Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault - adjudicate ExampleThesis Power was the fulcrum around which all else revolved during the Classical check and through Foucaults examples and arguments we understand how the body was debased through irresistible impulse and control, but gradually there came nigh a shift in fountain relations which we are experiencing today. In Foucaults words - Perhaps we should desolate the belief that power makes mad and that, by the analogous token, the renunciation of power is one of the conditions of acquaintance. We should admit, rather, that power produces knowledge. (Michael Foucault, 1977, pp. 27/28) According to Foucault, both power and knowledge compliment each other and go chip in in hand together. He explains that power relations cannot exist without the field of knowledge and in the same way, it is knowledge that contributes towards power relations. In Part I, Foucault speaks about torture that was used as a shaft to redress the body d uring the 18th century, giving us examples of torturous punishableties that were meted out during those days such as frequent executions. E.g. Damiens torture (pgs. 3-5) This period of torture resulted in the ushering in of a new penal form for Europe and the United States. New theories involving law and crime were introduced while the ancient laws and customs were cast out and the new reforms were based on the governmental justification of punishment. According to Foucault, justice no longer takes public responsibility for the violence that is bound up with its practice (Michael Foucault, 1977, p.9) However, with the introduction of the new penal system in our society today, judges have to judge something more than the crime and part of their powers are distributed to other authorities. Today, sinful justice functions and justifies itself only by this perpetual reference to something other than itself, by this unceasing reinscription in non-juridical systems. Its fate is to be redefined by knowledge (22). In Part II, Foucault sheds light on Punishment. During this period punitive practices were redefined through refinement. Cold blooded criminality morphed into a criminality of fraud. This complex mechanism determined more emphasis and value on more stringent methods of surveillance and effective techniques of getting tuition which critics called a bad economy of power. (79) The eighteenth century saw many reforms in the legal system such as new techniques and tactics for refining and regularizing the art of punishment and reducing the economic and political costs by making it more effective. In Part III, Foucault discusses about Docile bodies that was directed towards coercion and supervising the activity rather than the result. In Foucaults opinion, discipline serves to create docile bodies by disassociating the power from the body. On one hand, it increases an individuals capacity and aptitude but on the other hand, it arrests the flow of energy and brings about subjection. According to Foucault, disciplinary coercion establishes in the body, the constricting link between an change magnitude aptitude and an increased domination (138) Among Foucaults Disciplinary techniques, the one I have chosen for discussion is Control of Activity. Foucault describes discipline as a constant controlling of the activities,