذارند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 15/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 09/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book begins with a bang – in fact, a series of bangs. That is the point, you see. We need to be shocked about what is, after all, our relatively recent past. We too easily forget that there was a time when ‘people like us’ actually span back in history for nearly as far as the mind could imagine. Now, we struggle to believe that people who lived 20 or 30 years ago where quite like us – even when we ourselves were those people. Today we cast off selves and disown past selves like our endlessly cheap clothes – cheaper to buy than to wash, as someone pointed out recently – or like snakes and their skins, cicadas and their chrysalises. For, as Foucault points out here, the point of history isn’t for us to understand the past – that is dead and gone and has only the meaning we can give it from our vantage point – the point of history is to provide the narrative that helps us to understand the present.

I want to start with one of the quotes that go off with a bang at the start of this book – that shock us by how distant our world seems moved from that of a few hundred years ago:

“…in 1584 the assassin of William of Orange was abandoned to what seems like an infinity of vengeance. 'On the first day, he was taken to the square where he found a cauldron of boiling water, in which was submerged the arm with which he had committed the crime. The next day the arm was cut off, and, since it fell at his feet, he was constantly kicking it up and down the scaffold; on the third day, red-hot pincers were applied to his breasts and the front of his arm; on the fourth day, the pincers were applied similarly on the back of his arm and on his buttocks; and thus, consecutively, this man was tortured for eighteen days.' On the last day, he was put to the wheel and 'mailloté' [beaten with a wooden club]. After six hours, he was still asking for water, which was not given him. 'Finally the police magistrate was begged to put an end to him by strangling, so that his soul should not despair and be lost'.”

The spectacle of eighteen days of public torture seems extraordinary to us. Perhaps what is most shocking is the level of vengeance that is taken on the body of the guilty man. A transgression of the law – and the law at the time was represented in the body and in the will of the king – was equally revenged on the body of the transgressor.

The problem was that this expression of state power was far too often arbitrary and grossly overwrought. As in the example above, the vengeance of the state seems to know no bounds. However, and I guess ironically too, the state (king) was also able to pardon – that is, reserved the right to decide when and how the law might be applied – and this arbitrary law effectively undermined the state’s own moral authority.

We like to see our world as one on a kind of slow incline towards progress. And, let’s face it, it would be hard to read the description above and not think that from that particular south pole of inhumanity no matter which way we might have gone would have probably been ‘up’.

Our particular path up from that nadir was to decided that it was unreasonable to punish people’s bodies, that what we needed was to punish (or correct, rather) their souls. Now, this is only partly true, for as Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prove, we still like to get off on torture. All the same, there was a clear shift in policy away from torture of bodies towards using punishment as means of making an example of the criminal and also perhaps being able to reform them. The focus shifted to the souls of the wrong doers – but also on the social consequences of their crimes. It wasn’t any longer a matter of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, instead you might get punished more for a crime that might hardly harm any one single person, but have large social consequences. Punishments were increasingly seen as ways of improving both the individual and society – and therefore punishments tended to need to be seen as being ‘just’ – rather than an arbitrary expression of the will of the ruler. That is, punishments could no longer be ‘excessive’ in the way they had been before. They had to ‘match’ the crime. The punishment had to make risking doing the crime simply not worth it. The punishment also had to encourage the criminal to live a good life, that is, the punishment ought to make the crime abhorrent to the criminal.

That is, punishment needed a pedagogical function – it needs to teach the criminal the ‘right way’ to live one’s life. I couldn’t help, throughout this book, thinking of ‘re-education camps’ and how we imagine changing a label from re-education to rehabilitation can allow us believe what we do is so much better than what those nasty communists did. To understand how to be good requires a particular kind of knowledge. Knowledge, then, is a direct consequence of power, of state power – and true knowledge is aligned with the exercise of power. Ok, that might sound like rubbish – but I think it is a remarkably interesting point. To punish someone now means two things, you have some idea of what is the right way to live a life and that if you inflict a certain punishment on a person that punishment will thereby make them a better person. Ever since Socrates the idea has been that if someone understands ‘the good’ then they must also act in accordance with that knowledge. Well, if people are acting in ways that are not in accordance with the laws (and the laws are, naturally enough, to those who make them, completely rational and totally in accordance with ‘the good’) then the role of punishment isn’t so much to get revenge on those who break the laws, but rather, to help them to better understand the good – that is, to help them to become rational agents in society. Punishment is about re-educating those who transgress society’s laws because only those without reason would ever break these laws. Knowledge and Law and therefore also Power are all instances of the same thing.

There is a wonderful bit in Stephen Fry’s Moab is My Washpot where he says that having been at an English Public School meant that he had much less difficulty adjusting to prison life than other people. That a boarding school was run in much the same way that a prison is run and so it all seemed quite normal to him. This is Foucault’s point exactly, I think.

I need to talk about how you change people’s souls now – and therefore I need to talk about Foucault’s most fascinating metaphor – that of Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon was designed to be an ‘ideal prison’ – and it was literally ideal, never actually having been built. The point is that the ‘ideal’ often helps explain the actual world. It is probably easier if you just Google Panopticon – but the basic idea is to build a prison in which all of the cells are in the circumference of a circular building while at the centre of the circular prison there is a tower. Inside the tower is a guard (or citizens who have dropped by to see that the prisoners are reforming). The cells on the circumference of the circular building all have two windows – one facing into the centre of the building and the other on the opposite wall looking out. The second window looking out provides light into the cell – the window facing the tower means that the prisoner can be watched at any time of the day or night by the guard. The whole thing is designed so that the prisoner just doesn't know if or when the guard is watching – but the prisoner does know that there is no time when the guard will definitely not be watching. It is all a bit like God – constantly watching to constantly provide you with a conscience (or what is the next best thing to a conscience, as you act as if you are doing right for its own sake, even though you are doing right just in case you get caught doing wrong).

There was also the problem of having lots of criminals in one place that needed to be addressed so as to stop that one place becoming a university of criminality. So, prisoners were not allowed to talk to one another. And they were kept in isolation for long periods of time. All the better to allow the voice of the prisoner’s conscience to work on them and thereby to help teach them right from wrong.

The secret to right moral action, then, is more than just the relationship between knowledge and power – but also of proper surveillance. And surveillance now dominates our lives. And not just the cameras that are everywhere filming our every movement. But also in our obsession with tests in schools and performance reviews at work. To Foucault, the panopticon was not just a model for the ideal prison, but also for the ideal hospital, factory and school. He points out that this surveillance has meant turning our lives into texts. There was a time when only the heroes of our world had books written about them - today we are our high school report cards, our credit ratings, our performance review results, our medical history cards.

