Machineries of Disciplinarity

Sem. Ricky Joe M. Noble

September 9, 2009
Spe. QQ in Contemporary Philosophy
Rev. Fr. Luis David, SJ

This paper deals with the different machineries of disciplinarity

according to the conception of Michelle Foucault, its results or bi-products,
and as part of products – the emergencies and the possible responses to these
emergencies.

Governmentality and Criminality

Governmentality is a concept first developed by the French philosopher

Michel Foucault in the later years of his life, roughly between 1977 and his
death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during
this time. This term is made by the “…linking of governing (“gouverner”) and
modes of thought (“mentalité”)”. To fully understand this concept, it is
important to realize that in this case, Foucault does not only use the
standard, strictly political definition of “governing” or government used
today, but he also uses the broader definition of governing or government
that was employed until the eighteenth century. That is to say, that in this
case, for Foucault, “…’government’ also signified problems of self-control,
guidance for the family and for children, management of the house hold,
directing the soul, etc”. In other words, for our purposes, government is “…
the conduct of conduct…”. It is the way governments try to produce the
citizen best suited to fulfill those governments' policies and the organized
practices (mentalities, rationalities, and techniques) through which subjects
are governed. Thus, we can say that it is the art of the government – the
technique and strategy by which a society is rendered governable.
Foucault defines governmentality as the "art of government" in a wide
sense, that is, with an idea of "government" that is not limited to state
politics alone, that includes a wide range of control techniques, and that
applies to a wide variety of objects, from one's control of the self to the
"biopolitical" control of populations. The concept of "governmentality"
develops a new understanding of power. Foucault encourages us to think of
power not only in terms of hierarchical, top-down power of the state. He
widens our understanding of power to also include the forms of social control
in disciplinary institutions (schools, hospitals, psychiatric institutions,

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and the like) as well as the forms of knowledge. Power can manifest itself
positively by producing knowledge and certain discourses that get internalized
by individuals and guide the behavior of populations. This leads to more
efficient forms of social control, as knowledge enables individuals to govern
themselves.
"Governmentality" applies to a variety of historical periods and to
different specific power regimes. However, it is often used (by other
scholars and by Foucault himself) in reference to "neoliberal
governmentality"1, i.e. to a type of governmentality that characterizes
advanced liberal democracies. In this case, the notion of governmentality
refers to societies where power is de-centered and its members play an active
role in their own self-government, for example as posited in neoliberalism.
Because of its active role, individuals need to be regulated from the
'inside'. A particular form of governmentality is characterized by a certain
form of knowledge. In the case of neoliberal governmentality2, the knowledge
produced allows the construction of auto-regulated or auto-correcting selves.
In Foucault’s lecture entitled ‘governmentality’, he gives us the
following definitions: “1.The ensemble formed by the institutions,
procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow
the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as
its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy,
and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security. This strand of
the three-part definition states that governmentality is, in other words, all
of the components that make up a government that has as its end the
maintenance of a well ordered and happy society (population). The
government’s means to this end is its “apparatuses of security,” that is to
say, the techniques it uses to provide this society a feeling of economic,
political, and cultural well-being. The government achieves these ends by
enacting “political economy,” and in this case, the meaning of economy is the
older definition of the term, that is to say, “economy at the level of the
entire state, which means exercising towards its inhabitants, and the wealth
and behavior of each and all, a form of surveillance and control as attentive
as that of the head of a family over his household and his goods”. Thus, we

1 Deflem, Mathieu. 1999. "Power/Knowledge, Society and Truth: Notes on the work of Michel
Foucault." Unpublished paper. Available online via http://www.mathieudeflem.net/.

2 Neoliberal governmentality is a kind of governmentality based on the predominance of

market mechanisms and of the restriction of the action of the state.

