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Michael Foucault

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Submitted By staceymara
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Stacey Fischer
12/02/14
Analytical Paper #2

Michael Foucault Michael Foucault is one of the more modern sociological theorists of our time, relating to Marxist theories greatly. Foucault was born in France in the year of 1926. He became very well educated throughout his academic years. He followed in the footsteps of Emile Durkheim and many other French philosophers, and attended École Normale Supérieure in 1946. While attending École, he was greatly influenced by Hegel through his professor Jean Hyppolite and his "interpretation of his work" and Marx ideas through his professor Louis Athusser and his "structuralist readings (Gutting). Marxism contributes heavily to one of Foucault's earliest writings, the introduction to Dream and Existence by Ludwig Binswanger happened to be influenced by Heideggerian thought, and as a student of Heidegger, so was Foucault (Gutting). After finishing at École, he held a handful of different positions throughout the 1960s, at French Universities. Later in 1969, he received the upmost and highly respected position of professor of History of Systems of Thought. He worked this position up until he fell victim to AIDS and later died in 1984 (Gutting). One of Michael Foucault's later and most famous writings are Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison. Published in 1976, this book looks at and studies the genealogy of the modern penal system implemented. That is, prison is the heart of the modern discourse of punishment. Foucault socially analyzes punishment and how changes in power affect punishment. One of the first things this theory focuses on and most essential to his theory is power and the relationship between power and knowledge. Power is essentially a way of managing and controlling people. A set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets, ideas and arguments, are all used to generate power in some way. The way power is used is how the relationship between power and knowledge remain cohesive. The relationship between power ad knowledge is power is to punish, and knowledge is the development of the human science. This basically means training individuals to follow a set of norms. The development reinforces the power. Power acts in the normalcy of everyday life and resides in our actions and perceptions. He knowledge however, is what links human nature and behavior together. Power is consistently mentioned throughout this piece of work. A form of power Foucault discusses is the idea of discipline being a technology of power, which is spread across society. That is, discipline doesn’t reside in an institution or a particular person, but rather in our actions and perceptions. Discipline is a way of controlling the outcomes and movements of a body in continual way. Discipline does this through regulations. Control is possible though discipline.
A type of means of control and discipline, power, is torture. But torture is not a part of modern society’s view on punishment. Foucault first looked at the earliest forms of judicial inquisitions, which were public execution and torture, carried out by church and state. Torturing was a political ritual used, that manifested the power of the king. The main reason for torture was to obtain a confession, revealing the reality and actuality of a crime. The power of what law could and would do was taken out on the body.
Michael Foucault argues that torture is not a modern way of imprisoning criminals. Punishment is no longer for the public to see. There was a shift from public to private, punishment being public and the soul being private. There are however certain goals when discipline, which are to obtain power at the lowest cost both economically and politically – thus creating minimum resistance, from this bring power to maximum continuous intensity, and thus linking the growth of power to the output that is expected to come out through different institutions. For power to be carried out, it must operate through docile bodies. Like previously mentioned, “discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise (Foucault). The body is an object of knowledge that is capable of manipulation; which is subjected to study, but not listened to. But the success of disciplinary power comes from three apparatuses: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and examination. This disciplinary power controls not only docile bodies, but also space and time, and individualization and rank.
Hierarchical observation is “the exercise of discipline” which “presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation; an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects of power, and in which, conversely, the means of coercion make those whom they are applied clearly visible” (Foucault p.97). In short, the masses of docile bodies are observed and the power holders are invisible to the public. It was organized as a “multiple, automatic and anonymous power,” which allows for observation and surveillance (Foucault p.99). Power is physical, not corporal because it doesn’t require the excess of violence. However, power does operate on our bodies.
The idea of micro-power, power that operates on the body, thus leads to micro-penalty. A feature of modern power is the idea of what people have not done. This in turn leads to the correction of deviant behavior, through normalizing judgment. Out of all disciplinary mechanisms, there has to be a penal system, with “micro-penality of time (latenesses, absences, interruptions of tasks), of activity (inattention, negligence, lack of zeal), of behaviour (impoliteness, disobedience), of speech (idle chatter, insolence), of the body ('incorrect' attitudes, irregular gestures, lack of cleanliness), of sexuality (im- purity, indecency)” (Foucault p.100). This is then corrected through punishment that is exercised. Normalizing judgment generates and establishes a homogenous mass and increased individualization. This can be seen through the creation of gaps based on qualities, skills, etc. Normalizing measures individuals, which places them in a hierarchical system, which creates norms.
The last of the three elements associated with the functioning of disciplinary power is examination. Examination is a combination of certain aspects form hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment, modern form of knowledge – surveillance and modern form of power, respectively. Examination leads to punishment through examining and classifying. Examination “manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected” (Foucault p.103). This being said, examination makes each individual a case to be not only known, but also observed and recorded as well. Combined, all the elements of disciplinary power, essentially creates the individual because the individual is the object of power and knowledge, as well as the subject to the examination process.
Through this modern discipline and punishment system, comes new panopticons. A more recent and newer panopticon is the social media website Facebook. There are certain elements that are part of the power of Facebook, that ultimately lead to some type of social punishment. Facebook does in fact have a hierarchical system in place that where each individual account (individual case if you will) is observed, and the people observing are invisible; meaning this hierarchy also exercises a “big brother is always watching” type system. “The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly” (Foucault p.98). The creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, perfected this. He has access to very single user’s account and can remove content off of the site if he sees fit. By having access to every account, his “surveillance rests on individuals, its functioning is that of a network of relations from top to bottom” (Foucault p.99).
The micro-power created then leads to micro-penality. Like previously mentioned, Mark Zuckerberg is the creator of Facebook and has control over the content of Facebook. Content that is offending or too inappropriate to go on the site, he removes from Facebook. By taking down this offensive content, he publicizes what is good and bad. Zuckerberg creates his own gratification-punishment system, and “this system that operates in the process of training and correction [... ] [which] makes possible a number of operations characteristic of disciplinary penality” (Foucault p101). If something is reported or is seen unfit being on Facebook, he takes it down and depending on the severity of it, he has the authority to suspend an individual’s account for a given period of time. By normalizing what is good and bad to post, it generates social facts of Facebook.
Through combining what Zuckerberg deems good and bad to post, thus normalizing behavior, comes examination. This examination “makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish” (Foucault p.103). Examination has also made it possible to differentiate between new and old users of Facebook. Through the examination process, the individual becomes the object of power. When people first join Facebook, they are new to the experience so they act in an individual way, rather than the normative way. But as these newbies progress from rookie to veteran, they learn tricks of the trade; and their behavior becomes more socially normative than individual.
Facebook expresses Michael Foucault’s theory of discipline and punishment in a more modern way, that is easier for generations, like mine, to understand. His theory can still be seen today on a wider scale. Foucault’s theory can be applied to any disciplinary system.

Works Cited:
Foucault, Michael. "The Means of." Blackwell Reader in Contemporary Social Theory. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999. 97-106. Print.
Gutting, Gary. "Michel Foucault." Stanford University. Stanford University, 02 Apr. 2003. Web. 09 Dec. 2014.

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