One of the things Foucault does that I find utterly fascinating is to look at the etymology of words and to show how earlier meanings hang around the word’s usage today like ghosts. In this book he points out that the word discipline has always had the dual meaning it has today – a discipline as an area of study and discipline as in being forced to behave correctly. This seems terribly important to me.

Like in Orwell’s 1984 – the terrifying vision here is that power always acts in ways that are essentially inhuman. I’m certainly not advocating going back to a time when killing a king might involve you in 18 days of unspeakable torture – but then, one has only to read The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism to know we use torture today in ways that would make O’Brien blush with pride. We are shocked when we learn of the surveillance used by the Stasi – and rightly so – but we actively sign up so that international corporations can monitor every single item we purchase so as to better sell to us because they might agree to giving us a free chocolate bar every year or so. But then, what is the point of freedom and privacy if you can’t trade it for some chocolate?

This is a very disturbing book – it is also a must read.

[David Withun · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew nothing of the work of Michel Foucault. So What prompted me to choose this book? Perhaps, it seems to me, the fact that Michel Foucault was one of the great French intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century and that he was a reference for many thinkers and philosophers.
It is, therefore, a novice criticism without any pretension. Still, it is undoubtedly good, sometimes, to have a look free from any erudition on works so much into praised and commented.
I understood why Michel Foucault had acquired this fame from the first chapters. The divination of his analysis and the originality of his observations can only leave you speechless. It is a highly documented work. The author has conducted exhaustive research to include/understand the penitentiary system's current problems (in 1970). This genuine work as a historian led him to broaden his field of analysis to the organizational practices of our societies with the appearance, in the 16th century, of disciplinary structures inherited from monastic rules. These explain the gradual shift from justice as an authority's expression and power of a sovereign to a judge of control of normality.
Indeed, the prison is, according to Michel Foucault, only the tree that hides the forest. Suppose these elementary principles: panoptic control (seeing without being seen) and disciplinary rules of life, have never been called into question despite the perpetual failures of the system (crimes and misdemeanors have never diminished). In that case, these principles also apply to the control of populations by our political system. Disciplinary recurrence proves Foucault correct: in schools, in barracks, in hospitals, and in the world of work, everything is subject to discipline. We categorize, separate, and divide in time and space to normalize and subjugate to better control.
These reflections echo in 2008 with the current questions of generalized computer filing, the development of video surveillance, and the lowering of the age of penalization to twelve years! This dramatic underlining, if not that of putting even more people into the circuit of delinquency, that of the most exposed classes, the unprotected classes, the poorest classes, this accentuation would have, at least in no doubt, made Michel Foucault react.
How is it proper not to protest when politicians stigmatize petty criminals, responsible, according to them, for all the evils of our daily lives? While the kings of finance live far from the cameras, sheltered from all suspicion, peacefully continuing to disregard the laws that guarantee our living together.
Here then! I understand why I wanted to read this introductory essay suddenly.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise.”
― Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish



I've had this book for nearly twenty years on myself. Before a couple weeks ago I never quite found myself in the "right" mood for a French post-structural look at power, prisons, and punishment. It is interesting reading this and thinking about how influential Foucault was in the modern criticisms of the penal system, and various areas of control (schools, hospitals, psychiatric facilities, the military and prisons).

I didn't realize until I read the prologue that the "Disciple" part of the title was originally Surveiller (Watch) et punir (Punish). It made sense back in the day to use discipline, but given the giant NSA observation issues, I kinda hope they consider changing the title at some point back to some variant of watch. That was a surprise part of the book that isn't communicated by discipline, and a part that is VERY relevant to the world we exist in.

Anyway, I could probably come up with some high-falutin reason to like or not like this book, but honestly, I kinda liked it, just not enough to put forward HUGE efforts of defense or evangelism. There were some of the obvious issues with a lot of postmodern historical books (big ideas, radical ways to look at things), but the damn flag is pretty high and pretty big and the pole is thin and isn't buried very deep. But God love Foucault and his big poles.

So, I still want to read his sexy books, his book on madness, and his book on the clinic, so I guess that makes this a four-star book. I don't want to read all of his stuff tomorrow, but I want to read more... but later, when nobody's watching.

[Fergus, Quondam Happy Face · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the to-die-for cornucopia of the absolute-zero straight goods on how Society has morphed (in my and Foucault’s own lifetime) into a Prison. It is ALL due that meddling 18th Century Utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham.

Now. Jerry B. wanted to misguidedly make the world into Best of All Possible Worlds for the majority of people - read the people that matter - the Movers and the Shakers. Some animals are just more equal than others.

Now, these head honchos’ dream world is one that’s orderly.

So suddenly it was so - on the outside. Inside, we all live on incredibly sharp tenterhooks. And they’ve Zapped our Little Brains. Want FRIES with that, fellas?

Foucault has Aced Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon, AKA electronic wizardry compiling its records: Everything You Ever Wanted to know About Anyone. Gotta keep your heads on tight.

So now, it’s ALWAYS time for the big Panopticon’s next big move. No matter how they slice and dice you, what they get is ALWAYS Juicy. We’re dead to rights. Good night and sleep tight…

Like the sound of this? If your head isn’t screwed on tight (like me) you’ll love it.

For this is the true, unexpurgated Story of Modern Times.

Five totally zapped stars, guys!

This is the Straight Goods.

[Abubakar Mehdi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foucault begins this book by recounting the fate of a man called Damien the regicide, who attempted to assassinate King Louis XV of France in 1757. He was publicly tortured for hours, beaten, stabbed and crushed only to be quartered by horses at last. Foucault says that Public executions and scenes like this were common and happened every once in a while for those who were accused of heinous crimes. This practice, perfectly inhuman and brutish, was officially sanctioned just two centuries ago. Criminals were subjected to torture, flogging, beating, humiliation and beheading in public. But the most surprising thing is that all this ended rather suddenly in the 19th century, which is when the modern prison system was born.

Foucault is meticulous. He inspects each and everything from philosophical and psychological point of view; He disrobes the myth and romance of history only to show us a picture that is as real as it is shocking. For the most part of reading it, I was not entirely sure what Foucault was coming at, he dropped hints here and there but more importantly, he intends to enable us to see for ourselves. All his works are an attempt to understand the relation between power, culture and the individual.

Modern prison is the model for control of an entire society. What happens behind the prison walls becomes so distant for the ones outside it, that they have no empathy for the man who suffers in solitary confinement or sleeps on cold prison floors. His sufferings become none of our concern. There is a ‘dehumanizing’ effect that the modern prison has on the criminal, an effect that expels any chance of sympathy or pity for the prisoner. He fades rather quickly in society’s collective memory. Such was not the case, Foucault says, back when men were tortured in streets and executed brutally.