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see that this first part of the definition states that governmentality is a
government with specific ends, means to these ends, and particular practices
that should lead to these ends. 2. The tendency which, over a long period and
throughout the West, has steadily led towards the pre-eminence over all other
forms (sovereignty, discipline, etc) of this type of power which may be
termed government, resulting, on the one hand, in formation of a whole series
of specific governmental apparatuses, and, on the other, in the development
of a whole complex of savoirs. This strand presents governmentality as the
long, slow development of Western governments which eventually took over from
forms of governance like sovereignty and discipline into what it is today:
bureaucracies and the typical methods by which they operate. 3. The process,
or rather the result of the process, through which the state of justice of
the Middle Ages, transformed into the administrative state during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, gradually becomes ‘governmentalized’.”3
This strand can be restated as the evolution from the Medieval state, that
maintained its territory and an ordered society within this territory through
a blunt practice of simply imposing its laws upon its subjects, to the early
renaissance state, which became more concerned with the “disposing of
things”, and so began to employ strategies and tactics to maintain a content
and thus stable society, or in other words to “render a society governable”.
Thus, if one takes these three strands together, governmentality may be
defined as the process through which a form of government with specific ends
(a happy and stable society), means to these ends (“apparatuses of
security”), and with a particular type of knowledge (“political economy”), to
achieve these ends, evolved from a medieval state of justice to a modern
administrative state with complex bureaucracies. We have already given here
Foucault’s concept of the Governmentality and thus it is also necessary and
timely to have the knowledge of the theory of criminality.
Criminality is a probabilistic event determined by the frequency and
quality of interaction with persons holding definitions favorable or
unfavorable to violation of the law.4 Saying that criminality as a
probabilistic event means that it is a tendency to break the law, a
propensity to commit crimes. Crimes are measured through their quality, that
is, through the criminal character of the act. The sociological study of

3 Burchell, Gordon and Miller, 1991: 102-103

4 retrieved from http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/rest of URL accessed on September 1, 2009.

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crime, criminals, and the punishment of criminals is done by criminology.
Being a criminal is to commit illegalities. There is a criminality not just
because of the violations and acts against the law, but it is because there
is a law that says that a particular act is a crime. There is a certain
measure, a structure, a technology, a mechanism that categorizes a certain
act. These structures are disciplinary apparatuses deployed by the sense of
governmentality for the betterment of the society. The question now is how do
these things operate or function in the society? If they are structures and
mechanisms, they must be for something, for a purpose and for a certain
spectacle. What we are sure of is that these apparatuses operate within the
society. Criminality is a phenomena and a threat to the society.
Governmentality is the answer to these phenomena. Criminality is about crimes
committed and in every crime committed there is a certain punishment or
penalty set by that governmentality. And one of these apparatuses where we
can see obviously the workings and the processes of healing and restoration
of justice are in prisons and jails. Now, what is the main concept regarding
prisons and jails? What are the processes and actions made to maintain the
rehabilitation of inmates? We move on now to a discussion on prison where
Foucault gives us a frame of what should not happen in a jail, a certain
sense of emergency that we have to be concerned to.

Prison, its operation and purpose

According to the dictionary, prison is a place where criminals are
confined. It is a secure place where somebody is confined as punishment for a
crime or while waiting to stand trial. It is a way to punish and rehabilitate
the criminal. Before punishment has taken a shape as an art of discipline
deployed for the criminals. Now, according to Foucault, punishment has passed
from being an art of unsupportable sensations to an economy of suspended
rights. Punishments might still have an effect, it may scare some still.
One of the disciplinary apparatuses being deployed which is still
existent today is that of Prison or Jail system. Prison is an institution
designed to securely house people who have been convicted of crimes. These
individuals, known as prisoners or inmates, are kept in continuous custody on
a long-term basis. Individuals who commit the most serious crimes are sent to
prison for one or more years; the more serious the offense, the longer the
prison term imposed. For certain crimes, such as murder, offenders may be
sentenced to prison for the remainder of their lifetime.

