Although Foucault lived in the 1900s, his teachings still apply to today’s society. Foucault was big on the relationship between knowledge and power. People took action once they saw Wallace as a threat and they put her in her place. Michel Foucault’s concept of discipline helps us understand what happened to Wallace, because everyone is controlled by society’s norms and expectations. Michel Foucault 's “Discipline and Punish” was published in 1975 and was focused on convincing society that power and knowledge should be treated as two separate things. A chapter named “Panopticism,” however, is about a prison that was first constructed in Great Britain. It was specifically designed with the shape resembling a circle and in the center there was a big watch tower. It was a dynamic method to run a prison due to the fact that only a few guards were needed and all in one key location. All the prisoners could be seen from the watch tower, rather than needing multiple guards needing to check on every prisoner individually. The prisoners were under surveillance at all times, and even if they were not, they were under the impression they were. This all led to effortless control. Later, physical punishment …show more content…
Society was not happy with her and immediately went in to discipline her. Posting the video resulted in the “harassment of [Wallace’s] family, the publishing of [her] personal information, death threats, and being ostracized from an entire community” states The New York Times. Due to these ways of discipline, Wallace took the video down. Society did not agree with what Wallace had to say, however, if she had properly stated the problem rather than mock the Asians the outcome might have been different. When UCLA was asked about their opinion, they decided to stay out of the whole situation. The Los Angeles Times shows that UCLA stated, “While we were appalled and offended by the sentiments expressed in the video, we have uncovered no facts to lead us to believe the student code of conduct was violated.” UCLA saw Wallace’s rant as freedom of speech and nothing was done wrong. Foucault states that the “power to punish…is not the universal consciousness of the law in each juridical subject; it is the regular extension” which shows that authority figures are not really important to practice power. UCLA found nothing wrong with Wallace’s actions, even though society thought otherwise. Society looked to UCLA to take action rather than no participate at all. Wallace ended up having to leave UCLA because the situation was getting out of control. She left with an