Foucault Response

Oh Foucault, oh Foucault, oh Foucault, how I’ve missed thee? It’s been a while since I have had to read anything by Foucault in, but regardless of that it stands to be said that the man has a way with examining the how power and knowledge can be used as a form of social control. I have had to read bits and pieces of his work for various reasons within my anthropological theory classes largely because we were looking at post-structuralism/post-modernism. Concentrating on the cultural shifts that led to formation of prisons as the main form of a penal system, he examines in Discipline and Punish how this becomes a new form of social control. However, in response to this week’s prompt, I think it could be argued that there are multiple agents at work within this piece for historical change. Though one could say that is seems that the state is the agent, the “state” has a multiplicity to it that I feel needs to be examined.

As for the relation to Bloch and Foucault, they both aim to represent the time period they are studying in their entirety and that both wrote about the relationship between the government and the people. Whereas, Bloch focused more on the interrelations between the two, Foucault is more focused on the agency that the state has over the society. Individuality for Foucault is also viewed in this same way. Being that I am not as eloquent as others in describing this I think that Katie has probably said it not only the best, but also the most concisely in that the individual to Foucault is merely a cog within the machine.