foucault

Part 2 Punishment, Section 2 “The gentle way in punishment”

Submitted by raymond on Mon, 06/09/2008 - 11:05pm

regarding:

Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison
Part 2 Punishment, Section 2 “The gentle way in punishment”

from Rebecca Robinson in jus 501 (fall 2007)

• Suitable punishment “robs for ever the idea of a crime of any attraction” (104)
• Obstacle-sign constitute new arsenal of penalties must obey several conditions
o As unarbitrary as possible: “the idea of the offense will be enough to arouse the sign of the punishment”- natural consequence. (Vermeil) “those who abuse public liberty…deprived of their own” (105)
 “Power must act while concealing itself beneath the gentle force of nature”
o Complex of sign engage mechanics of force: penalty and disadvantages more lively the crime and its pleasures
 (Mably) “…source of evil” (vagabond-laziness) (106)
 Make penalty something feared (pride led to crime, let it be hurt)
o Duration integrated into economy of penalty (107)- facilitate proper action
 Punish diminishes as it produces effect (chacot, gene, normal)
o Penalty directed above all at potentially guilty (108)
 Penalty natural- retribution that guilty makes to his fellow citizens
 Body of condemned- from property of king to societal property
 (Cahiers) Public works: collective interest and visible/verifiable
o Learned economy of publicity (109) from torture (physical fear/collective horror) to decipherable sign/representation of public morality
 Ceremony of mourning (110)- from festival to school
 Secret punishment wasted (111)- criminal source of instruction
o Inversion of traditional discourse of crime: glory to misfortune (112)
• Reformers criticized imprisonment: incapable of corresponding to specific crime
o No effect on public so it is useless, even harmful to society (costly, causes idleness, multiplies vices) (114)
o Subject to defiance for citizens- obscurity causes suspicion of injustices
o Whole middle between light and death penalty
o Short transformation period
• 4 principle penalties remain in penal code all forms of detention- forced labor, detention, reclusion and imprisonment
• Scaffold replaced by prison with centralized administration (115)
• In <20 years, detention for every offense that did not require death penalty (116)
• Before, natural relation of crime to penalty (117) and security for someone, one does not punish (118) or to secure offenders (those not yet convicted)
o Prison disqualified because bound up with arbitrary, excesses of sovereign- used for philosophers and dissidents
o Counter to individuality of punishment (119) – punishes whole family
• What cause sudden shift to prison? Number of great models
o 1596 Rasphius in Amsterdam (120)- beggars/young malefactors
 Duration- could be reduces based on behavior
 Compulsory work (received wages)
 Strict timetables, obligations, prohibitions, supervision, religious readings link theory and spiritual transformation
o 1749 Ghent in Aloust- idleness caused most crimes
 Benefits: promoted work ethic, reduced taxpayer compensation to owners and number of criminal prosecutions, mass of new workers, true poor to benefit from charity (121)
 Prisoners earned wages & learned trade through compulsory work
 Duration related to length needed for correction
o English models added importance of isolation: provides terrible shock, apprenticeship, spiritual conversion (122)
o Gloucester model: total confinement for most dangerous criminals
o 1790 Philadelphia: continuously reexamined/transformed so not doomed to immediate failure like others (123)
 Constantly employed: defray expenses & to moral/material reform
 Strict timetable, limited solitary, duration based on behavior
 Penalty carried out secretly (124)
 Transformation process between convict and supervisor
 Work on soul: solitude, self-examination, religious exhortation
 Transformation based on knowledge of individual (125)
• Convergence of models: directed toward future (prevent repetition) (126), not to efface crime but to transform criminal, individualize penalties
• Disparity of models: technique of individualizing (instrument of transform) (127)
• Application of penalty to body and soul- instead of obstacle-sign, forms of coercion and schemata of constraint, applied and repeated (128) to restore juridical subject/shape obedient subject by general, detailed form of some power
• Special relationship between punished and punisher (total power free of 3rd party)
o Secrecy and autonomy imperative
o Contrary to 2 aims: citizen participation, render power adequate/ transparent to publicly defined laws (secret punishment not in legal code)
 New power as arbitrary/despotic as before (129)
• Prison=institutionalization of power to punish
• 3 way of organizing power: monarchical, obstacle-sign (130), reformist techniques of individual coercion
• Why was the third adopted? (131)

panopticon

Submitted by raymond on Sat, 05/17/2008 - 4:44pm

regarding:

Discipline and Punish

195-97: response to a plague by shutting an entire city down.

197: "this enclosed, segmented space... all constitutes a disciplinary mechanism."

198: "political dream: divisions, penetration of regulation into the smallest details."

comparison to leper colony and rituals of exclusion. not a binary separation ("good" vs. "bad", "infected" vs. "uninfected") use of multiple separations from each other. these individualizations are an intensification of power.

pure community vs. disciplined society--> two ways of exercising power over men, controlling relations, separating dangerous mixtures.

198-199: "rights and laws vs. perfect disciplines functioning..."

200: description of panopticon (prisoners are always the object of information, never the subject.)

201: not necessary to always observe. just make prisoners think they're always being observed.

