What is the thesis of Discipline and Punish?
Foucault’s book provides analysis of the historical development of the modern penal system and its move from execution to incarceration and total control of criminals. Foucault demonstrates the ways in which strict discipline and morals have transformed the agency of punishment from the corporeal to the spiritual.
What is Foucault’s view on punishment?
Foucault ultimately suggests that it is the use and subjugation of power that influences an institutions use of punishment. He rejects any notion that the development of this system had been motivated by any humanitarian ideals, or that this philosophy of punishment was initially intended as a form of rehabilitation.
What is Foucault’s main argument?
In his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, Foucault argued that French society had reconfigured punishment through the new “humane” practices of “discipline” and “surveillance”, used in new institutions such as prisons, the mental asylums, schools, workhouses and factories.
What does Foucault’s work tell us about surveillance?
Foucault argues that the use of disciplinary power has extend everywhere in society – it is not only in prisons that disciplinary power (surveillance) is used to control people; and it is not only criminals who are subjected to disciplinary power.
What is Foucault’s concept of discipline?
Foucault emphasizes that power is not discipline, rather discipline is simply one way in which power can be exercised. He also uses the term ‘disciplinary society’, discussing its history and the origins and disciplinary institutions such as prisons, hospitals, asylums, schools and army barracks.
What is Foucault’s definition of discipline?
Discipline for Foucault is a type of power, a modality for its exercise. It comprises a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets. It is a “physics” of power, an “anatomy” of power, or a technology of power.