Foucault

Madness and Civilization

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity
in the Age of Reason (French: Folie et Draison: Histoire
de la folie l'ge classique) is a 1964 abridged edition of a
1961 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. An
English translation of the complete 1961 edition,
entitled History of Madness, was published in June 2006.[1]
Foucault's first major book, Madness and Civilization is
an examination of the evolving meaning of madness in
European culture, law, politics, philosophy and medicine
from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century,
and a critique of historical method and the idea of history.
It marks a turning in Foucault's thought away
fromphenomenology toward structuralism: though he uses
the language of phenomenology to describe an evolving
experience of "the other" as mad, he attributes this
evolution to the influence of specific powerful social
structures.[2]
Background

The book developed out of Foucault's earlier writing on

psychology,[3] his own psychological difficulties, and his
experiences working in a mental hospital, and was written
mainly between 1955 and 1959 while working in culturaldiplomatic and educational posts in Sweden (as director of
a French cultural centre attached to the University of
Uppsala),[4] Germany, and Poland.[5]
Summary
Foucault traces the evolution of the concept of
madness through three phases: the Renaissance, the
"Classical Age" (the later seventeenth and most of the
eighteenth centuries) and the modern experience. He
argues that in the Renaissance the mad were portrayed in
art as possessing a kind of wisdom a knowledge of the
limits of our world and portrayed in literature as revealing
the distinction between what men are and what they
pretend to be. Renaissance art and literature depicted the
mad as engaged with the reasonable while representing
the mysterious forces of cosmic tragedy,[5] but it also
marked the beginning of an objective description of reason

and unreason (as though seen from above) compared with

the more intimate medieval descriptions from within
society.[2]
Foucault contends that in the mid-seventeenth
century, in the depths of the age of reason, the rational
response to the mad, who until then had been consigned to
society's margins, was to separate them completely from
society by confining them, along with prostitutes, vagrants,
blasphemers and the like, in newly created institutions all
over Europe a process he calls "the Great Confinement."[2]
The condition of these outcasts was seen as one of
moral error. They were viewed as having freely chosen
prostitution, vagrancy, blasphemy, unreason, etc. and the
regimes of these new rational institutions were meticulous
programs of punishment and reward aimed at causing
them to reverse those choices.[2]
The social forces Foucault sees driving this
confinement include the need for an extra-judicial
mechanism for getting rid of undesirables, and the wish to
regulate unemployment and wages (the cheap labour of

the workhouses applied downward pressure on the wages

of free labour). He argues that the conceptual distinction
between the mad and the rational was in a sense a product
of this physical separation into confinement: confinement
made the mad conveniently available to medical doctors
who began to view madness as a natural object worthy of
study and then as an illness to be cured.[2][5]
For Foucault the modern experience began at the end
of the eighteenth century with the creation of places
devoted solely to the confinement of the mad under the
supervision of medical doctors, and these new institutions
were the product of a blending of two motives: the new
goal of curing the mad away from their family who could
not afford the necessary care at home, and the old purpose
of confining undesirables for the protection of society.
These distinct purposes were lost sight of, and the
institution soon came to be seen as the only place where
therapeutic treatment can be administered. He sees the
nominally more enlightened and compassionate treatment
of the mad in these modern medical institutions as just as

cruel and controlling as their treatment in the earlier,

rational institutions had been.[2]
...modern man no longer communicates with the
madman [...] There is no common language: or rather, it no
longer exists; the constitution of madness as mental
illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, bears witness
to a rupture in a dialogue, gives the separation as already
enacted, and expels from the memory all those imperfect
words, of no fixed syntax, spoken falteringly, in which the
exchange between madness and reason was carried out.
The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue by
reason about madness, could only have come into
existence in such a silence.
Foucault, Preface to the 1961 edition[6]
Reception
Sociologist Jos Guilherme
Merquior discusses Madness and
Civilization in Foucault (1985). Merquior argues that while
Foucault raises important questions about the influence of
social forces on the meaning of, and responses to, deviant

behavior, Madness and Civilization is nonetheless so

riddled with serious errors of fact and interpretation as to
be of very limited value. Merquior notes that there is
abundant evidence of widespread cruelty to and
imprisonment of the insane during eras when Foucault
contends that the mad were perceived as possessing
wisdom, and that Foucault has thus selectively cited
data that supports his assertions while ignoring contrary
data. Madness was typically linked with sin by Christian
Europeans, noted Merquior, and was therefore regarded as
much less benign than Foucault tends to imply. Merquior
sees Madness and Civilization as "a call for the liberation of
the Dionysian id" similar to Norman O. Brown's Life Against
Death(1959), and an inspiration for Gilles Deleuze and Flix
Guattari's Anti-Oedipus (1972).[7]
Author Kenneth Lewes writes that Madness and
Civilization is an example of the "critique of the institutions
of psychiatry and psychoanalysis" that occurred as part of
the "general upheaval of values in the 1960s". Lewes sees