Power now looks kind, but isn’t. In past it wasn’t kind and therefore it could encourage open rebellion. So Prison system, doesn’t only takes away the spectacle of torture and murder from the streets, it crushes dissent and shackles the conscience of the society.

There is much more to this book than I could possibly explain here. Taught and recommended in universities around the world, this book is a timeless classic. Since it is not an easy book to read, I’d recommend that the new reader starts slowly and take it chapter by chapter. You can agree with his thesis or you could disagree, but there no doubt that Foucault was a genius.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

NEW REVIEW [it took more than a few days to get back to this -- I hope someone reads it... lol]

I will add only a few additional comments to what I’ve already written (below and in the comments sections). It will be enough and more than enough.

I came at this book with decades of prejudice built-up – and it showed in my (essentially failed) reading of Madness and Civilization. I knew that Foucault was a fake and a charlatan before I ever cracked a page. So to speak…

So one can imagine my surprise at discovering that he was, in fact, a philosophical genius of sorts, and that this book – though difficult, slow, craggy, like “cracking nuts”, paragraph by paragraph, was full of insight and sense and interest. To all those who are skeptical of opening up a front here, and it is a time consuming front…, I have to say that “I, too, am a recovering Foucault-hater.”

That does not mean that I am persuaded.

(1) To echo Habermas’ complaint, Foucault (like many of the postmodernists) equivocates between irony or literature and serious work – and he does not always know the difference himself. His verbal cleverness, the frequent use of reversals and antitheses, isocola, polarities, etc…, often reveal NOT the underlying truth, but an addiction to illusion and pretense. It is rhetorical

… none of which takes away from the sheer surface brilliance of this book.

-- and as a reader of Plato’s Theaetetus and Sophist, I *fully* understand the philosophical and metaphysical implications of ‘the rhetorical’ – in fact, I teach a course on this topic.

(2) Worse, Foucault equivocates repeatedly on this question that “Nathan” and I were discussing regarding the law of contradiction. Taking pages out of the Philebus of Plato, Foucault loves to talk about the minute parts, exhaustive, continuous, almost infinite divisions and partitions into which his moral continua (and the physical continua, like body, as well) can be partitioned, divided, apportioned, etc. – without ever coming out and saying whether or not the division is infinite or not. That “almost” is an equivocation of huge proportions, and it is deceitful. One must take a stand.

(3) Again, much rests in Foucault on his claims about “power-knowledge”. But what actually happens (in this book, at least) is that Foucault suggests the notion that knowledge is a function of power – and then seeks to ground this notion with an utterly fraudulent move (see my commentary below on induction) – and then operates from here on out as if his principal point had been established. Since very few people will have the time or patience to track the beast (the fallacy) to its lair – he pulls it off and persuades. But moves of this sort are (by definition) sophistical. And I have unmasked him.


(At least so far… I now have a copy of Power & Knowledge, the interviews, and will be interested to see if there is a better justification put forth there – though I am skeptical that I will find it.)

These are decisive objections.

And yet none of them matter…

Let me explain:

If Foucault relied on historical data QUA historical data, then his project would have been an utter failure. But my contention is that he uses ‘historical data’ as myth – like Rousseau’s story of le bon sauvage in the Second Discourse – like the story line in a Utopia or, in Foucault’s case, in a ‘fictionalized’ dystopia. It does not matter whether the history is true or not. Even when he relies on real facts, they are ‘falsified’ in their proportionality. Minor figures are treated as “turning points of great moment”, incidents that no one would remember (and quite rightly) are treated as “symbols” of deeper truths (a use, or rather, an abuse of history that goes back to Dilthey, I believe)… all these are clues, in my opinion, that Foucault did not intend us (or at least, in his more lucid moments would not have intended us) to take his history as ‘historical’ – it is simply the plot he weaves, a pseudo-history (made up of bits and pieces of the Real, perhaps…, but nonetheless….), that forms the warp and matrix of a philosophical nightmare that he is seeing beneath the pattern of modernity… and it is a nightmare that is anything but fictional… Indeed, the events of the past 15 years, the advent of the ‘national security state’, the ‘surveillance state’, the increasing, encroaching normalization of the Schmittian “State of Exception’ – the Society of the Spectacle – not only under Bush, but now continuing under a “Liberal” Presidency, all show that Foucault was prescient.

Thus, those historians who criticize him for being ahistorical are missing the point entirely.

Now of course, it was Foucault’s obligation to indicate clearly to the reader that his account is only ‘history as such…’, and I do not believe (though I could be wrong) that he does so. Maybe the postmodernist in him thinks irony is the default position, and that he doesn’t have to say anything…, or maybe he was not quite sure himself… but that is, in the final analysis, a relatively minor criticism…

(*Just as an aside, I believe that I can prove that Rousseau has given his readers a massive hint that his account of the noble savage in the Second Discourse is, indeed, a myth (and not to be taken as history) – a topic which is controversial in the literature on Rousseau – and that he adopts this method from Plato. I thought once I would publish a paper on this, but as Rousseau is outside my field, and I would have had to read and master a bibliography outside my area of knowledge, I never did.)




PREVIOUS COMMENTS:
I must pause here and add what I believe might be a comment of some significance – for I have found (I believe) a major flaw in MF’s thinking.

I no longer think it is just to criticize Foucault for a lack of historical accuracy – for I do not think that he intends his work to be taken as “historical”, despite appearances. I will develop this idea at greater length when I have finished the book. But I need first to take up an issue that I had raised in the comment section several weeks ago – and which concerns Foucault’s famous thesis about Power and Knowledge.

In my opening “comment”, I showed that Foucault had misinterpreted (pp. 41f.) the ancient notion of the “ordeal”, which he takes as “creating” truth, rather than simply “reflecting” it. He simply doesn’t know his history well enough, and his position is foolish.

Now, in the chapter on “Panopticism” (225ff.), he argues that the empirical sciences were born, in the later Middle Ages, out of the politico-juridico processes of investigation exemplified by the Inquisition. These “investigative techniques” were actually developed, he says, in the 12th-13th centuries as a method for establishing “truth”, and thus replacing the older method of “creating” truth through the “joust” or the “ordeal”.

This is absurd. The empirical sciences were born out of the development of the theory and practice of induction
(See A.C. Crombie, though I can supply a wealth of material on this: http://www.amazon.com/History-Science...),
which went back to the time of Roger Bacon, who got it (via the Arabs) from the Greek Commentary tradition -- that is, from the C.A.G.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commenta...

which developed these ideas in the context of Aristotle’s distinction between analysis and synthesis in geometry. The idea of analysis (which is clearly explained at the very beginning of Aristotle’s Physics I, however, was derived from the Socratic dialectic (itself a development of the sophistic/rhetorical dialectic of the late 5th cen.), which is analytical (and consciously so), not synthetic.

