I’m Dr. Andrew Wood with your introduction
to Discipline in Modern Culture.
Here I’m referring to Michel Foucault’s
book Discipline and Punish: an examination
of how the deployment of power changed from
the medieval era to modern times.
Foucault’s primary argument is that the
ability to influence the behavior of others
need not, indeed should not, rely upon coercion
over their bodies.
Enduring control doesn’t require one to
punish with physical pain.
He argues that modern discipline works at
a more subtle and abstract level.
To preview that argument, consider the following
phrase: “The perfection of power should
tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary.”
Our excerpt begins with an account of seventeenth
century European plague-management practices,
marked by the layering of a theoretical grid
of surveillance upon the actual bodies and
placements of people.
The binary division and branding of the sick
from the healthy, those who will die from
those who will live, remains a material exercise,
of course, but...
… the practices of looking, and the ever-increasing
refinement of knowledge gathered through surveillance,
works ultimately to reduce the need to apply
physical force upon people.
“The plague, Foucault writes, “is met
by order.”
The next step, he adds, is to build a structure
for perfecting – not just removing – people.
Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham enters
this conversation as an architect of such
a system of control.
Inspired by Enlightenment-era optimism, the
belief that ordered systems may produce ordered
lives, Bentham advances a radical vision that
unifies control and reform in his humane penitentiary,
the panopticon.
I’ll trust you to read the description of
Bentham’s design carefully, most notably
his proposal that [and I’m quoting Foucault
here], “inmates should be caught up in a
power situation of which they are themselves
the bearers.”
In your notes, you should demonstrate an understanding
for what the panopticon is, and how it works.
As you do, I want you to remember that this
structure manifests power not through premodern
modes of torture but rather through a modern
confidence that the subject, isolated and
individualized, the subject who believes they
are held under constant scrutiny, will tend
to discipline themselves, even if they are
not actually being watched.
Think about that, and then write a few original
sentences to articulate what you think Foucault
means when he proposes that power should be
“visible and unverifiable.”
Foucault doesn’t just write about plagues
and prisons.
His larger theme is the ever-expanding matrix
of discipline, and how it works in modern
culture – in sites like asylums and hospitals
and military barracks – and schools.
As we proceed, I’ll refer to our excerpt,
but also to some ideas even more broadly addressed
elsewhere in Discipline and Punish.
First, I want you to recognize Foucault’s
discussion of Normalization.
Given that San José State University was
once called California State Normal School,
you might find this part particularly interesting.
As a teacher’s college, this campus was
a nexus of normalization, which means that
future teachers were taught to convey and
assess knowledge in the most efficient and
consistent manner possible.
One technique of normalization is the distillation
of complex tasks into simple, repeatable movements:
a process that Foucault calls micro-power:
“tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms”
that work positively, not punitively, to convey
a broader value of discipline.
He adds that power becomes partitioned, divided
and subdivided into so many bureaus, so many
offices, so many departments, that no one
official can be blamed for the feeling of
tyranny that such a disciplinary society,
despite its best intentions, can induce.
I mean, sure, there is someone at the DMV
you can blame for the hassles you experience
there, but whom?
This kind of power – the de-individualization
of control – reflects a counterpoint to
the individualization of the subject.
These practices – micro-power and partitioned
power – are essential to the workings of
modern discipline.
That leads us to Foucault’s argument that
the old regime of power – epitomized by
the awesome spectacle of the king – becomes
replaced with an endlessly more refined kind
of control: the surveillance society.
This society begins in early modernity with
physical structures, such as the material
panopticon envisioned by Jeremy Bentham.
But in our contemporary era, with our increasingly
embedded and ubiquitous systems of digital
communication and surveillance, we encounter
an even more perfect deployment of disciplinary
technology.
Think about this for a moment, and ask yourself
how a learning management system like Canvas
reflects that practice.
Just how granular and refined is the professor’s
knowledge of your actions on this LMS?
Does Canvas provide you the same insight into
your professor?
Should it?
Well, that’s your introduction to Discipline
in Modern Culture.
You’ve read some Michel Foucault, which
can be a challenging adventure.
But the real goal of this discussion is to
inspire you to look closer at the structural
and conceptual strategies of control in today’s
surveillance society.
Once you start to look back at the devices
looking at you, there’s no telling what
you’ll see.
