Saturday, August 31, 2013
A1 Reading Response Question
Hey folks,
In a comment to this post, please list at least FIVE claims from the Foucault reading that you believe will be useful in your analysis of the stories. A good way to do this is to read the Foucault, then read some stories, and then return to the Foucault and try to apply the theory to the examples presented in the narratives.
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1. Foucault: “its [the body’s] constitution as labor power is possible only if it is caught in a system of subjection…the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body” (173)
ReplyDeleteIn other words, the body is only useful in the political field if the body is capable of labor and it is in an inferior position in which it must perform to its capabilities.
2. Foucault: “power exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy…this power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who ‘do not have it’; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them” (174)
Here Foucault is arguing that the exchange at play is not as simple as one coercing the other with force; rather, he says that the power over the body works to engage the subject in a way in which he/she is ____. The subject’s acceptance of the power is conducive to maintaining the power over the subject.
3. Foucault: “[the soul] has a reality; it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power…unlike the soul represented by Christian theology…[it] is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision, and constraint.” (177)
Foucault argues that the soul develops from the inner struggles of a person who is conflicted with authority and its power over the person’s life.
4. Foucault: “A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved.” (180)
Foucault is saying that if the body is passive and submissive, authority may do with it whatever it wants. That being said, if a subject isn’t docile, figures of authority often force docility on a subject via medicine.
5. Foucault: “Discipline…dissociates power from the body; on the one hand, it turns it into an ‘aptitude,’ a ‘capacity,’ which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses the course of the energy, the power that might result from it, and turns it into a relation of strict subjection” (182)
Foucault is arguing that through discipline, the body is empowered in that it is expected to perform to its best ability, yet it is disempowered in that the body is still a subject to a figure of authority.
-Ella Fayer
oops forgot to fll in that blank before submitting this. should read "the subject in a way in which he/she is feeding the process"
DeleteHELLO!
ReplyDelete1. "But we can surely accept the general proposition that, in our societies, the systems of punishment are to be situated in a certain "political economy" of the body... it is always the body that is at issue - the body and its forces, their utility and their docility, their distribution and their submission" (173).
I think it's interesting that Foucault mentions that all forms of punishment are exercised specifically on the body itself (mostly because that's the only form of "property" that we have that can be affected by such punishments), which in turn he implies affects the mind as well.
2. "...power is exercised rather than possessed...this power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who 'do not have it'; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them; it exerts pressure on them, just as they themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the grip it has on them." (174)
What I think Foucault is saying is that the dominant class does not have the power of punishment/subjugation because they have taken it from those "who don't have it", but it's the people who "don't have it" that perpetuate this power by obeying the "dominant class". Foucault mentions the catch 22 that the dominated class is in as they constantly resist against that power that they themselves are perpetuating.
3. " Rather than seeing this soul as the reactivated remnants of an ideology, one would see it as the present correlative of a certain technology of power over the body. ... it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished...This is the historical reality of this soul, which, unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, is not born in in and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision, and constraint." (177)
Foucault states that unlike the traditional, Christian definition of what a "soul" is, the soul's development depends solely on one's reactions and interpretations of the different types of authority in his or her life.
4. "...all these [prison riots]... have been about the body and material things.... What was at issue was not whether the prison environment was too harsh or too aseptic, too primitive or too efficient, but its very materiality as an instrument and vector of power, it is this whole technology of power over the body that the technology of the 'soul'...fails either to conceal or to compensate, for the simple reason that it is one of its tools" (178)
It doesn't matter how much stability and comfort that someone/something in power may provide, the issue at hand is the fact that the idea of power is exercised over their bodies. The idea of being subjugated sometimes pushes the subjugated party to try and break out of it.
5. "Discipline increases the forces of the body and diminishes these same forces...it dissociates power from the body; on the one hand, it turns it into an 'aptitude,' a 'capacity,' which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses the course of the energy, the power that might result from it, and turns it into a relation of strict subjection" (182)
Foucault explains that discipline has both pros and cons in that it allows the body to physically perform at its best as well as creating healthy habits, but it is still a "prisoner" to whoever/whatever the authority figure is.