The theory of ideas was then postulated by Plato to explain why analysis works – and does not lead to an infinite division. This is incontrovertible.

Then, to adduce Francis Bacon, as Foucault does on p. 226, is really a blunder, for Francis Bacon was actually one of the very few people who recognized that induction had its roots in the Socratic dialectic (see Novum Organon, 1.105). Foucault simply doesn’t know what he is talking about. To seek to reduce ‘analysis’ to a juridico-investigative root is simply ignorance.

But if this postulated origin falls, then so too falls his theory that knowledge is simply power.

(That said -- I am really impressed by this book -- and think it is a major work, and I'm quite embarrassed to have missed its importance all these years. Consider the above a small attempt to make amends... in my typically Socratic fashion, of course....)

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this book three times: First time was in undergraduate, second time was in law school, third time was last week. I can honestly say that my understanding of this work has grown with each reading, but that growth in comprehension has come more from my reading of other books either discussing or related to Discipline and Punish.
Specifically, I would recommend Jurgen Habermas's critique of Foucault, although I now forget which book of his contains his critique. I would also recommend Goffman's "Asylums" and Sykes "The Society of the Prison" as works which can illuminate Foucault's oft dense prose.

Foucault's main thesis is that the transistion of society into modernity has resulted in institutions which are increasingly devoted to the control of the "inmate's" time. The instituions use this control of time to develop discipline. Discipline is then used to both reinforce the strength of the instituion and also to expand the reach of institution's into the community.

As other reviewers have noted, this book isn't really about Prisons. Rather, the development of the modern prison represents the pinnacle of the relationship between power and discipline. Foucault leads up to his discussion of the prison by examining developments in other instituions: the work shop, the school and the barracks.

I really would encourage admirers of this work to read Goffman's "Asylums". The two books overlap to a considerable degree, but they both complement one another.

[Lex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book rearranged my brain. I have never read something that met my intuition half way, and then expanded my vision beyond all critical capacities I knew before. I will never conceive of power, structures, knowledge, statistics, or my cock the same way again. His anti-humanitarian, empirical, and nonuniversal critiques that follow the money and the violence are the perfect medicine for people who have been reading saggy assed media studies and cultural studies for too long. Saved my life.

[Kevin]

Under (social) construction…

Preamble:
--Forgive the pun. This review is merely a reminder for when I revisit this book, although it continues to sink under new priorities.
--I read this book early on (thank goodness in a reading group) when I had limited critical historical frameworks to reference:
i) Thus, my vague baseline was status quo, default-liberal assumptions.
ii) Thankfully, Chomsky had already flipped my 20th century upside-down from my assumptions growing up in the “War on Terror”: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance
iii) Around the time of starting Foucault, Graeber would flip over the past 5,000 years with Debt: The First 5,000 Years
--Motion sickness is to be expected given the repeated somersaults and lack of long-term structural grounding. Graeber’s great strength (sparking leaps in social imagination, see: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity) may be a bit too provocative for someone starting off with careful, step-by-step plodding.

--Afterwards, I searched for more structure:
iv) (Geo)political economy: starting with World-systems theory (World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction) and shifting more towards Global South perspective (ex. Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital). Next, Marx’s political economy with hints of historical materialism (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1) and later evolution esp. Global South (Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present) and Finance/militarism/geopolitics (The Bubble and Beyond).

Highlights:
--Looking back on this book, my perception is a sprawling mess of connections minus Graeber’s clear and engaging presentation. The historical observations provided momentary grounding (although difficult to tie everything together), where the landmarks featured further analysis in political economy: Ex. comparing the function of punishment with the different systems of production, in particular the transition to an industrial economy requiring a "free" labour market:
--This required "corrective" detention. Idleness became criminalized, as time became increasingly quantified and controlled via surveillance (supervisors, Bentham's Panopticon). A "police-prison-delinquency circuit" formed based on a controlled "delinquency" and generalized policing.
--The Panopticon's method: power should be visible but unverifiable, a mechanized surveillance system where the possibility of surveillance prompts individuals to create self-discipline, some 200 years before our modern digital mass surveillance controversies:
-Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
-This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information
-When Google Met Wikileaks
-The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
--This is where it gets Foucauldian in terms of "power", where "Panocopticism" pervades over the scientific formation of knowledge and thus power: this starts in the 18th century, first in hospitals (i.e. examinations) and then in schools, workshops, armies, etc. As I work in health information, this was my most vivid recollection of the book.
--The sprawling web of connections conflicted with what I was learning from the best of physical/natural sciences (how to deal with confirmation bias/heuristics in pattern recognition) and the blurry intersections with social sciences:
…difficulties in experimentation/methodologies:
-I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That
-Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks
…dialectics of historical materialism on idealism/materialism:
-Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
…so we can avoid biases and untangle messes of all kinds:
-ex. liberal materialism/physical sciences: How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future
-ex. liberal pop psychology/social science: Outliers: The Story of Success
-ex. vaporous critical theory: Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
-ex. undecipherable postmodern philosophy: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...

Next Encounter:
--When I revisit, my game-plan starts with: revisit critical engagements with Foucault by Graeber, as well as Marxist historical materialists especially on the topic of “primitive accumulation” (the often-censored violence to set up and perpetuate capitalism). Relevant texts include:
-Federici’s Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. (I recall there are critiques of Foucault)
-Perelman’s The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (discipline the dispossessed to form the wage labour market for capitalism)
…If you’ve already done this and can save me some time, do share :)
--Note: “primitive accumulation” is probably a misleading term as a critical concept. It comes from Adam Smith’s assumption of an idyllic “previous accumulation” where future capitalists accumulated capital through hard work. Marx critiqued this assumption at the end of Capital Volume 1, calling it “so-called primitive accumulation” and recognizing its reality as violent “expropriation”. Later Marxists emphasized the fundamental continuity (as opposed to “previous” or “original”) of this expropriation to capitalism, ex. David Harvey's “accumulation by dispossession”). Marx on “so-called primitive accumulation” [Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, Ch.26, emphases added]:

We have seen how money is transformed into capital; how surplus-value is made through capital, and how more capital is made from surplus-value. But the accumulation of capital presupposes surplus-value; surplus-value presupposes capitalist production; capitalist production presupposes the availability of considerable masses of capital and labour-power in the hands of commodity producers. The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn around in a never-ending circle, which we can only get out of by assuming a primitive accumulation (the ‘previous accumulation’ of Adam Smith) which precedes capitalist accumulation; an accumulation which is not the result of the capitalist mode of production but its point of departure.

