User:Lbattich/Foucault and Deleuze - Synopsis

Foucault, The Means of Correct Training (From Discipline and Punishment)

In this chapter Foucault analyses what he terms the transition from sovereign societies to disciplinary societies, which emerged and developed through the 17th and 18th centuries.

"The disciplinary power is to 'train', rather than to select and to levy" (which would be a juridical/sovereign power: select, levy and punish, according to the written law or the whim of the sovereign)

It trains and disciplines by a two-fold movement: -It homogenized and normalized the "useless multitude of bodies" -It separates the mass into a multitude of individual elements. It separates the homogenized mass into particular individuals each with its particular features. Yet the movement of individualization is closely related to the "norm" (and what is "normal") common to the homogeneous society.

"Discipline makes individuals."

Foucault describes the use of simple procedures or "instruments" of disciplinary powers, such as: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and their combination in a procedure that is specific to [the disciplinary power], the examination."

Hierarchical Observation:

Disciplinary power "coerces by means of observation." The gaze forms part of the overall functioning of power. Whereas in sovereign societies, the visibility of the monarch or sovereign was part of the ritual of display of power. the subjected masses remained in the dark, their gazes did not hold play a central role in the exercise of sovereign power. In disciplinary societies, however, "all power would be exercised solely through the act of observation." All individuals, regardless of their rank within the power hierarchy of the society, act on each other by a constant surveillance.

"The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly." (173)

This instrumental observation is manifest in several disciplinary places of power, such as the school and the factory:

"Surveillance becomes a decisive economic operator both as an integral part of the production machinery and as a specific mechanism in the disciplinary power." (175)

Surveillance enables the disciplinary power to remain indiscreet (it is everywhere and always alert, present through the gaze of every individual and the network of their relations) and highly discreet ("it functions permanently and largely in silence")

This manner of instrumenting discipline, Foucault writes, "makes possible the operation of a relational power that sustains itself by its own mechanism and which, for the spectacle of public events, substitutes the uninterrupted play of calculated gazes."

Normalizing judgement

Every disciplinary system contains a "micro-penal" system within.

This micro-penal system differs from the juridical system (even though it may appropriate its rituals) in that it does not take an isolated case and refer it to the written law. Rather, the disciplinary micro-penality acts by making punishable the whole domain of the "non-conforming." That is, whatever does not conform to the disciplinary system. Thus the micro-penal system combines the urge to train (to educate, to make the subject conform to certain parameters) with the act of punishing.

Even thought the disciplinary power exercises a movement of normalization (and punishes whoever deviates from the norm), it separates its subjects according the their nature, potentialities, their level or their value. (see 181)

"The perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes." (183)

The examination

"The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze."

According to Foucalut, the examination was developed as a technique during the 17th century, with important transformations to the power relations within several institutions. (Such as the hospital)

The examination established the principle of "compulsory visibility." (187)

Furthermore, the examination introduces the techniques of documentation and archiving on a grand scale. The power of documentation is here an essential part of the mechanisms of disciplinary power.

The instrument of examination coupled with it techniques of documentation establish two possibilities:

• "The constitution of the individual as a describable, analysable object."
• "The constitution of a comparable system" for the measurement and description of phenomena and groups. (190)

Through the examination, the individual becomes an object for study (the object of analysis for a "scientific" apparatus, or branch of knowledge), and a node in which power is exercised (and thus manifested). In the double act of homogenization and indivualization that disciplinary power effect, we have:

• "The individual as he may be described, judged, measured, compared with others, in his very individuality."
• "The individual who has to be trained or corrected, classified, normalized, excluded, etc."