1.“…the systems of punishment are to be situated in a certain ‘political economy’ of the body: even if they do not make use of violent or bloody punishment, even when they use ‘lenient’ methods involving confinement or correction, it is always the body that is at issue – the body and its forces, their utility and their docility, their distribution and their submission.” (172)
ReplyDeleteBy incarcerating, the system is trying to tame and break the spirit of the inmate. Their goal, like that of slavery is to make a docile and useful body through incarceration that was once done with physical pain.
2.“…the body become a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body.” (173)
Only when a person understands and is subjective to power are they seen as effective to society.
3.“The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.” (174)
If you can control the soul of the man, you can control their existential significance as well. By controlling the soul you can control the body.
4.“A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved.” (180)
Only when a person is completely submissive are they able to be molded by someone in power and “improved”.
5.“In short it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions – to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide – it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.
Visibility is a powerful asset that can be used to control.
1. “[Power] is not the “privilege” [...] of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions.” (p. 172)
ReplyDeleteFoucault says here that power over people is not something that is given to those in the dominant class on a case-by-case basis, but rather it refers to the entire structure of society. It runs deeper than just “those with power” and “those without power,” instead our entire social system is bound up in class hierarchy.
2. “This political investment of the body is bound up [...] with its economic use” (p. 173)
Because prisoners have needs and requirements like anyone else--food, water, shelter, etc--but also have value as, for example, laborers, much of the politics surrounding prisoners deal with balancing the cost required to house a prisoners with what the prisoner can give back to the system. In this way, the literal physical presence of bodies is prioritized over any sort of abstract needs the prisoners might have.
3. “The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.” (p. 177)
Since the soul is, supposedly, immortal and unique to each person, the limitations of the body can actually hinder it. If a person is imprisoned, for example, the fact that their body is being subjected to forces beyond its control can be extremely taxing on a person and their soul. However, if that person were to be “soulless,” the effects on the body would be met with no resistance.
4. “Thus discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, ‘docile’ bodies.” (p. 182)
Both soldiers and prisoners alike are disciplined in a way that transforms them, physically, into something else. In the case of soldiers, the entire body is trained to be more efficient and more powerful. In the case of prisoners, the body that is being trained is the prison system itself. They longer they are under the control of the prison system, the more docile they are supposed to become.
5. “[The Panopticon induces] in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.”
Foucault relies on human nature to avoid being caught and punished by devising a system in which prisoners think they’re constantly being watched; a sort of Big Brother-like setup. This fear of being watched will in Foucault’s mind cut down drastically on the amount of wrongdoing done by the prisoners.
1. “This political investment of the body is bound up, in accordance with complex reciprocal relations, with its economic use; it is largely as a force of production that the body is invested with relations of power and domination; but, on the other hand, its constitution as labor power is possible only if it is caught up in a system of subjection (in which need is also a political instrument meticulously prepared, calculated and used); the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body.” (173)
ReplyDeleteThe body must function as both a dominant and submissive force to harness the fullest extent of its power.
2. “Now, the study of this microphysics presupposes that the power exercised on the body is conceived not as property, but as a strategy; that its effects of domination are attributed not to “appropriation”, but to dispositions, maneuvers, tactics, techniques, functionings; that one should decipher in it a network of relations, constantly in tension, in activity, rather than a privilege that one might possess; that one should take as its model a perpetual battle, rather than a contract regulating transaction or the conquest of a territory. “ (174)
Power exercised on the body is not simply given, taken, or possessed, but the product of an ever present struggle and internal tension.
3. “The classical age discovered the body as object and target of power. It is easy enough to find signs of the attention paid to the body-to the body that is manipulated, shaped, trained; which obeys, responds, becomes skillful, and increases its forces.” (180)
Mastery and manipulation of the body became an external sign of individual skill and power, a point discovered during the classical age.
4. “While jurists or philosophers were seeking in the pact of a primal model for the construction or reconstructions of the social body, the soldiers and with them the technicians of discipline were elaborating procedures for the individual and collective coercion of bodies” (187).