This primitive accumulation plays approximately the same role in political economy as original sin does in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote about the past. Long, long ago there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent and above all frugal élite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort finally had nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority who, despite all their labour, have up to now nothing to sell but themselves, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly, although they have long ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property.

[Yu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is the world turning into a panopticon in which everyone of us cannot evade the gaze of whoever that is occupying the central point? I find this book to be making a powerful argument, but I do have doubts as to whether surveillance by itself (without corporal violence) could impose discipline ( in other words, whether the observed really interiorizes the system of surveillance). I also doubt as to whether the systems of micro-power really fits into a bigger top-down power hierarchy. In the example of the school for instance, I think that students have certain power over the teachers just as the teachers have over the students. I don't think power is as top-down as Foucault describes.

My favorite quote: "The ideal point of penality today would be an indefinite discipline: an interrogation without end, an investigation that would be extended without limit to a meticulous and ever more analytical observation, a judgement that would at the same time be the constitution of a file that was never closed, the calculated leniency of a penalty that would be interlaced with the ruthless curiosity of an examination."

[Carlo Mascellani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primo (e di certo non ultimo) incontro con Foucault, filosofo che ho deciso di approfondire per via dell'interesse che in me suscitano molte delle sue tematiche. In questa celebre opera Foucault esamina il passaggio dai vecchi supplizi medievali alla nascita della prigione come forma di sorveglianza e controllo. Vi si scopre il lento processo che, influenzato dalla progressiva capitalizzazione della società, ha condotto a preferire lo sviluppo del sistema carcerario come espediente per eliminare gli individui ritenuti pericolosi o, tramite mezzi coercitivi, rieducare (diciamo) alle norme sociali imposte quelli ritenuti 'recuperabili'. Viene analizzato il fallimento di tutti questi propositi ed evidenziati i reali motivi che sottendono a simili pratiche. Il discorso si allarga poi alla dinamica del controllo e della sorveglianza che la società contemporanea esercita anche sugli individui liberi per irregimentarli e renderli docili alle disposizioni emanate dal potere. Lettura obbligatoria per tutti.

[Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

In many ways a response to the French government's penal codes of the 60s and 70s but also a continuation of Foucault's work in Madness and Civilization, the influence of D&P can be seen everywhere from Spielberg's Minority Report to Enemy of the State to Ted Conover's Newjack and most if not all critiques of surveillant governments. It's also a horrifying read, starting out as it does with an account of the ritualistic execution of a regicide, which Foucault compares favorably to the prisons of the Enlightenment. The general thrust is that under the guise of humanism, Europeans decided on punishing the soul rather than the body. This they accomplished first by quite theatrically monitoring prisoners and delinquents, and eventually by having prisoners monitor themselves, saving the government all the work.

I personally don't think Discipline and Punish is the strongest of Foucault's works, though. Partly, I think he misunderstands the nature of physical violence. His strategy here and in M&C is to lay out a pretty sinister historical transition in the way states used their power, passing over counterexamples that might disprove his point (Australia, anyone?), and then allow the reader to assume that the trend he has identified continues... to this... very... moment! You're supposed to wonder, is the videocamera in my bank (*gasp*) part of the Panopticon? Have I been deprived of my free will and become a tool of the State? Harold Bloom rightly complains of Foucault that he tended to forget that the historical ironies he uncovered were just metaphors, and aren't as all-encompassing as his many followers in academe suppose. Mikey's History of Sexuality books are much more closely reasoned, or at least Introduction is and what I've read of Uses of Pleasure.

The problem is that you can carp all day about D&P but you will continue to see it everywhere, long after you've set it down. That makes it an amazing book.

[Tijana]

Ovo je bilo mnogo prijatnije iskustvo nego što sam očekivala - e, da mi je Nadzirati i kažnjavati pre iks godina bio prvi Fuko, a ne Reči i stvari, ko zna šta bi bilo.
S druge strane, drago mi je što ga čitam s malo razvijenijim kritičkim mišljenjem nego onomad sa dvaes godina :P Jer Fuko piše tako super retorički zavodljivo a usto potkovano činjenicama da mic po mic čitalac krene da prihvata i one klimavije delove njegovih teorija o zatvoru kao sistemu za (jelte) nadziranje i kažnjavanje koji u suštini odražava ustrojstvo čitave države i povratno ga određuje. Sve je to izloženo tako ubedljivo i, ponoviću, sa sjajnom retorikom i inteligentnom strašću (koja mnohohogo nedostaje raznim Fukoovim sledbenicima) da u nekom trenutku prosto može da izmakne kako Fuko "državi kao represivnom aparatu" ne suprotstavlja ništa tj. kad čovek bolje pogleda ispada da život van represivnog sistema ne samo da nije moguć nego da nije ni zamisliv sistem koji nije represivan. Ili kad na kvarnjaka izjednačava zatvore i školstvo (zapravo ne, to je ok), dakle zatvore i bolnice - jasno je da to čini jer ga zanima odnos prema *duševnim* bolesnicima (sledeće na spisku: Istorija ludila u doba klasicizma) ali zaboga, reći ćete vi, nije to sasvim isto! a Fuko će odgovoriti nenenene jeste, slušaj pažljivo, i onda će navaliti s brdom dokaza i primera i sve koji se savršeno uklapaju u njegovu teoriju i čik se onda vi držite nečeg drugog.
Stvarno dobra knjiga i stvarno pristupačna i zanimljiva i lep dokaz da poststrukturalisti umeju i jasno da se izražavaju kad hoće. Samo čitati sa zrnom soli (i ruke dalje od epigona, hvala, dovoljno).

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me think I must be getting older. Why? Because I used to enjoy trying to parse the unnecessarily complex and obtuse sentences of French intellectuals and now I seem to lack the patience. (A glorious example: "The moment that saw the transition from historico-ritual mechanisms for the formation of individuality to the scientifico-disciplinary mechanisms, when the normal took over from the ancestral, and measurement from status, thus substituting for the individuality of the memorable man that of the calculable man, that moment when the sciences of man became possible is the moment when a new technology of power and a new political anatomy of the body were implemented.") Oh, how we pine for our free-er days of savagery!

All that aside, Foucault seems to do an incredibly meticulous job of tracing the history of discipline and punishment. He takes the reader from medieval tortures and public executions on up through today's modern prison-industrial complex. As Marx predicted capitalism's eventual undoing of itself, Foucault seems to suggest that the prison itself will become obsolete, thereby being replaced by a series of ever more technical disciplinary apparatuses supplied by the likes of fields better suited for controlling/shaping the individual (sociology, psychology/psychiatry, education, etc.). Other than providing physical safety by removing the dangerous individual from his fellow citizens, we still seem to have very little additional insight into the benefits or preferred goals of incarceration. We still seem just as split on whether purely punitive measures are justified or whether rehabilitation is truly possible. The prison seems to mirror the very same social constructs we use to discipline and control ourselves--regimented schedules and timetables; clearly defined responses and roles; meaning, productivity, and avoidance of temptation through labor; etc. At one point, Foucault points out the arbitrary nature of penalization almost exactly split down the class divides (those who meet out justice and bring suits belonging to one class, and those who suffer punishment and commit crimes belonging to another; the arbitrary part being to which class and circumstances one is born).

