An Analysis of Michel Foucaults Discipli PDF
An Analysis of Michel Foucaults Discipli PDF
An Analysis of Michel Foucaults Discipli PDF
By
Meghan Kallman
with
Rachele Dini
WAYS IN TO THE TEXT
Key Points
The thesis was published in English as Madness and Civilization and later as
History of Madness. It was extremely well received, winning the prestigious
Medal of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (the French National
Center for Scientific Research), the main governmental research organization
in France. Foucault’s next books were The Birth of the Clinic (1963), The
Order of Things (1966), and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969).
Discipline and Punish argues that social institutions exercise power and
discipline on the bodies and souls of their subjects through le regard*—the
“gaze.”ii Forming this argument, he turns to a discussion of the Panopticon,* a
model for a prison invented by the British social reformer Jeremy Bentham* in
the late eighteenth century. The Panopticon was designed so that the inmates
cannot see their guards and, therefore, never know if they are being watched
or not; it is the perpetual possibility of observation that encourages them to
behave. Foucault suggests that the Panopticon and the mechanisms of power
it contains extend beyond the prison and into other institutions of society (a
driver who cannot be certain that she or he is not being tracked by a speed
camera, for example, may choose not to speed “just in case”). According to
this view, behavior is conditioned by the awareness of the possibility of
control.
Key Questions
Synthesize: How did Michel Foucault help push the field of sociology in new
directions?
Analyze: How significant are his ideas for discussions outside of sociology?
Apply: What might Foucault’s ideas tell us about power, surveillance, and the
individual today?
i
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Sheridan, NY: Vintage
Books, 1979), 27.
ii
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 96.
iii
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 135.
iv
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 27