Jurists and philosophers served as “planners” who aspired to construct and reconstruct “the social body” while soldiers actually mobilized this type of social alteration through their ability to generate discipline and thus manipulate (“coerce”) bodies.
5. “If it is true that the leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion, which to a certain extent provided the model for and general form of the great Confinement, then the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects. Rather than the massive binary divisions between one set of people and another, it called for multiple separations, individualizing distributions, an organization in depth of surveillance and control, and intensification and ramification of power.” (196)
The plague provided people with a hierarchical divide based on the extent of their sickness. Instead of being cast off by society as lepers were, those affected by the plague were divided into groups and fiercely surveillance, thus forming a carefully defined organization of power in society.
1. “But we can surely accept the general proposition that, in our societies, the systems of punishment are to be situated in a certain "political economy" of the body; even if they do not make use of violent or bloody punishment, even when they use “lenient” methods involving confinement or correction, it is always the body that is at issue - the body and its forces, their utility and their docility, their distribution and their submission" (172).
ReplyDeleteIn this quote Foucault claims that there is more than one method of punishment. This is appropriate considering that this time period saw a transition from inflicting very public and bodily punishments to inflicting more private and mental ones. In many ways, this is more effective because the soul of the prisoner is encroached upon and thereby, their mind becomes malleable to their wants.
2. “But the body is also directly involved in a political field…they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs” (173).
This again emphasizes the type of control exerted both on the physical and mental aspects of a being. By using the words “mark,” “train,” and “torture,” Foucault sends the image that we are almost animalistic beings –stripped of our identity and by default, our souls.
3. “The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.” (177).
It is apparent that the soul of a man is of greater use than of any single body. The author suggests that if one can get into the mind of a person, one controls the thoughts and, in theory, their actions.
4. "What was at issue was not whether the prison environment was too harsh or too aseptic, too primitive or too efficient, but its very materiality as an instrument and vector of power, it is this whole technology of power over the body that the technology of the 'soul'--that of the educationalists, psychologists, and psychiatrists--fails either to conceal or to compensate, for the simple reason that it is one of its tools" (178).
This excerpt goes back to what Foucault has been conveying about punishment. It is no longer a matter of torturing the physical body but of torturing the rational and sensible part of an individual. Environmental conditions cease to become the issue –a fact reiterated by his introduction of “psychologists” and “psychiatrists” who have the ability to touch the soul.
5. “A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved.” (180)
Submissiveness is a prevalent theme in Foucault’s work. Again, he mentions our potential to be malleable, and therefore tools of those wish to exercise their power over us –puppets if you will.
1. "the soul... the element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power.” (177)
ReplyDeleteOn multiple occasions, Foucault gives us the instance of power as a machine, articulating the effects of subversion on a sometimes non-corporal kind of docility, first with the instance of institutional power barriers, followed by the example of the Panopticon.
2. “L’Homme-machine [man-machine], is both a materialist reduction of the soul and a general theory of dressage, at the center of which reigns the notion of “docility,” which joins the analyzable body to the manipulable body. A body is docile that may be subjected, used, tranformed, and improved. The celebrated automata, on the other hand … were political puppets, small-scale models of power.” (180)
Foucault makes this distinction between the physical and non-physical ‘body’ clear in his description of the societal context for a necessary power distribution. He describes on the one hand the anatomico-metaphysical idea of power, which deals with the mechanic details on the power distribution, and the “technico-political”, which deals with the structural hierarchy which defines the terms of the distribution.
3. “.. the object of the control … [is] the economy, the efficiency of movements, their internal organization … there is the modality: it implies an uninterrupted, constant coercion, supervising the processes of the activity rather than its result, and it is exercised according to a codification that partitions as closely as possible time, space, movement. These methods … assured the constant subjection of its forces and imposed on them a relation of docility-utility, might be called ‘disciplines’” (181)
The efficacy of the disciplinary system is reliant on the existence of a utility function. Foucault asserts that the utility of the subjected must equal or be greater than the relative cost of the ‘superior’ party, as greater utility results in greater docility, and vice-versa. Foucault explores this idea with Bentham’s idea of the Panopticon.