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 When individuals are accused of violating criminal law, they are tried
in a court and either convicted (found guilty) or acquitted (found not
guilty). A person who is convicted is then sentenced—that is, assigned a
specific punishment. The sentence may involve fines, probation (supervised
release), or incarceration (confinement). Judges may sentence first-time
offenders to probation instead of incarceration. Offenders convicted of more
serious crimes and those who have prior criminal records may be sentenced to
incarceration in either a jail or a prison, depending on the nature of the
crime. Prisons are also called penitentiaries. The word penitentiary was
coined in the late 1700s because certain groups believed that through
solitary religious study of the Bible, prisoners would become penitent
(remorseful) and reform their behavior. The study of theories and practices
of punishment is called penology. Although prison structures existed in
ancient civilizations, the widespread use of long-term confinement as a form
of criminal punishment began only in the 15th century. Today every
industrialized nation has prisons, and the role of prisons throughout the
world is to punish criminals by restricting their freedom. In most countries,
governments construct and operate prison systems. However several countries
also authorize private corporations to build and run prisons under contract
for the government.
We have seen in the book of Michele Foucault “Discipline and Punish”
that imprisonment serves several universal functions, including the
protection of society, the prevention of crime, retribution (revenge) against
criminals, and the rehabilitation of inmates. Additional goals of
imprisonment may include the assurance of justice based on a philosophy of
just deserts (getting what one deserves) and the reintegration of inmates
into the community following their sentences. Differences among prison
policies in various countries depend upon the society’s experience with
managing criminals, as well as its experiments with different ways of
correcting and improving prisoner behavior. Some countries’ programs foster
changes among inmates better than others. Cultural differences also help
explain why countries emphasize one imprisonment objective over others. Here
in the Philippines, our inmates usually have activities in order to help
them. It could be therapeutic to some. Inmates do artworks such as making
baskets, souvenir items, and even till lands.
Locking up dangerous criminals or persistent nonviolent offenders means
that society will be protected from them for the duration of their sentences.
Thus, imprisoning criminals temporarily incapacitates them. Additionally,

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people expect that prisons will cause inmates to regret their criminal acts,
and that when most prisoners are released they will be deterred from
committing future crimes. Incarceration of criminals may also deter other
individuals from engaging in criminal behavior due to the fear of punishment.
However, it is not possible to lock up all offenders who deserve to be
incarcerated. Some criminals are never captured. Due to space and budget
constraints, even those who are caught cannot all be imprisoned. Experts
disagree about the relationship between the amount of people imprisoned and
the amount of crime that occurs. Changes in the number of people imprisoned
may reflect actual fluctuations in the amount of crime being committed.
However, both figures may also be influenced by independent factors. To some
degree, rates of imprisonment indicate how much space is available to
accommodate offenders, rather than how much crime is being committed. Legal
factors—such as prior record, type of crime committed, and whether the crime
involved injuries or death to victims—help to determine the appropriate
sentence length or other punishment. However, different state and federal
laws and practices create sentencing disparities. For example, some
nonviolent and unthreatening offenders are incarcerated, whereas some
dangerous offenders are placed on probation. In the Philippines, we lack
rooms or quarters for the criminals, that is why, many share the same room
that in many cases cause troubles, they fight each other. Not just with the
lack of rooms but also the lack of food. Some die because of hunger and
sickness for there is no enough budgets to sustain them.
As we usually know through news on the televisions and Magazines,
although prisoners must abide by institutional rules, they also establish
their own rules for themselves. Thus, a culture within a culture, or prison
subculture, exists. This subculture has its own status structure and
hierarchy of authority. In many prisons, inmates fear the informal prison
subculture and its reprisals for rule violations more than formal
administrative rules and punishments. If the prison subculture rejects the
goals of the institution (such as rehabilitation), inmates are less likely to
accept those goals. Prisons throughout the world have many similarities. The
prison site consists of buildings of various sizes surrounded by high walls
topped with razor wire. The buildings are staffed by armed guards or
correctional officers who maintain inmates under close supervision and
control.

The Modern Prison – disciplinary apparatus - as seen in

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Foucault’s Discipline and Punish

Let us see for ourselves now if the ethics of this disciplinary

apparatus still speak for and of itself. Let’s analyze them by the aid of
Foucault’s concept found in the discipline and punish and contextualizing
them in our present prison setting – enframing them with Foucault’s
conception. The book Discipline and Punish of Foucault represents the idea of
writing a history that reveals struggles, discontinuities, and the role of
the individual. Discourses like that of a modern punishment, such as what we
have now, define what it is possible to say and do about certain things. In a
sense, people are trapped inside them, but Foucault aims to give them a voice
and help them resist. In our prisons and jails, we need someone or a group
who will imitate Foucault in giving voice to those people imprisoned already
and still experiences much injustice inflicted by the present power. They
need a vocal cord strong enough to give them a powerful voice to be heard. If
prison is for restoration of one’s being and dignity, why let these people
experience much suffering of injustices? This could not let to a best result,
but the worst.
Foucault wrote his Discipline and Punish not to free prisoners from
their cells but to free them from the discourses that helped to create them.
For him, when the power to judge shifted to a judgment about normal and
abnormal, the modern soul was formed. The prisoner or delinquent with an
abnormal soul is defined against the normal majority. In showing how the
prisoner is oppressed, Foucault wants to show us what is wrong with the
modern soul in general. There is really a problem to this modern soul that
shows how unfortunate these prisoners are. They are already victims of
circumstances but still a victim of oppression inside the prison. In this
case, we see how power operates. The knowledge possessed by prison warders
and psychiatrists creates a certain technology of power. For Foucault, power
is a strategy, or a game not consciously played by individuals but one that
operates within the machinery of society. It is undeniable that power affects
everyone, that is, from the prisoner to the prison guards, but now one
individual can take control of it. Foucault, shown in his writings, indeed
has a role in the prison reform movement. The work he carried out in practice
is shown in his book discipline and punish.
Disciplinary apparatuses are means for exploring a crime and
establishing the truth but there are many cases in the machinery of our
society wherein the established truth is imposed, forced, made, and bribed.
These things are the work of those who are in power who could not simply face

