Discipline And Punishment In French Surveiller Et Punir Analysis
1024 Words5 Pages
The work Discipline and Punish, in French, Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la prison, written by Michel Foucault was published in 1975. The author was a French philosopher and historian of ideas. He problematized (in his way of the term) many important concepts in the twenty century, as biopolitics, biopower, and as we can see in this book, panopticism.
In that book, Foucault shows us the development of punitive and disciplinary practices through the centuries, from the ceremony of tortures, to the dominion over the body in a brutal way. To the author, there is a system of punishment and discipline that encompasses the whole production of the scientific knowledges. Thus, the book demonstrates the relationship between power and these different…show more content… The point is that all problems and pressure involved in this the process changed with the time, the punition as a spectacle of public torment, went to be extinguished. The punishment became more humanistic[sic], because progressively, it left the body field and entered the field of consciousness. It is the rise of the practices that try to give correction, reeducate the criminal. Pain and physical suffering are no longer constructive elements of the penalty, giving rise to the loss of a good or a right, punishment or forced labor, sexual deprivation, and so on. That is the silent pain produced developed by the 19th…show more content… Judgment becomes part of something objectified, searching for truth. To understand this, the author offers us the example of madness, which could not be dealt with together with the criminal. The madman should be treated, not punished. This demonstrates how the process has become linked to different instances and procedures (psychiatric, educational, and administrative, for example).
The right to judge had thus become shared. This form of fragmentation, the power to judge, which no longer rests solely with an inquisitor, has made the power to punish pass from sovereign to society. Everyone should become part of the punishment process of the condemned, who now would not only be executed, but reeducated (a reeducation of the spirit to tame the body). The prisoner then becomes the target of individual surveillance, being placed in cells and assisted in his sentence.
At this point, Foucault spotlights the correlation of power between different points in society, such as schools, prisons and psychiatric clinics. Places to make the rules followed and the law enforced. All this requires a vigilance of bodies sweetened by rules. Its main example is the Panoptype, of