- social control
- the way society effects our subconsciousness
- institutions
'Literature, art and their respective producers do not exist independently of a complex institutional framework which authorises, enables, empowers and legitimises them. This framework must be incorporated into any analysis that pretends to provide a thorough understanding of cultural goods and practices.'
Randal Johnson in Walker & Chaplin (1999)
Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984)
- Madness and Civilisation
- Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
The Great Confinement (late 1600s)
- 'houses of correction' to curb unemployment and idleness
- mad people were seen as the fabric of society, no separation between the sane and the insane (before 1600s)
- new sensibility started to emerge towards work and the social usefulness of work, to make people better
- anxiety emerged around people who were unable to work effectively/socially useless
- houses of correction - giant work houses/prisons were built, almost like factories
- housed criminals, drunkards, vagabonds, diseased, single mothers etc
- put to a work station, and if they didn't do it they were beaten
- very crude way of making the unproductive productive
- understand was that this was an exercise in moral reform, making people better through the honesty of work
The birth of the asylum
- houses of correction were soon seen as a massive mistake
- inside the houses of correction, all the different deviants would corrupt each other, the insane would corrupt the sane, the criminal corrupt the non-criminal
- special institutions then came about, particularly the asylum which specialised in housing and correcting the insane
- new legislation, specialist institution
- worked on correcting the inmates in a very different way
- instead of violence as a tool, more subtle tools were used, treated like children
- if they behaved appropriately, they were given rewards and behaviour was celebrated
- if behaved badly, they were "told off" by an internal figure
*Foucault sees this as an important shift from pre-modern societies, that attempt to control society using the "stick", to a more specialised form of social control, subtly training people to behave*
- not just about punishing, but correcting
- new specialist knowledge starts to emerge - biology, psychiatry, medicine etc
- legitimise the practices of hospitals, doctors, psychiatrists
- Foucault aims to show how these forms of knowledge and rationalising institutions like the prison, the asylum, the hospital, the school, now affect human beings in such a way that they alter our consciousness and that they internalise our responsibility
- responsibility for your own discipline
The Pillory
- spectacular and grizzly discipline/punishment
- visible discipline
- visible reminder of power of the state
- middle of village, criminals put in stocks, villagers then get to throw "all kinds" at the criminal
- reminder not to test the state
- punishment that works on fear
e.g. Guy Fawkes
Disciplinary society and disciplinary power
'Discipline is a 'technology' aimed at 'how to keep someone under surveillance, how to control his conduct, his behaviour, his aptitudes, how to improve his performance, multiply his capacities, how to put him where he is most useful: that is discipline in my sense.'
Foucault, 1981 in O'Farrell 2005:102
- sun = number one disciplinary mechanism
Jeremy Bentham's design The Panopticon
- proposed 1791
- design for generic institution, multifunctional institution
- could be a school, prison, asylum, workhouse
- most were asylums or prisons when actually built
- rotunda, circular building
- on the side are cells with walls in between where an individual would be placed
- number of floors
- building proposed as the perfect institution, a building that would function perfectly for whatever institution you make it into
- e.g. Millbank Prison on site of Tate Britain, institutional 'gaze'
- each cell is open from the front, and lit from the back by a large window
- constantly staring into the middle at an observation tower guarded by supervisors/guards etc
- inmates cannot see each other, there's no lateral visibility
- all you can see is the constant presence of the people in the observation tower, no inmates
- constant reminder that you're being watched and supervised by someone who expects you to work and behave in a certain way, so you never behave in a way that the supervisor wouldn't want you to
- effectively you are telling a lie because you don't want to be "told off"
- what is the point in misbehaving because you'll just be punished
- no one to share thoughts, feelings or emotions
- internal form of psychological torture in an extreme sense
- this has a really strange effect
- has a mental effect
- effect entirely opposite to the "dungeon" where you lock people away and forget about them, mass social repression
- Panopticon, everything is really light, visible and on display
- Foucault particularly interested in this - the object of scrutiny and study
*the Panopticon internalises in the individual the conscious state that he is always being watched*
'Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.'
Foucault, 1975
- panopticon eventually doesn't actually need any staff to man it, because people automatically start to behave
- Foucault is interested in the fact the building is an analogy for how society controls and disciplines
- used as a system for classifying and scrutinising
- allows scrutiny
- allows supervisor to experiment on subjects
- aims to make them productive
- reforms prisoners
- helps treat patients
- helps instruct school children
- helps confine, but also study the insane
- helps supervise workers
- helps put beggars and idlers to work
- institutional gaze = behaving in a way you think an institution wants you to behave, without anyone forcing you to
- patriarchal gaze = forcing women to adapt and act in a certain way, act towards male social definitions
- what Foucault is describing is a transformation in Western societies from a form of power imposed by a 'ruler' or 'sovereign' to A NEW MODE OF POWER CALLED "PANOPTICISM"
' the Panopticon is a model of house modern society organises its knowledge, its power, its surveillance of bodies and its 'training' of bodies
Examples of panopticism in everyday life
The open plan office
- myth is that it encourages people to share experiences and get along as a workforce, but what actually happens is that workers can be constantly seen by the boss so you feel more awkward and make sure that you're always working
- changes behaviour of workers
- visibility and knowing you're being scrutinised
- changing behaviour accordingly
- e.g. The Office (Ricky Gervais) humour of the programme comes from the fact that people in the office always know there is a camera crew in the office and people always see how they behave, under this knowledge people start to act up to the notion of what an office worker should behave like
The open plan bar
- everything in the pub is visible but to the bouncers and bar staff
- always on display
- unconsciously consciously force you to change your behaviour
- forces you to adapt in a more responsible kind of way
- changing how you walk in etc
Google maps
- can look into people's houses
- can go to street level
- every street in the world is photographed and mapped
- everywhere we go in society is recorded by CCTV cameras
- live in a surveillance society where we know that every single action is in some way recorded
- this internalised sensation of always being watch works panopticly to make us alter our behaviour
Pentonville Prison
- lecture to reform deviants
- in each seat was a barrier between each of the 'students'
- can't talk, can only see the central lecturer or supervisors
Lecture theatres
no accident that lecture theatres are arranged in the way that they are
- don't have same power as lecturer
- can see how everyone is acting and responding
- isn't the lecturer that is making us behave
- surrounded by institutional apparatus
- expected to conform
Register
- attend classes because you know if you don't you will be punished
Relationship between power, knowledge and the body
'Power relations have an immediate hold upon it [the body]; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.'
Foucault, 1975
- disciplinary society produces what Foucault calls 'docile bodies'
- self monitoring
- self correcting
- obedient bodies
Disciplinary techniques
'That the techniques of discipline and 'gentle punishment' have crossed the threshold from work to play shows how pervasive they have become within modern western societies'
Danaher, Schirato and Webb, 2000
- what your bodies should be like, what your physical aptitudes should be like
- start to feel guilty if we're the wrong dress size etc
- start to conform without anyone making you
- most modern gyms have a very big window or are open plan
- increase of labour force by 15% because people are living longer/are healthier
- rise of nation socialism in Germany, cult of the perfect body, the master race
Foucault and power
- his definition is not a top-down model as with Marxism
- power is not a thing or a capacity people have - it is a relation between different individuals and groups, and only exists when it is being exercised
- the exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted
- 'where there is power there is resistance'
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