User:Manetta/annotations-of-foucault-disciplinary-society

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ANNOTATIONS

text: Foucault - the means of correct training (1977)


The idea of a disciplinary power originated from the 17th century. It 'makes' individuals, by applying its instruments:

  • hierarchical observation
  • normalization judgement
  • the examination


HIERARCHICAL OBSERVATION

The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation.

Observation is a apparatus that induce effects of

  • power, (as a school, prison, or psychology center does)
  • and has an ideal model.

Foucault describes multiple (architectural) spatial nesting’s of horizontal surveillance.

Architecture is not designed anymore in order "to be seen" (palaces) or "to observe the external space" (fortresses), but to be in contrast of those who are inside of the architectural object itself.

Surveillance is expressed in the architecture by innumerable petty (kleine) mechanisms, which play a role on the level of individual behavior, creating minor influences, but definitely significant ones. Foucault illustrates this with the examples of an hospital, military camp and school.

The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly. It is the center from where all orders would come, activities would be recorded & judged; all thanks to pure geometry. [panopticon] This continuous supervision leads to a shift from focus on production (quality in production) to the activity of the process itself (quality in work itself). Supervising workers became distinct from the "normal" workers.

Supervision prevents that a working team would lead to a loss of capital, and so it is an economic operator, both internal of the production as also in the disciplinary power.

A similar movement was to be found in elementary teaching, were tasks were classified and given due to the skills of the students.

The power techniques of surveillance function like a piece of machinery, it makes the 'physics' of power operate according to the laws of optics and mechanisms.


NORMALIZING JUDGEMENT

1. penalty mechanism

At the heart of all disciplinary systems functions a small penal mechanism, with specific

  • laws
  • offenses
  • judgements

The surveillance acts can be divided into micro-penalties according to

  • time
  • activity
  • behavior
  • speech
  • body
  • sexuality

which are connected to a specific range of punishment procedures.

"Each subject find himself caught in a punishable punishing universality."

In order to punish, the subject needs to feel the offense it has committed; by:

  • humiliation
  • confusion

2. order of disciplinary punishments

The order of disciplinary punishments is of a mixed nature: an artificial order, divided into:

  • law
  • programme
  • set of regulations

Specific to the penalty is non-observance; the subject is expected to reach a required "norm"

3. to punish is to exercise

Disciplinary punishment must be essentially corrective, and do therefore take the form of an exercise or training.

"To punish is to exercise."

4. reward systems

In discipline, punishment is only one element of a dual system:

  • gratification
  • punishment

This is the system that is active through training and correction.

5. reward system as motivator

A ranking system marks the gaps and hierarchal qualities, but also punishes and rewards.

example: military honorary classification system, where specified levels are trained with a specified punish and reward system.

—

Foucault explains about a hierarchal punishment system based on the student’s marks and rankings. A model that

  • (1) sorted students by their capabilities,

according to the use that could be made of them;

  • and (2) conforms all the students to the same model,

"so that they might all be like one another"

—> the penalty in the disciplinary institutions NORMALIZES

Is the norm the new law of modern society? Normalization imposes homogeneity, but it individualizes by making it possible

  • to measure gaps
  • to determine levels
  • and fix specialities


THE EXAMINATION

The examination combines the techniques of

  • "observing hierarchy"
  • with "normalizing judgements"

It establishes an individual visibility, through which others

  • differentiate
  • and judge

the individual.

This brilliance visibility imposes

  • a power relation
  • a knowledge relation

and is a type of power itself

Foucault questions why the concept of "examination" is never researched through history.

Examination is about the possibilities of knowledge, as it is a political investment.

"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. visibility of the examination

The examination transformed the economy of visibility into the exercise of power.

The examination is the ceremony of objectification. —> disciplinary power manifests it potency by arranging objects.

Discipline has its own type of ceremony: the review, the parade. As its power was manifested by watching, the ceremonies’ "subjects" were presented as "objects".

2. documentation of the examination

The examination also introduces individuality into the field of documentation.

By examinations, an individual becomes part of a network of writing; documents that capture and fix (vastleggen) the examination. —> administration! "the register enables one to …."

It transcribes the codes of disciplinary individuality.

Thanks to the apparatus of writing (documentation), examination offers two possibilities:

  • approaching the individual as a describable, analyzable object, to maintain him in his individual features
  • a comparative system for
    • measurement
    • description of groups
    • description of collective facts
    • and calculation of gaps between individuals

[data-mining]

3. the individual as a 'case'

The examination, surrounded by all its documentary techniques, makes each individual a 'case'

A case is the individual as he may be (1)

  • described
  • judged
  • measured
  • compared

(captured) within its context (the other individuals). And he has to be (2)

  • trained
  • corrected
  • classified
  • normalized
  • excluded
  • etc.

To be written about is power, not only for the future, but also for the now.

VARIABLE : PARAMETER coded value (2) (1)

"Turning real lives into writing is no longer a procedure of heroization"; it functions as a procedure of objectification and subjection (in 1977!)

The examination as the fixing, as the pinning down of each individual in his own particularity clearly indicates the appearance of a new modality of power, in which each individual (…) is linked by his status to

  • the features
  • the measurements
  • the gaps
  • the 'marks' that characterize him

and make him a 'case'.

—

"The individual is no doubt the fictious atom of an 'ideological" representation of society, but he is also a reality fabricated by this specific technology of power that i have called 'discipline'."

"Power produces reality; (…) domains of objects and rituals of truth."

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