I get the feeling that, like me, Mikey also requested a replica panopticon in the form of a cake in honor of his 12th birthday. The difference is in how we dealt with the disappointment of not getting such a cake. I shed a tear or two and played some Nintendo. But he didn't have Super Mario Brothers as a distraction, and thus he theorizes as such: "Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, or altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies."

And so, what are we left with? A court system that defines "offences" as that which the (nonviolent) accused sees as a vital life: "the lack of a home as vagabondage, the lack of a master as independence, the lack of work as freedom, the lack of a time-table as the fullness of days and nights." A separation between those who judge and those who punish, which gives an inordinate amount of power and mostly unmonitored discretion to those who punish. And an almost perpetual discussion over prison reform, a topic originating with the very first prison.

And here in the United States?
2.3 million people in jail.



Note: This paperback edition has the worst book cover I've ever seen in my life.
-------------------------------------------------------
Words I Learned While Reading This Book:
anamnesis | dyad | teratological | saturnalia | suzerainty
-----------------------------------------------
11/12/19 Update: I woke up a morning or two ago and thought to myself how much funnier it would have been if my review had simply read: This is the worst BDSM manual ever.

[muthuvel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This deeply disturbing work starts with the evolution of modern penal justice system from the public spectacle of gruesome tortures and executions pertaining to the earlier 17th and 18th centuries. Foucault argues, with his rich historical citations, that the changing to the methods of incarceration to maintain social order marks the shift of subjection and control from individual's anatomy over psyche by means of various schemes of hierarchical observation(surveillance). With architectural figure of 'Panopticon' implemented in prisons enables and exposes the prisoners to being observed, watched upon anytime from the centralized annular watch tower.

It felt ineluctable to note from citations provided parallels to major historical movements like Enlightenment or French Revolution. Foucault here also connects the other 'emergent' structures of Enlightenment era such as the militia schools, education system, systematic working patterns in (manu)factories and other institutions with the ways of social control with this evolving form of discipling the crime and punishment.


"Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"

What started as a erudite historicity of incarceration and penal practices ends with underscoring the problem and the power of normalization in the mass society making it all the more 'undemocratic' and its further production of knowledge and 'disciplines.' Are we all prisoners of this constructed human reality?

Afterall a highly unavoidable read to explore the dynamics of power relations and authority, existing hegemony of the western societies which pretty impact everywhere in these postcolonial postmodern times.

Foucault was a mad Genius with an intriguing biography. His influences from youth communist circle, experimentations with homosexuality, recreational stuffs, BDSM, and Nietzsche, Kant, Heidegger, Althusser, Freud, Sade make his books a weird mix of rich intellectual experience. As for me, this is the most approachable Foucault having tried and dropped many of his works.

[Jessica]

I started it. I didn't finish. And unless I one day find myself in a situation with extremely limited mobility and options, with a great deal of time (read: years) on my hands, it's conceivable that I never will.

I'd like to have read this book, since I'm very interested in the topics it addresses, but I don't know that I have the mind, stomach, or patience for Foucault. So while I'd like to have read it, I don't know that I'd like as much to read it, if you get what I'm saying. Well, maybe someday.... It wasn't boring, but it was kind of hard, and as I'm not much of a French Theory type of girl, nor am I particularly Intellectual, every other page I was sort of scratching my little tete and sort of wondering all over again what the point of all this was, and whether it was even possible that there was one.

I bet a lot of people'd love this. Plus, anyone who doubts its relevance completely (and not just periodically) should read about the NYPD's new "Sky Watch" tower program.

Next time I try this guy, if I do, I'll probably go for the stuff on madness.

[Elen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally reading Foucault after reading a ton of stuff that was (supposedly) inspired by Foucault made me realize I like Foucault a LOT more than I like people who like Foucault.

[Mansoor · Rating 1 out of 5]

فوکو، فیلسوف پدوفایل فرانسوی، این کتاب را در نتیجۀ همکاری‌اش با گروهی افراطی از اکتیویست‌های حامی اصلاح در زندان‌ها نوشت. ایده‌ی بنیادی کتاب این است که نظارت اجتماعی در جوامع مدرن، در مقایسه با دنیای قدیم، فراگیرتر شده و به نحو شریرانه‌تری اعمال می‌شود. این ایده به گوش نسلی که مخاطبان کتاب بودند، حرف چندان تازه‌ای نمی‌آمد. با این حال اگر فوکو ذره‌ای درک اقتصادی و تاریخی داشت و اینقدر هم مزور* نبود، شاید می‌شد کمی بر حرفهایش تامل کرد. ولی او تنها قصۀ فلسفی می‌بافد. جالب است که تاثیری که کتاب در جهان انگلیسی‌زبان و به تبعش در کشورهایی با فرهنگ دنباله‌رو، مثل ایران، گذاشت، هیچ وقت در خود فرانسه نداشت

*هنوز سه سال از انتشار این کتاب نگذشته بود که صدای انکرالاصوات انقلاب اسلامی ایران در جهان پیچید. فوکو که از تجسم خشونت‌بار ارادۀ جمعی، مثل بچه‌ای، به شوق آمده بود، دو بار به ایران سفر کرد و از آنجا که شیفتۀ تمام‌قد "معنویت" خمینی شده بود، به دست‌بوسش در نوفل لوشاتو شتافت. فوکو خشونت تروریست‌های اسلام‌گرا را "روح جهانی بی‌روح" می‌دید، آنوقت برای غربی‌ها منبر می‌رفت که مدارسشان، در عمل، حکم زندان را دارد

[Sean Chick · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first two chapters are interesting, although his defense of public torture is idiotic. His critique of modern society is a stunning case of postmodern claptrap. My god, prisons are meant to dissuade us from committing crime! You don't say! He essentially says Enlightenment reform was actually insidious and bad for humanity. In this way he is actually a conservative, by calling into question all the reasons for reform. The fact that the left embraced this book, which was a grand critique of left wing reform ideology, is just another reason why the conservatives triumphed in the age of postmodernism, when leftists became their own worst enemy. Internal debate is good, but without a moral compass and faith in reform, then you are lost. I think/hope the left is regaining this and abandoning the poisons of postmodernism and its hand-maiden moral relativism. Simply put, this is a nihilistic work if you follow it to its conclusion, and nihilism serves no end. Read Locke, Rousseau, and just about anyone else if you can.

