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The means of correct training - Foucault

The chief function of the disciplinary power is to train. To train in order to levy and select all the more. It does not link forces together in order to reduce them but it seeks to bind them together in such a way to multiply and use them. Discipline makes the individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise.

The success disciplinary power depends on three elements: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and examination.

Hierarchical observation

The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation; an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects of power, and in which, conversely, the means of coercion make those on whom they are applied clearly visible. The almost ideal model is the military camp. In the perfect camp, all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power. The camp is geometrically divided into sections each adding to the general visibility. This early model of observation was applied also to urban development; the spatial nesting of hierarchized surveillance. On the architectural level it is not about to be seen or to observe the external space, it is about to control what its inside. An architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them and to alter them. An example of this is the hospital but also schools. The school is a place for observation, recording and training.

The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly. But this is impossible, the disciplinary gaze need relays and a model that works better than the circle is the pyramid. It fulfils to requirements better: 1) to be complete enough to form a uninterrupted network and 2) to be discreet enough not to weigh down with an inert mass on the activity to be disciplined. An example is the factory where a new type of surveillance was introduced and later on applied into teaching. Surveillance became a decisive economic operator both as a internal part of the production machinery and as a specific mechanism in the disciplinary power. The disciplinary power in the pyramid acts absolutely indiscreet, since it is everywhere ans always alert, but also discreet since it acts in silence.

Normalizing Judgement

1. At the heart of all disciplinary systems functions a small penal mechanism. Every system (school, the army) is using some sort of micro-penality system of time (absences), activity (inattention), behaviour (disobedience), speech (chatter), the body (irregular gestures) and sexuality (indecency). Slight departures from correct behavior were punished.
2. Discipline brought with a specific way of punishing resembles a small-scale model of the court. What is specific is its non-observance. The order that the disciplinary punishments must enforce is of a mixed nature: it is an artificial order, explicitly laid down by a law, a programme, a set of regulations. But it is also an order defined by natural and observable processes.
3. Disciplinary punishment has the function of reducing gaps, to be corrective. The disciplinary systems favour punishments that are exercise.
4. In discipline, punishment is only one element of a double system: gratification-punishment. Rewards can work positive too. Defining behavior on the basis of the two opposed values of good and evil.
5. The distribution according to ranks or grade has a double role: it marks the gaps, hierarchizes qualities, skills and aptitudes, but it also punishes and rewards.

Punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power, is aimed neither at expiation, nor even precisely at repression. It brings five quite distinct operations into play:

1. differentiation
2. compares individuals to a minimal threshold
3. measuring individuals and places them in a hierarchical system
4. comformity (standard)
5. traces the abnormal

In short it normalizes.

Examination

The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. The examination is highly ritualized. In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth.

The examination introduced a whole mechanism that linked to a certain type of the formation of knowledge a certain form of the exercise of power:

1. The examination transformed the economy of visibility into the exercise of power
2. Examination introduces individuality into the field of documentation
3. The examination, surrounded by all its documentary techniques, makes each individual a case