203: experiments on the observed.

204: "knowledge follows the advances of power, discovering new objects of knowledge."

205: application of the panopticon model to other things (factories, schools, etc.)

209: panopticonism-- "discipline mechanisms: a functional mechanism that improves the exercise of power"

extension of disciplinary institutions.
210: 1/ inversion of discipline from minimizing negatives to maximizing positives.

211: 2/ swarming of mechanisms: beyond the walls of the institutions.

213: 3/ state control of mechanisms (from private religions to governments) and the minuteness of the controls.

215: "discipline is a type of power."

jus 501 - Michael's notes on Foucault

Submitted by raymond on Mon, 01/07/2008 - 1:11am

regarding:

Discipline and Punish

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.

jus 501 - class' notes on re: transformation of punishment (foucault)

Submitted by raymond on Sun, 01/06/2008 - 11:06pm

regarding:

Discipline and Punish

#1. What is Foucault’s argument about the transformation of punishment?

REBECCA

• Foucault first discusses the use of torture as a public spectacle, which he illustrates by the execution of Damiens who attempted regicide in 1757
• Since 19th century, almost universal adoption of the jury system, corrective character of penalty, less physical punishment, disappearance of torture and penalty adapted to individual offender
• The criminal’s body played a key role in penalty but this trend was being phased out as well; “The body of the target of penal repression disappeared” (8).
• “Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of penal process” (9)
• Punishment became “an economy of suspended rights” (no more pain involved in punishment) and the executioner was replace with “an army of technicians” (11)
• New morality concerning penalty instead of “thousand deaths” (quartering, disembowelment, the wheel, etc) the guillotine: equal for all, “one death per condemned man,” (not cruel), and least shameful (12)
• Use of black veil = condemned man was not to be seen
• By 1830-1848, public executions proceeded by torture were a thing of the past and but the “hold on the body” did not disappear until the mid-19th century
• Pain was replaced by loss of wealth or rights but penalties were still directed at the body (food rations, sexual deprivation, solitary confinement, forced labor)
• New penalty not to punish but to “supervise the individual, neutralize his dangerous state of mind , alter his criminal tendencies and continue even when this change has been achieved” to make offender “not only desirous, but also capable, of living within the law and of providing for his own needs” (18)
• Penal system began judging the soul of the offender rather than the crime
• Penalty not meant to reduce crime but is “linked to a whole series of positive and useful effects” (24)
• Penal system is less a consequence of legal theories than “a chapter of political anatomy” (28)
• Legal proceedings depended on confession through judicial torture
• At times, penalty was a “theatrical reproduction” (45)
• Penalty was as much a political ritual as a judicial ritual- crime is an attack on the sovereign because the laws are his will
o Penalty demonstrates dissymmetry between king and subject who dared violate his laws- a spectacle to show imbalance and excess- “exercise of terror” (49)
o Penalty does not reestablish justice but reactivates power (49) – king’s revenge
• Ceremony of excesses at times took place after death (51)
• Role of the masses ambiguous- witness torture so they will be afraid
o The unintended result was the beginning of social disturbances
o Condemned people became heroes of the masses
• These protests against the “confrontation between the sovereign and the condemned man” (73) led a reform of penalty and the end of the king’s revenge
• Crime became less violent and more an issue of private property and these property offenses were dealt with more sternly
• Varying degrees of penalty also demonstrates to abuses of the monarch
• When punishing one must calculate penalty not in terms of crime but in terms of future disorder and penalty measured in terms of economy not excess (93)
• Six major rules: minimum quantity, sufficient ideality (motive for crime = advantage, effectiveness of penalty = disadvantage), lateral effects (penalty has most profound effects on those that did not commit the crime), perfect certainty (laws published and open legal process), common truth (truth of crime only when completely proven), optimal specification (individualization of sentences)
• Suitable punishment “robs for ever the idea of a crime of any attraction” (104)
• Obstacle-sign constitute new arsenal of penalties must obey several conditions
o As unarbitrary as possible: “the idea of the offense will be enough to arouse the sign of the punishment”- natural consequence. (Vermeil) “those who abuse public liberty…deprived of their own” (105)
 “Power must act while concealing itself beneath the gentle force of nature”
o Complex of sign engage mechanics of force: penalty and disadvantages more lively the crime and its pleasures
 (Mably) “…source of evil” (vagabond-laziness) (106)
 Make penalty something feared (pride led to crime, let it be hurt)
o Duration integrated into economy of penalty (107)- facilitate proper action
 Punish diminishes as it produces effect (chacot, gene, normal)
o Penalty directed above all at potentially guilty (108)
 Penalty natural- retribution that guilty makes to his fellow citizens
 Body of condemned- from property of king to societal property
 (Cahiers) Public works: collective interest and visible/verifiable
o Learned economy of publicity (109) from torture (physical fear/collective horror) to decipherable sign/representation of public morality
 Ceremony of mourning (110)- from festival to school
 Secret punishment wasted (111)- criminal source of instruction
o Inversion of traditional discourse of crime: glory to misfortune (112)
• Reformers criticized imprisonment: incapable of corresponding to specific crime