[Miquixote · Rating 5 out of 5]

This reads like a dystopian novel, albeit with foucault's famously (infamously?) difficult language.

First I have to admit that I was probably provoked to read this because Steven Pinker said it was 'unconvincing' in his particularly unconvincing book 'The Better Angels of our Nature'. I was also a bit perplexed how such an apparently unconvincing book (this one) could get over 33, 000 citations on google academic. Also pretty great reviews by the goodreads non-scholars. So you know that strange combination kinda got my notice.

Anyhow, on to a quick review...

SO Foucault's take on the increasing levels of civilization that pinker toots about is that it actually ain't so civilized. Although institutions of 'social care' have expanded immensely they also increased repression of the inmates. But not physically violent repression (that's about as far as Pinker and Foucault agree). But rather rigorous psychological and moral bloodsucking of dignity, freedom, and individuality. Everywhere: military parades, schools, factories, hospitals, workhouses. Necessity of efficiency is the rationale.

But Foucault realizes that 'liberal' politics go hand in hand with this regimentation and unending labour. Work is the most efficient form of social control. Nietzsche also said that ( Foucault is most certainly Nietzschean). Foucault realizes here (and apparently in his other works as well) that basic human drives are now considered taboo and he calls us out on our hypocrisy. Modern times are repressed times. Virtually everything is determined by power. Not only are most of us too well 'disciplined' and 'punished' but we are isolated in our cells of various hues and colours and so pervertedly repressed.

A veritable dystopia of uncannily real proportions. I can only reccommend you struggle through the language, stop and think about what is being said. Slow down, this one isn't just another notch on your bookshelf: it's that worth it.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 1 out of 5]

Foucault, who was mentally unstable, tells us that there is no such thing as individual human agency except when we're lovingly embracing the slimy tendrils of "power". But "power" can't be defined because it's just out there slithering around for humans to use, even though it's an abstract concept. Oh yeah, and everything that' I'm writing right now is because I've (un)con)science)sciously submitted to the ruling authority of the keyboard, because the dominion of typing, which I will(fully) become the serpentine slave of, is part of an apparatus of discipline (disciple) which tells my hands what to do and by extension (existension) my soul, whatever that is, I'm not supposed to know, just Foucault.

[FotisK · Rating 5 out of 5]

Το Πανοπτικόν, ως η αποτελεσματικότερη μέθοδος ελέγχου. Απαραίτητο για την κατανόηση της εποχή μας.

[Aslı Can]

''Suç ve ceza fikirlerinin sıkı sıkıya bağlı olmaları ve ''birbirlerini aralıksız olarak izlemeleri gerekir...Böylece yurttaşlarımızın kafasında fikir bağlantısını kurduğumuzda, onları yönetmekle övünebilirsiniz. Aptal bir müstebit köleleri zincirlerle zorlayabilir; fakat gerçek bir siyaset onları kendi fikirlerinin zincirleriyle çok daha güçlü bir şekilde bağlar; bunun ilk halkası aklın sabit düzlemine bağlıdır; dokusunu bilmezsek ve onu kendi eserimiz sanarsak bu bağ daha da güçlü olur; umutsuzluk ve zaman demirden ve çelikten bağları kemirirler ama fikirlerin alışılmış birliğine karşı hiçbir şey yapamazlar, bunu yalnızca daha da sıkılaştırırlar; ve beynin yumuşak liflerinin üzerinde en sağlam impartorlukların sarsılmaz temeli atımıştır.''

Foucault, Fransız bir hukukçu ve politikacı J. M. Servan'dan yapıyor bu alıntıyı. Bilgi, diyor, iktidara giden araçtır. Bu politikacıların, siyasetçilerin, hukukçuların, insan doğası hakkında keşfettiği küçük detaylar üzerine kurulu ''gözetim'' sistemi, günümüzde gerçekten de tıkır tıkır işliyor.

İş yerleri, hastaneler, okullar, hapishaneler toprağın değil insanın korkuları üzerine temelleniyor. Foucault'ya göre, insan doğası üzerine böyle bir bilgi birikimine sahip ve insan üzerinde emelleri olan iktidarın tüm kurumları, tek tek insanlar yerine, insanlardan oluşmuş ''işler bir toplum'' olarak tesis etmek üzere kurulu. Evet, belki görünürde faydalı görünebilir tüm bu kurumlardan oluşan koca sistem, fakat iyi edebiyat okuru, birçok şeyin görüdüğü gibi olmadığını bilir :)

Elinde az da olsa bir birikimi, bir altın bileziği, bir bakır tası, bir cep telefonu olan, onları kaybetmekten, çaldırmaktan korkuyor ister istemez. Korkuya eşlik eden şey, bunlara sahip olmanın hazzı bir yandan da. İşte iktidar, bu haz ve bu korku üzerine temelleniyor.

Sahip olmak ve elimizde tutmak istediklerimiz neler? Hangi kaygılar bizi istemediğimiz ne gibi şeyleri yapmaya sürüklüyor? Tüm bunlar üzerine düşünerek, beynimizin en derin dokularına sızan iktidarı üzerimizde işlemez hale getirmeye yaklaşabiliriz belki.

Foucault 13 yaşında, evi ve ailesi olmayan ve serserilikle suçlanarak iki yıl ıslahevi cezasına çarptırılan Beasse isimli bir çocuktan söz ediyor kitabın sonlarına doğru. Homurdanan bir burjuvanın yanında çalışmaktansa, sokaklarda günlük işler yapmayı tercih eden Beasse, iki yıl cezayı duyunca cevabı şu oluyor:

''İki yıl, yirmi dört aydan başka bir şey değil. Hadi gidelim.''

''Eğer onu suçlu kılan (yasa hükümlerinden çok disiplinler adına) yasanın söyleminin karşısına, bu baskılara kulak asmayan bir yasadışılığın söylemini çıkartmasaydı kimse onun farkına varmazdı.''

İlk alıntının sahibi Servan'ın insanlara dair bildiği hiçbir şey, Beasse üzerinde işlemiyor. Başlangıçta karamsar ve kötücül görünen bir görüş, aslında bir özgürleşme aracı olarak işliyor bana kalırsa. Bİr köle, sonuna kadar çalışmayı reddedebilir. Bazıları belirli bir sınırda pes eder. Bu sınıra dair bilgi, efendinin köle üzerinde tahakküm kurmasını sağlayan şeydir işte. Sivil itaatsizlik bunun tersine çevrilmesiyle işler.