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the consequences of their actions but blame them to innocent people by making
them admit a crime which they did not do. Witnesses are silenced by paying
them and by death threats. Where is justice here? Is the power here really
working rightly? How do we make things right? There are lots of issues
regarding the matter of prison by which the authority gives justice to the
oppressed but not giving justice to the oppressor. The authority often
becomes the oppressor of the oppressor. They are creating a monster here.
They are no longer advocates for justice but for more crimes. They become
causes of evil. They are the ones triggering in each prisoner and the family
of this prisoner to revolt against the authority and beg for their right for
justice.
Disciplinary apparatuses are discourses in themselves, thus the process
of punishment is also a discourse but what happens in our present apparatus
is not the right thing to happen. Accused are not allowed to speak freely,
that is, if they speak it is certainly not the truth, but the truth of the
powerful placed in their mouths. If this is always the case then much is
expected during executions. This is not humane. Criminals are not robots that
are to be ordered to operate the way authority would like them to behave.
Foucault is right for his call for a humanitarian reform. In this kind of a
situation, the production of criminals will be more instead of lessening them
and rehabilitating them. There should be a shift in the use of power. Power
should work the way it should be. The presence of reform movements would show
and reflect a certain change in the structure of power. A reform is called
for basically because those who asked for it have seen the need for change –
a change that can happen only through fluidity and openness to new
technologies by the authority concerned and of hold of power.
Imposition, force or coercion, manipulation and the like are forms of
technologies for control. These are the mechanics used by most of prisons
today. In the Docile Bodies, Foucault shows us that the body is the subject
of attention not of torture but of control and discipline. He wrote that
Docility is achieved through the actions of discipline. Discipline is
different from force or violence because it is a way of controlling the
operations and positions of the body. Foucault finds the roots of discipline
in monasteries and armies and this is important and has to be taken into
consideration seriously. Monastic rules, which regulate the behavior of
monks, and drill exercises in the army both emphasize self-control and
obedience to rules, but from differing starting points. He believes that
institutions like prisons, schools and hospitals acted like machines for

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transforming and controlling people in this period. But as we shall observe
and see the situation of prisons or jails today, it’s not always the case…
The control seems to be deployed by force not because of the docility of the
bodies imprisoned.
For him, the individual is a modern invention, a construction of power.
It is a body that is observed, and compared to a "norm" of average behavior.
Observation here is a mechanism, as what the warders of jails do, to deploy a
sense of coercion not in terms of torture and contact to the body but by mere
observation one can feel that he is being forced to act or behave the way the
observer would require it – just by the single gaze. This does not just make
you feel self-conscious, but your behavior changes. This is an excellent
example of the operation of power: an effect occurs on your body without
physical violence, simply by gaze. The perfect disciplinary institution, he
argues, is that in which everything can be seen at once: this is a clear
reference to the Panopticon discussed in the same book. The way Foucault
links the development of observatories to scientific developments shows his
early interest in the history of science, but also one of the major
criticisms of his work: that he puts theory before evidence. Whether such
observatories were designed, or whether military camps actually operated in
the way he describes is uncertain. This is perhaps unnecessary to the overall
argument, which depends more on Foucault's philosophical interpretation of
society than on historical evidence.
Judgment is always concerned with a disciplinary apparatus. Prison as
it is patterned in schools and monasteries have disciplinary apparatus too.
Here, judgment is concerned with an arbitrary standard: pupils, soldiers and
prisoners are observed and measured against this standard. In this book he
wrote that what is normal is good, and what is abnormal is bad and must be
corrected. Penality becomes about correcting deviations from the norm,
organizing people into ranks and classifications according to their
"normality". For Foucault, the norm is an entirely negative and harmful idea
that allows the oppression and silencing of deviants and the "abnormal."
Foucault is showing us how unnatural this process is. In our context,
abnormality is not just seen and observed in the docile bodies but also with
the warders and the system itself. Each element becomes a harmful device
constructed by power. Thus, if power does not work rightly, it will produce
all the more harmful devices. The prisoners, if not tamed and rehabilitated
well will have the possibility of becoming harmful devices and machineries of
blood. Each criminal is excluded among the many, the normal society. By being

