Discipline and Punish

According to Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish, the Panopticon is a prison designed to establish power and control of one individual over the prisoners through observation. This observation is achieved through the prison’s annular structure, with the prisoners in confined cells facing the center, and the supervisor in a central tower (Foucault 200). The ring-like structure and the central tower allow the supervisor to see all inmates while simultaneously prohibiting them from seeing each other or the supervisor. As Foucault states, for the prisoners, “visibility is a trap” (200). Visibility is a trap for the prisoners because they can see the tower, but not the supervisor (Foucault 201). In addition, the prisoners never know…

In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault breaks down the premises of a panoptic system, outlining the mechanics through which it controls a population and linking it to other structures seen throughout a society, such as in prisons and schools. An example of such evident in the implementation of new grading rubrics for English teachers across America in 1923. The essays of 12th graders nationwide, who wrote under the same conditions, formed the base of a design for a national rubric, consisting…

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 Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish”, Foucault creates an example of a seventeenth century soldier versus an eighteenth century soldier, and how the latter can be made and transformed into what the former needed to be born as. Our academic system follows this same structure of the body being “the object of imperious and pressing investments”, where it is “in the grip of very strict powers, which imposed on it constraints, prohibitions or obligations.” Therefore, we are each taught the…

Foucault particularly accentuates how this new wave method of imprisonment becomes an instrument of more effective jurisdiction: ''to punish less, but certainly to punish better'' Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish. Additionally, he maintains that that this new means of punishment becomes the seed for ever growing control of an entire society with hospitals, factories, and even educational institutions modeled on the modern prison system. However, this does not mean that we should…

population and work towards assimilative policies (Henderson 2006). These policies were brought to attention during the Civil Rights movements in the 1960 's and 1970 's and led to activism and outrage. This paved the way for affirmation of aboriginal rights in the Constitution Act of 1982 (Henderson 2006). FOUCAULDIAN THEORY Michel Foucault (1979), the famous French philosopher, in his book Discipline and Punish argued that political institutions, particularly state run institutions,…

and (…) he can gain a clear idea of the way in which the surveillance is practiced” (Foucault, 6). Although the incidents are embarrassing, it was not by accident that the surveillance of their acts was caught, but the initial power of the individual due to surveillance. This challenges the view of panoptic order, as its primary intentions are to influence the way people behave due to its omnipresent surveillance. Finally, Foucault tells us that freedom they believe to partake in, has been…

cuticle clippers to cut the grain out of his own head. This episode represents many different aspects of Foucault’s famous Panopticism as well as his explicit dangers regarding the controlling nature of technology. The design concept of the Panopticon was first conceptualized in the late 18th century by Jeremy Bentham, and later used by Foucault in his Discipline and Punish. The Panopticon is a reference to a Greek giant named Panoptes who had hundred of eyes, and was later used to refer to a…

There are two ways of exercising power over men. The first way is controlling their relations, and the second is separating them out of their dangerous mixtures. This was done by supervision and discipline. Discipline is described as an effective agent of change, such as increasing power, and broadening the fronts of attacks with out reducing strength. Discipline is what brings power into play. Foucault believes, "the disciplines function increasingly as techniques for making useful…

Performance appraisals and the underlying disciplinary power it exercises in the UK education system Epigraph Disciplinary power is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time, it imposes on those it subjects a compulsory visibility. In discipline, it is the subjects who have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them. It is the fact of being constantly seen that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection (Foucault, 1979, p.…