jus 501 - Michael's notes on Foucault

MICHAEL

Foucault is not a philosopher in the sense of the others read in the curriculum of this class, he is a historian interested primarily in meaning and understanding. The result of this is that he writes about history as though it is literary criticism – which is the only way that one could write about historical “facts”, if one did not believe that “facts” exist. So I would suggest that anyone reading thing this, try to stay away from using statements that suggest superiority or inferiority.

Also, I use some of his language here which includes the “soul”. I should emphasize that Foucault was not a dualist and when he talks about the “soul”, he is typically talking about an intangible sense of the self that only becomes tangible in discourse. That being said…

- Foucault suggests that not only was punishment different during feudal times but that crime itself was as well. Distinctions included:
o Private Property – Prior to the modern-era, most of European societies were mercantile or feudal systems of government, in which private property did not exist to the citizen.
 Private property meant the existence of property crime, which created crimes of desperation.
o Perception of Crime – Because there were no property crimes or crimes of necessity
 People were not as afraid of crime or criminals as much as they are now, even though the rate of crime was roughly the same as it is now.
 Since most crime was violent, criminal acts were seen as indefensible attacks against the sovereign and the society.
o Sovereign Power– The lack of a “judicial system” allowed sovereigns to appoint magistrates at their discretion.
 Lead to corruption by the magistrates
 Allowed for a system of understanding between the magistrates and the peasants regarding crimes and their punishments, which often benefited the peasants.
 Made public punishment significant as retribution was the power of the sovereign, who represented the whole society, punishing the criminal
- Foucault mentions three models of prisons which came about at the beginning of the enlightenment, the last of which -- the Walnut Street Prison (which is actually called the Eastern State Penitentiary), ultimately became the model for our current structure of discipline and punishment.
o Rasphuis at Amsterdam – This prison stressed relationships between the guards and the inmates and allowed the wardens to increase or reduce incarcerations as they saw fit
o Maison de Force at Ghent – Emphasized work due to a prevailing belief that those who committed crimes were “lazy”. The belief was that a physical change was needed for these individuals
o The Walnut Street Prison in Philadelphia – Quaker prison was the first to explicitly target the “soul” as the damaged part of the individual which needed repair. This was done through intense structuring of the day, coerced spiritual guidance and labor, all of which were thought to assist in the “correction” of a damaged soul.

- The enlightenment sought to create “technologies of power”, or systems for ordering and stratifying bodies (meaning both literal bodies as well as metaphysical). Foucault mentions several applications/examples
o Military – In particular Foucault mentions the Prussian military which prided itself on regimentation and discipline.
 Prior to this time, military units had operated in organized masses. However the advent of new war technology had forced tactics to shift towards small, mobile groups operating in cohesion.
• Rather then make the military less regimented; this change resulted in even stricter regulation as forces had to leave to act as a collective.
 One of the ways that order was enforced in this less traditionally structured environment was the creation of additional classes of officers.
• Because units had an endless stratification of higher-ups, soldiers always had someone watching and evaluating their performances.
o Education – Unlike the informal master/apprentice relationship, formalized education was a highly structured environment.
 Formalizing education was thought to assist in formalizing the citizenry themselves and give a unified identity.
• This allowed for the creation of “exams” which, for the first time, established universal standards of “correct” and “incorrect” that could be measured along the way to graduation – not as before where an apprentice merely had to demonstrate his skill once before being expected to take over for the master.
 Students are arranged in an open class room with rows, where an instructor can pass to the side, in front, or behind them. This causes the students to believe that they are always being watched.
o Medicine/Hospitals – Through the construction of more regimented hospitals, in particular with regards to mental health facilities, states were able to create a medical description of what is “normal” with regards to human health and wellness.
 Foucault argues that by developing a hierarchy of terms, individuals were conceived of as a laundry list of illnesses and negatives, rather then by some less tangible notion of the “other”.
 This resulted in the belief that “individualism” was typically aspects of an individual which were relatively undesirable.
o Prison – Foucault invokes the notions of prison popularized by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
 The Panopticon, is less of an actual prison and more of an idea of prison in which the most important distinction is the change from public punishment to private discipline.
• According to existential thought, no individual can ever truly “know” what another person is thinking. Consequently we attempt to affirm what we believe about ourselves by trying to see how other people see us.
o Think of the concept of “shame” (Sartre). To be ashamed is not to be ashamed of myself, but to be ashamed of how you will now see me.
 The Panopticon design involves a large cylindrical tower in the center of a circular ring of cells. Each cell has a large window facing the tower and the tower itself has windows facing each cell. However the small windows of the tower are too distant for prisoners to see through, while all prisoners can be seen by the individual in the tower.
• The design was to make prisoners always believe that are being watched and evaluated even though the tower has only a minimum number of individuals in it at any time – because the prisoners never know when they are and are not being watched.

- Foucault does not conceive of discipline in the manner we typically do, but rather as a system of empowerment and disembodiment. Furthermore he believes that the reason that these things are not as apparent to us now is that these changes have made any other conception of education, punishment or medicine completely unthinkable to us.
o After the modern period, societies are no longer made of people but of subjects, to be molded according to the whim of those in power, according to the new standards that have been created.

- As it pertains to “punishment”, prison is merely an extension of the same socializing mechanism used in schools. Except when it fails and sends the citizen to prison, it must be reapplied and targeted at the soul.