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

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault - Essay ExampleThesis Power was the fulcrum around which each(prenominal) else revolved during the Classical period and through Foucaults examples and arguments we understand how the body was debased through irresistible impulse and control, that gradually there came or so a shift in power relations which we are experiencing today. In Foucaults words - Perhaps we should abandon the belief that power makes mad and that, by the comparable token, the renunciation of power is one of the conditions of knowledge. 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 conk 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 tool to discipline the body du ring the 18th century, giving us examples of torturous penalties that were meted out during those days such as overt executions. E.g. Damiens torture (pgs. 3-5) This period of torture resulted in the ushering in of a new penal system for Europe and the United States. New theories involving justice and crime were introduced while the ancient laws and customs were discarded and the new reforms were based on the political 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 to a greater extent than the crime and part of their powers are distributed to other authorities. Today, criminal 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 guilt morphed into a criminality of fraud. This complex mechanism laid more emphasis and value on more stringent methods of surveillance and effective techniques of getting education 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 finish 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 b rings about subjection. According to Foucault, disciplinary coercion establishes in the body, the constricting link between an increase 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,