Foucault distinguishes three chief disciplinary mechanisms, all of which contribute to shaping individuals into economically productive, but politically impotent, entities – if this sounds familiar, given the apathy of most citizens in contemporary democracies, it should be clear what the history behind present levels of political passivity, if not impotence, has been. --Bert Olivier
What contemporary city-denizens take for granted was not always the case, and most people would be surprised to know that #surveillance has a long history, and was linked to modes of punishment from early on. https://t.co/GnshPQCt5P
— Activist Post (@ActivistPost) December 11, 2023
Foucault distinguishes three chief disciplinary mechanisms, all of which contribute to shaping individuals into economically productive, but politically impotent, entities – if this sounds familiar, given the apathy of most citizens in contemporary democracies, it should be clear what the history behind present levels of political passivity, if not impotence, has been. These mechanisms are ‘hierarchical observation,’ ‘normalizing judgment,’ and the ‘examination’ (in which the first two are combined). Together, they comprise the backbone of a ‘panoptical’ society, named after Bentham’s optimal-surveillance prison, or ‘Panopticon.’ Such ‘panopticism,’
. . .
Foucault demonstrates in this book, has become pervasive in modern society through the micro-operation of mechanisms such as those alluded to above. In passing one should note that modern panopticism – guided by the regulative ideal of complete transparency or visibility of all citizens – could be understood as a secular version of the Christian (as well as other religions’) belief that no one can escape the ‘all-seeing eye of God.’
Instead, modern control requires many, varied micro-mechanisms for disciplining citizens, such as ‘the gentle way of punishment’ – prison incarceration, which was put into practice surprisingly quickly, with its meticulously calculated categories of morally efficient and socially useful penalties, as a generalized punishment for a diversity of crimes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Europe (Foucault 1995, pp. 115-117). It also included the ‘instrumental coding of the body,’ for example the discipline of rifle training (Foucault 1995, p. 153), as well as the ‘analytic’ of learning to read according to different stages (Foucault 1995, pp. 159-160), teaching children a form of uniform ‘penmanship’ (Foucault 1995, p. 176), and organizing available space in hospitals in an increasingly ‘efficient’ manner.
Other kinds of hierarchical observation – with its connotation of higher versus lower – marked by its accompanying effect of control, by turning people into docile bodies, are not hard to find. Teachers and lecturers are familiar with the sloping way in which rows of seating are arranged in schools and universities, where optimally lit classrooms and lecture halls with large windows facilitate the visibility and learning of, as well as discipline among students. Counterparts of this may readily be found in factories and hospitals.
This reminds me how student behavior is already formed by the time they are in middle and high school. And it is the height of a teacher's hubris to think that the kids' behavior is the way it is because of them.