9
excluded, he becomes abnormal. Individuality, that is, taken out of the
community or excluded from the normal community, is almost the same with the
mental patients who live by themselves even if he has companions in the cell.
Becoming one of these abnormal means becoming a dangerous specie, a threat to
the normal.
We have read his Discipline and Punish and we could somehow say that he
gives us a sense that power somehow inheres in institutions themselves like
schools, prisons, hospitals and the like rather than in the individuals that
make those institutions function. The Panopticon becomes Foucault's model for
the way other institutions function: the Panopticon "is an important
mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power. Power has its
principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of
bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms
produce the relation in which individuals are caught up". Applying the
methods of discipline to the prison through the architecture of the
Panopticon transforms simple incarceration into a diabolical means of
punishment. The problem faced by prison administrators of controlling masses
of people led them to turn to the solution of the Panopticon and thereby
changed the effects of incarceration from simple removal from society to
total power over the inmate. Indeed, Bentham's goal was to create an
architectural idea that, ultimately, could function on its own: it did not
matter who exactly operated the machine: "Any individual, taken almost at
random, can operate the machine: in the absence of the director, his family,
his friends, his visitors, even his servants". In seminaries, this is
observable. Even if formators are not around, seminarians seems to behave in
accordance still because of that sense of authority seem to be staring at a
seminarian. The idea of discipline itself similarly functions as an
abstraction of the idea of power from any individual: "'Discipline' may be
identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of
power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments,
techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a physics' or
an 'anatomy' of power, a technology".

The Emergency
What is the emergency? Where do things start to go wrong? It is
undeniable that in a disciplinary apparatus, such as prison and jail, there
are lots of emergencies that happen and these happen not just in the
Philippines but almost all of the countries who have this kind of
disciplinary apparatus. We have seen and heard on the news that people are

10
used to do crime by paying them. Some are paid to admit other’s crime. Some
are threatened not to tell the truth by giving a death threat to the family.
Emergencies in the case of the treatment of the inmates are undeniable too.
These are just some of the emergencies that are happening worldwide. Where do
we trace these emergencies? Where do things really go wrong? In the
Philippines, this may be true to some countries too, these kinds of
emergencies can be traced in the misuse of power not just within (the
inmates, the structure) but also in the sheath, in the spectacle that covers
the structure.
The problem is with the authority, the power that produces another
power that inflicts inmates or criminals. They are already victims of
circumstances, why still make them another victim of this kind of emergency?
We have a saying that a mango tree can produce only mango fruit. It is
impossible for a mango tree to produce banana. The structure of the
disciplinary apparatus will not be problematic if there is no problem in or a
lack in the one creating the structure. This kind of structure (Prison) is
made for the good of both the victims and the oppressor. Victims are given
due justice while oppressors are given a chance to change by rehabilitation
and other programs inside this structure. But what happens is the misuse of
power. Power seems not to function rightly in this area of disciplinarity. It
seems that we have to discipline first the one making the disciplinary
apparatuses. How do we do so? What are the steps to begin a change? Every
beginning has an end. If this kind phenomenon started then it must be ended.
Is it still possible? Of course it is still possible. What we have to do is
to create a just law applicable to all, be a judge, the president or a common
tao. Disciplinary power should be revived when its treatment is still
humanly. Everyone deserves justice. Each, though in different degrees,
deserves it. Disciplinary power should then be that which produces and is
useful. It should not exclude and should not be negative. It should not be
sick, it should be co-extensive with society. It is generalized and
pervasive, that is, disciplinary power should operate in the society, not
from above. Discipline is a machine in which everyone is caught. Thus, there
should be no exceptions. If you are a corrupt president then you should be
punish, you should not be above the law. But, until now we can still see in
our modern society what Foucault calls as disciplinary but not disciplined.
There is always struggle within and with-out - struggle against the misuse of
power of the undisciplined authority.