Foucault's work as being similar to, but more profound

than, Thomas Szasz's The Myth of Mental Illness (1961).[8]
Philosopher Gary Gutting writes in Michel Foucault's
Phanomenologie des Krankengeistes (1994):
The reactions of professional historians to
Foucault's Histoire de la folie seem, at first reading,
ambivalent, not to say polarized. There are many
acknowledgements of its seminal role, beginning
with Robert Mandrou's early review in Annales,
characterizing it as a "beautiful book" that will be "of
central importance for our understanding of the Classical
period." Twenty years later, Michael MacDonald confirmed
Mandrou's prophecy: "Anyone who writes about the history
of insanity in early modern Europe must travel in the
spreading wake of Michael Foucault's famous
book, Madness and Civilization." Later endorsements have
been even stronger. Jan Goldstein: "For both their empirical
content and their powerful theoretical perspectives, the
works of Michel Foucault occupy a special and central place
in the historiography of psychiatry." Roy Porter: "Time has

proved Madness and Civilization far the most penetrating

work ever written on the history of madness." More
specifically, Foucault has recently been heralded as a
prophet of "the new cultural history." But criticism has also
been widespread and often bitter.
See also

Cogito and the History of Madness

The Archaeology of Knowledge

References

1.

Jump up^ Foucault M. History of Madness. Khalfa

J, editor, translator & Murphy J, translator. New

York: Routledge; 2006. ISBN 0-415-27701-9.

2.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Khalfa J. in Foucault
M. History of Madness. NY: Routledge; 2009. ISBN 0-41547726-3. Introduction. p. xiivxxv.
3.

4.

Jump up^ *a licence de psychologie (1949)

a diplome de psycho-pathologie (1952)
Jump up^ Macey, David (2004). Michel
Foucault. Reaktion Books. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-86189-226-3

5.

^ Jump up to:a

b c

Gutting, Gary, "Michel

Foucault", The Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
6.

Jump up^ Foucault M.. History of Madness.

Translated by Khalfa J.. NY: Routledge; 2009. ISBN 0-41547726-3. Preface to the 1961 edition. p. xxviixxxix.

7.

Jump up^ Merquior, J.G. (1985). Foucault,

Fontana Press ISBN 0-00-686226-8

8.

Jump up^ Lewes, Kenneth

(1995). Psychoanalysis and Male Homosexuality. Northvale,
New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc. p. 201. ISBN 1-56821-484-7

The Birth of the Clinic

The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of
Medical Perception (French: Naissance de la clinique:
une archologie du regard mdical) is a 1963 book by the
French philosopher Michel Foucault. First published in
French in 1963, the work was published in English
translation by Alan Sheridan Smith in the United States in
1973,[1] followed in the UK in 1976 by Tavistock Publications
as part of the series World of Man edited by RD Laing.[2] In
continuous publication since 1963, the book has become
a locus classicus of the history of medicine, with admirers
and critics in equal measure.[3]
Developing the themes explored in his previous
work, Madness and Civilization, Foucault traces the
development of the medical profession, and specifically the
institution of the clinique (translated as "clinic", but here
largely referring to teaching hospitals). Its central points
are the concept of the medical regard ("medical gaze") and
the sudden re-organisation of knowledge at the end of the

18th century, which would be expanded in his next major

work, The Order of Things.
The medical gaze
Foucault coined the term "medical gaze" to denote the
dehumanizing medical separation of the patient's body
from the patient's person (identity); (see mind-body
dualism). He uses the term in a genealogy describing the
creation of a field of knowledge of the body. The material
and intellectual structures that made possible the analysis
of the body were mixed with power interests: in entering
the field of knowledge, the human body also entered the
field of power, becoming a possible target for manipulation.
Originally, the term "medical gaze" was confined to postmodern andpost-structuralist academic use, but it is now
frequently used in graduate medical and social work
courses.[4]
Foucault also argued that the French and American
revolutions that spawned modernity also created a "metanarrative" of scientific discourse that held scientists,
specifically medical doctors, as sages who would in time

abolish sickness and so solve all of humanity's problems.