o No effect on public so it is useless, even harmful to society (costly, causes idleness, multiplies vices) (114)
o Subject to defiance for citizens- obscurity causes suspicion of injustices
o Whole middle between light and death penalty
o Short transformation period
• 4 principle penalties remain in penal code all forms of detention- forced labor, detention, reclusion and imprisonment
• Scaffold replaced by prison with centralized administration (115)
• In <20 years, detention for every offense that did not require death penalty (116)
• Before, natural relation of crime to penalty (117) and security for someone, one does not punish (118) or to secure offenders (those not yet convicted)
o Prison disqualified because bound up with arbitrary, excesses of sovereign- used for philosophers and dissidents
o Counter to individuality of punishment (119) – punishes whole family
• What cause sudden shift to prison? Number of great models
o 1596 Rasphius in Amsterdam (120)- beggars/young malefactors
 Duration- could be reduces based on behavior
 Compulsory work (received wages)
 Strict timetables, obligations, prohibitions, supervision, religious readings link theory and spiritual transformation
o 1749 Ghent in Aloust- idleness caused most crimes
 Benefits: promoted work ethic, reduced taxpayer compensation to owners and number of criminal prosecutions, mass of new workers, true poor to benefit from charity (121)
 Prisoners earned wages & learned trade through compulsory work
 Duration related to length needed for correction
o English models added importance of isolation: provides terrible shock, apprenticeship, spiritual conversion (122)
o Gloucester model: total confinement for most dangerous criminals
o 1790 Philadelphia: continuously reexamined/transformed so not doomed to immediate failure like others (123)
 Constantly employed: defray expenses & to moral/material reform
 Strict timetable, limited solitary, duration based on behavior
 Penalty carried out secretly (124)
 Transformation process between convict and supervisor
 Work on soul: solitude, self-examination, religious exhortation
 Transformation based on knowledge of individual (125)
• Convergence of models: directed toward future (prevent repetition) (126), not to efface crime but to transform criminal, individualize penalties
• Disparity of models: technique of individualizing (instrument of transform) (127)
• Application of penalty to body and soul- instead of obstacle-sign, forms of coercion and schemata of constraint, applied and repeated (128) to restore juridical subject/shape obedient subject by general, detailed form of some power
• Special relationship between punished and punisher (total power free of 3rd party)
o Secrecy and autonomy imperative
o Contrary to 2 aims: citizen participation, render power adequate/ transparent to publicly defined laws (secret punishment not in legal code)
 New power as arbitrary/despotic as before (129)
• Prison=institutionalization of power to punish
• 3 way of organizing power: monarchical, obstacle-sign (130), reformist techniques of individual coercion
• Integral part of new prison system = surveillance and normalization through discipline as well as categorization/documentation
o This is illustrated by the Panopticon- designed for constant surveillance
o Panopticon is perfect exercise of power because “it can reduce the number who exercise it, while increasing the number of those on whom it is exercised” (206)- integrated into any function (medicine, education, production and punishment)- “new political anatomy” (208)
• Discipline is a “whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, target” (215) and “techniques for assuring the ordering of human multiplicities”
• Prisons became self-evident form of punishment for civilized society based on “deprivation of liberty” (232)- prison to pay one’s debts to society = natural
• Imprisonment covered both deprivation of liberties and transformation of criminal
• Complete/austere institutions (prison) = “exhaustive disciplinary apparatus” (235)
• Ideology imagined by reformers: isolation (intimate exchange between convict and power exercised over him), work and prayer (remedy against wandering imagination), prison instrument in modulation of penalty (once reformed, criminal must return to society)
• “Seven universal maxims of the good ‘penitential conditions’”(269)- essential function of transformation of individual’s behavior, convicts isolated/distributed based on gravity of offense (also age, mental attitude, technique of correction and stage of transformation), penalties altered based on individual, work essential element, education of convict crucial, prison supervised by people of moral qualities technical abilities of an educator, and imprisonment followed by measures of assistance/supervision until rehabilitation is complete
• “Crime constitutes a political instrument” (289)
• Carceral system completed in 1840- opening of Mettray (disciplinary form at its most extreme) (293)- inmates had numbers, were taught military exercises, conducted cleanliness inspections, forced work (9 or 10 hours per day), required education, isolation for even minor offenses- it produced bodies that were docile and capable (correctional facility for children)
o Deputies of Mettray were a mixture of judge, teacher, foreman, officer, and parent- lived in close proximity to inmates and rarely left prison
o Undisciplined/dangerous could be normalized through “technical elaboration and rational reflection” (295)
o Prison transformed punitive procedure into penitentiary techniques
 No longer offence but departure from norm
 Made power to punish natural and legitimate (lowered the threshold of tolerance for penalty- appears free of excesses and violence)- “nothing in it that recalls the former excess of sovereign power” (302)
 New form of law: mixture of legality, nature, prescription, constitution and norm
 Capture of body and perpetual observation “examinatory justice”
 Solidity of prisons through reduced utility of crimes and growth of disciplinary networks