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Answer to Emergency: Counter attack or restorative justice?
"My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is
dangerous" (Foucault, 1984:343). Danger is a great emergency that has to be
fixed. To fix this, what has to be done? Is there still a way out? How do
fight back the power that inflicts? There seems to be a way out, according to
Foucault, but the fight against power can no longer be conceived in terms of
the fight against State, Capital or Law. In line with his discontent with
totalitarian, global theories, Foucault asserts that criticism should be
local, presenting a "multiplicity of genealogical researches", or a history
of struggles, as an attempt to emancipate historical knowledges from
subjection. Theory has to be connected with practice "within specific
sectors, at the precise points where their own conditions of life or work
situate them. In this process of localized struggles the intellectual only
provides instruments of analysis: the fighters have to do their own fighting.
The philosopher can only give a survey of the battlefield. But are these
local struggles not in danger too because of the remaining useless attempts?
Foucault says that the weakest links have to be attacked so that the whole
structure could be demolished. "The role for theory today seems to me to be
just this: not to formulate the global systematic theory which holds
everything in place, but to analyze the specificity of mechanisms of power"
(1980:145). However, Foucault admits that one may run "the risk of being
unable to develop these struggles for lack of a global strategy or outside
support" (1980:130). Therefore, he considers cooperation across local
struggles useful: everybody can participate in "a global process of
politicization of intellectuals" (1980:127). Particularly in recent time this
seems necessary: "since the nuclear threat affected the whole human race and
the fate of the world, [the intellectual's] discourse could at the same time
be the discourse of the universal. Under the rubric of protest, which
concerned the entire world, the atomic expert brought into play his specific
position in the order of knowledge" (1980:128). Instead of developing global
projects, one must employ specific tests. Thus, a great challenge for
philosophers! How about restorative justice?
Justice must be given each one – whether victim or offender.
Justice is crying against the emergencies. It has to live and work in
the society to restore its original form. Emergencies may appear as
phenomena, impossible to remove them maybe, but we have to do

12
something to at least lessen them. One concerns the very concept of
‘crime’ as that which merits a punitive response: we should reconceptualize
crimes as ‘conflicts’ that require resolution rather than punishment
(REP,v.1. 1998). Relatedly, we should ‘civilize’ our response to crime,
favouring a civil law rather than a criminal model: rather than seeking
‘retributive’ justice by condemning and punishing those judged to have done
wrong, we should seek ‘restorative’ justice by striving to reconcile the
conflicting parties and (where necessary) negotiating reparation for whatever
harm has been done.
Justice does not only apply to the offender and the victim but as well
as to power, the authority, the judge, and the law. The power applied or used
should be just. The one applying it should be just. The one evaluating it
should be just and that the law used for evaluation should be just. It is the
only way, except for miracle, by which we can have a restorative justice that
will be used as an elixir to the virus of inequality and emergencies.

Conclusion:
Each has a vocation to contribute to the well-being of our society and
its members. Each one should answer to this call that one may contribute for
its good. Starting from within ourselves, we can have a power to fight
emergencies. We can have a disciplined disciplinary society if only each of
us cooperate in this undertaking and challenge. We should be affected, we
should care. We are part of this society and we have the responsibility in
taking care of this society. We are the power of this society, thus power
should begin within the society, not from above. We should advocates of
governmentality. We should create a machinery of our own to maintain the
integrity of our society and our well being. Impossibility implies a certain
sense of possibility. It might be impossible to restore this world into its
original state, but we can still hope for it. To hope for it does not mean
that we should do nothing and wait for it, rather, we should act on it. We
cannot arrive at a destination without moving away from our points of
departure. Let’s journey towards it hand-in-hand. Go for a just society. Go
for the right disciplinarity. Deploy it because it is necessary.

Sources:
Foucault, Michele. Discipline and Punish. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York:
Vintage Books, 1995.
Craig, Edward, Ed. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0. 1998.

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Microsoft Student Encarta 2008. Version: 16.0.0.1117. USA: Microsoft
Corporation. 2007

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