For the nineteenth-century moderns, medical doctors
replaced the discredited medieval clergy; physicians save
bodies, not souls. This myth was part of the greater
discourse of the humanist and Enlightenment schools of
thought that believed the human body to be the sum of a
person: biological reductionism that became a powerful
tool of the new sages: through thorough examination
(gazing) of a body, a doctor deduces symptom, illness, and
cause, therefore achieving unparalleled understanding of
the patient hence, the doctor's medical gaze was
believed to penetrate surface illusions, in near-mystical
discovery of hidden truth.
The epistemic change
Foucault's understanding of the development of
the clinique is primarily opposed to those histories of
medicine and the body that consider the late 18th century
to be the dawning of a new "supposed" empirical system,
"based on the rediscovery of the absolute values of the
visible."[5] In Foucault's view, the birth of modern medicine

was not a commonsensical movement towards simply

seeing what was already there (and therefore a science
without a philosophy), but rather a decisive shift in the
structure of knowledge. That is to say, modern medicine is
not a mere progression from the late 18th century wherein
an understanding of the true nature of the body and
disease is gradually acquired. Foucault recommends a view
of the history of medicine, and clinical medicine in
particular, as an epistemological rupture, rather than result
of a number of great individuals discovering new ways of
seeing and knowing the truth:
The clinic - constantly praised for its empiricism, the
modesty of its attention, and the care with which it silently
lets things surface to the observing gaze without disturbing
them with discourse - owes its real importance to the fact
that it is a reorganization in depth, not only of medical
discourse, but of the very possibility of a discourse about
disease.[6]
Thus the empiricism of the 18th and 19th centuries is
not a naive or naked act of looking and noting down what is

before the doctor's eyes. The relationship between subject

and object is not just the one who knows and the one who
tells; the contact between the doctor and their individual
patient does not pre-exist discourse as "mindless
phenomenologies" would suggest.[7] Rather, the clinical
science of medicine came to exist as part of a wider
structure of organising knowledge that allowed the
articulation of medicine as a discipline, making possible
"the domain of its experience and the structure of its
rationality".[8] In other words, the observations and analysis
of an object (for instance a diseased organ) depended
entirely upon the accepted practices as outlined in the
contemporary organisation of knowledge. Investigation,
diagnosis and treatment all followed that contemporary
organisation, in which case the criteria that distinguishes a
diseased organ from a healthy one is thoroughly historical.
Foucault would later formalise this notion in
the episteme, where one epistemological era gives way to
another, thus allowing one concept of what is scientific to
move aside for another. In this case, as outlined in The

Order of Things, the taxonomic era gave way to the organic

historical era; thus, the clinic was not simply founded upon
the observation of truth, and therefore more correct than
any preceding medicinal practice, but rather an artefact of
a theory of knowledge inserted within a specific discursive
period. The authority of the clinician relies on a relationship
to the then current organisation of knowledge, instead of a
relationship to a non-discursive state of affairs ('reality').
Because of this, an early 18th-century doctor could observe
an organ with exactly the same disease as a 19th-century
doctor, with both doctors coming to vastly different
conclusions about what caused the disease and how to
treat it. Despite this difference, both accounts would be
'true', since they were both spoken in an episteme that
considered such statements to be true.
This means that anatomists
like Morgagni and Bichat were not students of the same
discipline, even though their work was only thirty years
apart.[9] The epistemic change meant that the bodies,
diseases, tissues and pathologies that each cut open and

explored were articulated in completely different and

discontinuousdiscourses from one another. Thus anatomy's
claim to be a privileged empirical science that can observe
and determine a true bodily schema cannot stand when its
beginnings were not in a discovery of a way of coming to
know what was real, but rather emerged amongst a new
philosophical way of granting meaning and organising
certain objects. Hence the use of "birth" in the title; the
clinic had no origins, but simply and suddenly arrived.
Notes
1.

Jump up^ Foucault, Michel (1973). The Birth of the

Clinic. New York: Pantheon Books.

2.

Jump up^ Foucault, Michel (1976). The Birth of the

Clinic. London: Tavistock Publications
Ltd. ISBN 0422761907.

3.

Jump up^ Jones, Colin; Porter, Roy, eds.

(1994). Reassessing Foucault: power, medicine, and the
body. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415075424.

4.

Jump up^ St. Godard, E. E. (2005). "A better

reading". Canadian Medical Association Journal 173 (9):
10721037. doi:10.1503/cmaj.051067.

5.

Jump up^ Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An

Archaeology of Medical Perception (London, 1973), p. xii.

6.

Jump up^ Foucault, Birth of the Clinic, p. xix.

7.

Jump up^ Foucault, Birth of the Clinic, p. xiv.

8.

Jump up^ Foucault, Birth of the Clinic, p. xv.

9.

