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The Means of Correct Training, Michel Foucault

Foucault brings to our attention the mechanisms of power employed by the disciplinary state. Enclosed spaces that have their own rules of conduct aim to individualise and regulate the behaviour of their subjects. Collective spaces such as family, school, factories, prison or hospitals, all compartmentalise and splinter the individual's identity, thus reinforcing the technologies of social architecture. A subcategory of this is the technology of self, which relies heavily of self improvement and efficiency; the individual is motivated to invest in himself by the promise of being ranked according to a time and space based codification structure.

"Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise." (Foucault, 170)

The means of correct training are as follows: hierarchical observation, normalising judgement, and finally the examination.

Compared to previous ruling systems, the disciplinary society functions at a more discreet level, it exercises power by becoming invisible and shifting focus from itself to coordinated and standardised frameworks. Training, the now primary control tool, is used to embed the observing gaze in the subject's subconscious. The subject internalises the network of surveillance and adjusts to a situation in which his/her conduct is microscopically analysed. An example for this is circular architecture as illustrated by Ledoux' Arc-et-Senans, which consisted of buildings placed together around the administrative, policing, economic and religious centre. It heralded a new supervision type that would create an uninterrupted network by ridding itself of structures singling out constituting nodes, there would be no shade left in which to hide; a perpetual alertness would become the norm.

As a case study, Foucault uses the observations of La Salle and Demia on educational systems to subtract more general traits of the surveillance state. In schools, judicial privilege would multiply into the smallest fractions. Pupils would be ranked based on their compliance with the rules established by authoritative figures: lateness, absences, interruption of tasks, impoliteness, disobedience would be reprehended and punished through "light physical punishment, minor deprivations and petty humiliations" (Foucault, 178). There were also other, subtler ways of straying from the path: not measuring up to the rule, not conjuring up enough stamina or intelligence to complete a task. All these abnormalities needed to be corrected.

"Disciplinary punishment is, in the main, isomorphic with obligation itself; it is not so much the vengeance of an outraged law as its repetition, its reduplicated insistence. [..] To punish is to exercise." (Foucault, 180)

The correction can be realised in two ways: gratification and punishment. One can either reward conformable behaviour or punish its alternative. Through this system, binaries of good and evil, privilege and imposition are being installed in the performance of pupils, as opposed to simple prohibition. The more merit the pupil would demonstrate, the higher the rank he/she would be put under. Their value as functional beings in a social setting was determined by the hierarchy of their classification in such a way that it would mould obedient and efficient individuals. The normalising act consists of five operations:

"It refers individual actions to a whole that is at once a field of comparison, a space of differentiation and the principle of a rule to be followed. It differentiates individuals from one another, in terms of the following overall rule: that the rule be made to function as a minimal threshold, as an average to be respected or as an optimum towards which one must move. It measures in quantitative terms and hierarchizes in terms of value the abilities, the level, the 'nature' of individuals. It introduces, through this 'value-giving' measure, the constraint of a conformity that must be achieved. Lastly, it traces the limit that will define difference in relation to all other differences" (Foucault, 183).

The examination as defined by Foucault consists of "the ceremony of power", "the form of the experiment", "the deployment force" and the "establishment of truth" (Foucault, 184). It is the measuring system against which individuals are marked. A seventeenth century visit of the medic is a perfect example of the examining apparatus: daily visits created a situation of incessant inspection. The repetitious practice was echoed in schools, where pupils would be tested in spelling, arithmetic and other subjects.

"Disciplinary power [...] is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility. In discipline, it is the subjects who have to be seen.(Foucault,187)"

While in the sovereign society power was shown and publicly demonstrated, in the disciplinary society invisibility is strongly linked to dominance. Just as it would be difficult for actors blinded by spotlights to see the audience, being visible makes individuals vulnerable to the network of probing gazes, their performance an exam that they must sustain. Indeed, the idea of a stage suggests a deeper truth, namely the power relations between the two sides: performers are set apart and objectified, they cannot return the gaze. At the same time, the accuracy of the review depends on building a consistent archive of the individual's progress. In order to track down new developments, a system of writing needed to be devised that would assign each constituent a value. This practice was essential in the army, when it was necessary to note deserters, avoid repeating enrolments or keep track of disappearances and deaths. As a result of introducing distinctiveness into documentation, each person would become 'a case' of describable individuality. No longer would a lingering look be a sign of admiration, but a means of control.

Postscript on the Societies of Control, Gilles Deleuze