“This book is intended as a correlative history of the
modern soul and of a new power to judge.” (p.23)
The power of the state to reform the penal institutions of
the West (and the power of the state to punish, etc.) represent an agent of
historical change for Foucault in Discipline
and Punish. The scaffold is replaced
by a prison. Death sentences and public
executions are replaced by life sentences, and the penitentiary becomes a
modern institution. When Foucault writes
of “disciplinary society” he is offering a social theory that puts “power” in
the central role as opposed to, say, class struggle. Foucault sees criminals as part of society,
created and recognized by the law. In a
way Foucault seems to equate prison and society, and the law is an instrument
of social control (criminals are a simultaneous byproduct created by society). For Marxists, in a sense, the outlaw is locked
in a struggle, often justified in his opposition to the laws of the ruling
class.
Foucault’s work here is a study less in the history of punishment
and more of how power operates in modern society. Seen this way, Foucault is working from a global
point of view - that is a macro-interpretational style. But his topic (change in penal style) seems
like it may lend itself to a micro framework / micro analysis. The “power” study is the macro, and the perhaps
the change in penal style is the micro?
This may be jumping ahead in the syllabus, but it is something that was
interesting to me.
Before this reading assignment I was not at all familiar
with the Linguistic Turn theory. In side
reading on Foucault I came across the relationship of Structuralism to the Linguistic
Turn element. I’m not sure if Foucault is a Structuralist,
but he seems interested in identifying structures that define and shape
institutional practices – again, Discipline
and Punish seems not so much a work about the history of punishment rather than
a structural analysis of power, specifically the modern from of “discipline.” Is it the structural analysis Foucault makes
of discipline, power, the body (docile), and other concepts, like “judging,”
the power to judge, and the soul, what makes the work part of the Linguistic
Turn? I am uncertain and would enjoy
hearing everyone’s thoughts in class.
(The Linguistic Turn theory posits that words must be recognized
as functioning like labels attached to concepts - the concept of something cannot
exist without being named. Language is not
objective – words cannot describe what something is but can only describe what
something does not encompass: words are defined by what they are not. The underlying structure of language constitutes
reality because all that we consider reality is a system of naming and
characterization – language.)
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