Günlerim gecelerim bana kalmayacaksa, yaşamamın, öğrenmemin, sağlıklı olmamın ne önemi var ki?
Bilgilerimi kimin için, ne için seferber ediyorum?
Bedenimi, sağlığımı nasıl değerlendiriyorum?
Hapiste geçirmediğim günlerimi, nerede nasıl geçiriyorum?

İşte Foucault, tüm bu soruları sormaya teşvik ediyor okuyanı. Evet görünürde çok karamsar bir ağ, okullar hastaneler huzurevleri hapishaneler. Güvenlik kamerasına nanik yapmak suç mudur hakim bey? Dikkatle okuyan göz için, o ağı delme hakkı kitabın herbir cümlesinde saklı bana kalırsa.

Bir de, Fouacult'yu çok karamsar bulanlar için, Franco Bifo' Berardi'nin, Ruh İşbaşında kitabını önerebilirim. Bifo' kitabında bir adım ileri giderek, Foucault'nun bahsettiği bu ağ ve depresyon arasındaki ilişkileri açığa çıkarıp, arzularımızı keşfetmenin ve bu ağdan kurtulmanın sırları hakkında fısıldıyor bize.

[Mohamed Elashri · Rating 3 out of 5]

في المراقبة والعقاب لميشيل فوكو نتعلم عن الكيفية التي تمارس بها جهات مختلفة سلطاتها للتحكم والمراقبة لجموع كبيرة. كانت دائما فكرة أن يستطيع عدد قليل للغاية بمراقبة او التحكم في جموع غفيرة مسألة غير منطقيةً في العصور السابقة ولكن مع تطور الوسائل والمفاهيم أصبح ذلك الأمر ممكنا.

لا يناقش فوكو فقط مسألة السجون كأدوات عقاب او نطاق مراقبة بل يتوسع في ذلك ويصف البني الاجتماعية الحديثة التي تلعب ولعبت تاريخيا كأدوات ضبط وعقاب كالمدارس والمستشفيات. تتواري السلطة دائما خلف المرافق وخلف ما سيسمي بعد ذلك بمؤسسات الدولة لتمارس من خلالها العقاب سواء بشكل مباشر او غير مباشر وتصبح حياة المواطنين عرضة دائما لأن تكون مراقبة. فالسلطة من خلال احتكارها للعديد من الادوات كاصدار البيانات الشخصية تتحكم في مقدار ما يمكن السماح به للمواطن وتعرف كيف تراقبه فهو في النهاية في حاجة اليها. قد يحدث هذا بشكل بسيط وقد يصل الي درجة كبيرة كالصين والتي تعد فيها مراقبة المواطنين وسلوكهم الاجتماعي وبناءً عليه يمكن للسماح لهم بالسفر أو الحصول علي قرض من
البنوك.

هذه المؤسسات غايتها توحيد معايير السلوك بين أفراد المجتمع. فإذا كانت السلطة السياسية الشمولية تبحث عن إسكات الأفواه، وإبقاء الجهل والتخلف بين صفوف العامة، وقمع الحريات والإرادة، فالمؤسسات الأخرى هي بالأحرى مُنتِجة، تصنع الخطابات وتحث علي الالتزام بها. وتتجلى هذه المؤسسات التي اعتبرها فوكو بأنها سلطوية في المدارس والمستشفيات والملاجئ والسجون، مما يجعلنا محاصرين أمام جميع المؤسسات التي تزاول مهمة المراقبة، لتحديد من ينضبط أمام المعايير والقواعد المحددة مسبقا من طرف السلطة، ومن يحيد ويكسر قواعد السائد في مجابهة السلطة القمعية، فيتم اعتباره حالة شاذة ينبغي اجتثاثها من المجتمع.

[Efe Karabulat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çok başarılı ve inanılmaz bilgi yüklü bir kitap. Tek kusuru fazlaca ağdalı dili ve Foucault'un aşırı uzun çözümlemeleri. On gün kadar yalnız bu kitapla boğuşmak durumunda kaldım zira okuması epeyce zor. Kitabın çok farklı alanların perspektifiyle kurulan bir harmonisi olduğundan meseleye bir yönden hakim olanların da konuya tümüyle yabancı olanların da aynı faydayı sağlayacağını söyleyebilirim. Yine de en çok sosyologların ilgisini çekecektir sanıyorum.

Hemen belirteyim -zira kitabı aldığım sırada ben de bilmiyordum- kitap hapishanenin doğuşunu neredeyse yalnızca Fransa üzerinden anlatıyor. Evrensel bir tümevarım ya da karşılaştırmalı bir çözümleme bekliyorsanız hayal kırıklığına uğrayabilirsiniz. Keyifli okumalar.

[Andrew]

Having previously been exposed to Foucault through a reader, it was nice to see a book-length context for his meditations on the birth of the prison. What impresses me most about Foucault are his abilities as a great synthesizer of knowledge, taking a vast body of textual evidence and orchestrating that evidence into a theoretically solid thesis, which is a skill that so few theorists seem to have. As a precise history, I have few quibbles with his reporting, and his theory seems completely valid. More or less universally recommended.

[Matteo Fumagalli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non lento, non pesante. Anzi, semplicemente IMMOBILE e UN MACIGNO (come quasi sempre è, anche se nessuno lo dice, Foucault).
Eppure, come sempre è un'opera di Foucault, una lettura piena di interesse, illuminante, arricchente.
Da leggere assolutamente.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foucault's Discipline and Punish is a bit of a tough read. Perhaps that's due to his derivative thinking, perhaps to the translation; regardless, the book presents to me as a dissection of the construction, maintenance, and exercise of state power as it relates to the penal system. Here Foucault renders some interesting points; most significant to me is the notion of the penal system as virtual cycle. If I understand him correctly, both 'delinquency' and the justice system need each other to perpetuate their existence. Once the power of the state is created, in the form of prisons, courts, police, a strong incentive forms to continue, if not grow, that power. The 'delinquents' are fed from the very system purported to retard them. This is a very interesting dynamic and one of recent 'scientific' making, it seems. It also may explain the ever expanding scope of criminality in the US.

Further, the penal system has implications for broader society, as Foucault writes:

The practice of placing individuals under 'observation' is a natural extension of a justice imbued with disciplinary methods and examination procedures. Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penalty? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?

Is this not an outright indictment of the social sciences?

I thought about the role the bogeyman plays in supporting state power; the role German and Japanese hidden 'agents' played in past world wars, the lurking communist cells of the mid-twentieth century, and the many nefarious dark ghosts today, internal and external, ready to spring forth and unleash their horrors upon the innocents. These bogeymen, too, have an important role in the construction of state power. The issue with this all is that our collective subconscious comes to control our individual conscious, and without any great number seeming to notice or care; that we all bear a significant cost, both social and monetary, is of little concern. Now why is that?