4. “… some of the essential techniques that most easily spread from one to another. These were always meticulous, often minute, techniques, but they had their importance: because they defined a certain mode of detailed political investment of the body, a 'new micro-physics' of power…” (183)
Foucault explores the idea of the micro-physics of power multiple times. In his exploration of the Panopticon, he asserts the importance of control of the individual, that each person feel unequivocally subjected to an overpowering being that is, or at least could be, watching him/her at any time. Foucault is concerned with the ‘small things’, ideas and events that arrange together a mechanism of power and control, through careful observation.
5. "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. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers." (Panopticon 5)
In his writing, Foucault explores the weaknesses of certain power structures by rationalizing methods of discipline and punishment. The Panopticon represents the peak of efficiency for which Foucault strives, as well as a complete example of total physical repression and non-corporal obedience. A self-imposed sense of weakness presents an ultimate, totalitarian example of a Big Brother scenario.
1. Types of punishment adjust to fit social/economic needs (Foucault supports this claim with the example of forced labor in a slave society vs. “corrective” detention in a capitalist society where free labor is a market requirement)
ReplyDelete2. The body is involved in a “political economy,” which is related to how the body produces work and how it responds to the power exerted on it. (From the text: “But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks...The political investment of the body is bound up...with it's economic use...the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body” (The Body of the Condemned, 173). )
3. The “soul” is a product of punitive power and our reaction to it. It in turn invests punishments with their power because of its knowledge in the effects of such punishments, especially in relation to our bodies (“The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body” (The body of the Condemned, 177). )
4. Disciplinary tactics evolved to produce “docile” bodies, which respond to subjugation and control because of their investment in a choreographed routine (like soldiers in an army, or citizens reacting to the discipline of the soldiers).
5. This is kind of an extrapolation, but here goes: In some cases, a physical institution can hold power by itself because of how it separates/exposes certain bodies, and requires no further investment from those in charge or those subjugated (as is the case in Bentham's Panopticon, where the guards do not necessarily have to be present in order to maintain complete control over the prisoners on view).
-Morgan Pavey
1. “We must rid ourselves of the illusion that penality is above all…a means of reducing crime and that...the political system or beliefs...tend toward expiation of obtaining redress, toward the pursuit of individuals or the attribution of collective responsibility” (171)
ReplyDeleteDispelling the idea that the penal system is a system of reform for the incarcerated is the first step in dissecting the illusion of the penal system that society has been blindly following. This understanding can lead to further understanding of phenomena that occurs after inmates leave the penitentiary.
2. “But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks…” (173)
Foucault brings the readers attention to how the ones in power utilize the systems in place to train, mould and create workers, soldiers, servants for that system. This control over the physical body, whether of soldiers or of inmates, also contributes to the system's control over the mind and the spirit.
3. “We should admit, rather, that power produces knowledge…that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that three is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.” (175)
Foucault presents the idea that it is not knowledge that gives one power, but rather power that gives one knowledge. One who is in a power position has access to knowledge that contributes to the control over those with lesser knowledge. Those in power are exercising their power of influence over the ignorance of those they control.
4. “A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved. The celebrated automata, on the other hand, were not only a way of illustrating an organism; they were also political puppets, small-scale models of power” (180)
This sentence seems to imply that those who are moulded by their system don't even understand that they are being moulded towards a certain purpose. The soldier is a great example as he is moulded to carry out certain tasks, have a certain lifestyle...etc; but after that lifestyle ceases to exist, those soldiers are lost, as if brainwashed to the point that they cannot think of a life beyond the military.
5. “…Power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment…[this] automatizes and disindividualizes power” (Panopticon 3)
Invisible power is a power that stays in control. Those who cannot see the power that one holds acts in accordance to what is expected of them out of fear. Once the fear of someone in power dwindles, the ones in power lose the control they once had.