Discipline and Punish

Foucault’s book discipline and punish examines the forces of social control since the rise of modernity. His opening chapter contrasts the public torture of Robert-François Damiens in the 1800’s against the schedule of inmates in 19th century prisons.

His book gives particular attention to Jeremy Bentham’s Panoptican, a modernist prison design which sort to maximize prison efficiency by reducing the number of guards required in relation the number of prisoners.



The way Bentham achieved this was to build a multi story, semi circular structure. Prison cells lined the walls with a window to the outside and bars in place of an inside wall. At the centre of the prison a guard tower over looks every cell, which is backlit by its window rendering the prisoner permanently visible. The guard, on the other hand, is shielded from view by venetian blinds so that inmates can not tell when they are being watched and more importantly when they are not being watched. This perceived state of constant surveillance forces the inmates to regulate their behavior at all times and thus eliminates the need for enough guards to carry out such surveillance.

“The most striking thesis of discipline and punish is that the disciplinary techniques introduced for criminals become the model for other modern sites of control (schools, hospitals, factories, etc). So that the prison discipline pervades all of modern society. We live, Foucault says, in a ‘carceral archipeligo’ (DP, 298)” (Gutter)

Foucault describes these techniques as taking the form of three distinct actions;

Hierarchical observation.
Modern architecture are built to both serve the functional need of the people who use them but also to increase their visibility to assure that the powers that govern the space can be effective. The panoptican is the archetype of this structure but the principles are applied elsewhere such as schools, lecture theaters, factory floors and office buildings.

Normalizing judgment.
Society increasingly values rankings and statics, individuals are therefore judged not by the rightness or wrongness of there actions but by how they compare to their peers.

Examination.
This final action combines the two principles above and implements them. Individuals can then be observed, judged and attention can be focused on those who exhibit unacceptable or unusual behavior.

This is of course fascinating in much the same way 1984 or the matrix is but is it applicable to post-modern society? I personally believe it is more relevant in a contemporary Brittish context than it was in France at its time of writing. With the advent of CCTV, expensive and complex architectural concerns or active authority figures are no longer necessary. An understanding of how the normalizing gaze is employed to examine us is ingrained through the education system from an early age. Though we may not be aware of it our lives more closely match that of the prisoner than ever before.