That is, the ground of the game of power is not won by "liberation", because liberation already exists as a facet of subjection. He explains that power and knowledge imply one another, as opposed to the common belief that knowledge exists independently of power relations (knowledge is always contextualized in a framework which makes it intelligible, so the humanizing discourse of psychiatry is an expression of the tactics of oppression). He defines a "micro-physics" of power, which is constituted by a power that is strategic and tactical rather than acquired, preserved or possessed. Foucault wants to tie scientific knowledge and technological development to the development of the prison to prove this point. He believes that the question of the nature of these changes is best asked by assuming that they were not used to create a more humanitarian penal system, nor to more exactly punish or rehabilitate, but as part of a continuing trajectory of subjection. These examples provide a picture of just how profound the changes in Western penal systems were after less than a century.įoucault wants the reader to consider what led to these changes and how Western attitudes shifted so radically. Torture įoucault begins by contrasting two forms of penalty: the violent and chaotic public torture of Robert-François Damiens, who was convicted of attempted regicide in the mid-18th century, and the highly regimented daily schedule for inmates from an early-19th-century prison ( Mettray). The main ideas of Discipline and Punish can be grouped according to its four parts: torture, punishment, discipline, and prison. In a later work, Security, Territory, Population, Foucault admitted that he was somewhat overzealous in his argument that disciplinary power conditions society he amended and developed his earlier ideas. Prison is used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks. He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists. 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and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison ( French: Surveiller et punir : Naissance de la prison) is a 1975 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault.
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