Jump up^ Foucault, Birth of the Clinic, pp. 128-133

The Order of Things

This article is about the Foucault book. For the Kipfer
book, see The Order of Things (Kipfer book). For the metal
album, see The Order of Things (album).
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the
Human Sciences (French: Les mots et les choses: Une
archologie des sciences humaines) is a 1966 book by the
French philosopher Michel Foucault. It was translated into
English and published by Pantheon Books in 1970.
(Foucault had preferred L'Ordre des Choses for the original
French title, but changed the title because it had been used
by two structuralist works published immediately prior to
Foucault's).
Foucault endeavours to excavate the origins of the
human sciences, particularly but not
exclusively psychology andsociology. The book opens with
an extended discussion of Diego Velzquez's painting Las
Meninas and its complex arrangement of sightlines,
hiddenness, and appearance. Then it develops its central
claim: that all periods of history have possessed certain

underlying epistemological assumptions that determined

what was acceptable as, for example, scientific discourse.
Foucault develops the notion of episteme, and argues
that these conditions of discourse have changed over time,
from one period's episteme to another. Foucault
demonstrates parallels in the development of three fields:
linguistics, biology, and economics.
The concept of episteme
The key concept of the book is that various periods of
history have been characterized by a certain number of
conditions of truth or discourse which are common to
various areas of knowledge and determine what it is
possible or acceptable to affirm, and that these have been
subject to change over time.[1] Foucault analyzes shifts in
the paradigm of thought between the classical and modern
periods:

In respect of language : from general grammar

to linguistics

In respect of living organisms : from natural

history to biology

In respect of money : from the science of wealth

to economics.
Foucault references three epistemes :

1.

The episteme of the Renaissance, which is

characterized by resemblance and similitude

2.

The classical episteme, characterized by

representation, ordering, identity and difference, giving rise
to categorization and taxonomy

3.

The modern episteme, the character of which Foucault

seeks to uncover.
Within the classical episteme, Foucault claims that the
concept of "man" was not yet defined : certainly man was
spoken of, but not subject to a distinct epistemological
awareness.[2]
Influence
Foucault's critique has been influential in the field of
cultural history.[3] The various shifts in consciousness that
he points out in the first chapters of the book have led
several scholars, such as Theodore Porter,[4] to scrutinize
the bases for knowledge in our present day as well as to

critique the projection of modern categories of knowledge

onto subjects that remain intrinsically unintelligible, in spite
of historical knowledge.
The Order of Things brought Foucault to prominence
as an intellectual figure in France. A review by Jean-Paul
Sartre attacked Foucault as "the last barricade of
the bourgeoisie". Foucault responded, "Poor bourgeoisie; If
they needed me as a 'barricade', then they had already lost
power!"[5]
Jean Piaget, in Structuralism, compared Foucault's
episteme to Thomas Kuhn's notion of a paradigm.[6]
Notes
1.

Jump up^ Foucault, Dits et crits I, in Sur la justice

populaire, p.1239

2.

Jump up^ Foucault, Les mots et les choses, op. cit.,

p. 320

3.

Jump up^ Chambon, Adrienne (1999). Reading

Foucault for Social Work. New York: Columbia University
Press. pp. 3637. ISBN 0-231-10717-X.

4.

Jump up^ Porter, Theodore (1992). Quantification and

the accounting ideal in science. Social Studies of
Science 22(4): pp. 633651.

5.

Jump up^ Miller, James (1994). The Passion of Michel

Foucault. New York: Anchor Books. p.159.

6.

Jump up^ Piaget, Jean (1970). Structuralism. New

York: Harper & Row. p. 132.

The Archaeology of Knowledge

The Archaeology of
Knowledge (French: L'archologie du savoir) is a 1969
book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is
a methodological and historiographical treatise promoting
what Foucault calls "archaeology" or the "archaeological
method", an analytical method he implicitly used in his
previous works Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the
Clinic, and The Order of Things.[1] It is Foucault's only
explicitly methodological work.
The premise of the book is that systems of thought
and knowledge ("epistemes" or "discursive formations") are

governed by rules (beyond those of grammar and logic)

which operate beneath the consciousness of individual
subjects and define a system of conceptual possibilities
that determines the boundaries of thought and language
use in a given domain and period.[1]
Most prominently in its Introduction and Conclusion,
the book also becomes a philosophical treatment and
critique ofphenomenological and
dogmatic structural readings of history and philosophy,
portraying continuous narratives as nave ways of
projecting our own consciousness onto the past, thus being
exclusive and excluding. Characteristically, Foucault
demonstrates his political motivations, personal projects
and preoccupations, and, explicitly and implicitly, the many
influences that inform the discourse of the time.
Theory
Foucault argues that the contemporary study of the
history of ideas, although it targets moments of transition
between historical worldviews, ultimately depends on
continuities that break down under close inspection. The

history of ideas marks points of discontinuity between

broadly defined modes of knowledge, but the assumption
that those modes exist as wholes fails to do justice to the
complexities of discourse. Foucault argues that
"discourses" emerge and transform not according to a
developing series of unarticulated, common worldviews,
but according to a vast and complex set of discursive and
institutional relationships, which are defined as much by
breaks and ruptures as by unified themes.[2]
Foucault defines a "discourse" as a 'way of speaking'.
[3]

Thus, his method studies only the set of 'things said' in

their emergences and transformations, without any

speculation about the overall, collective meaning of those
statements, and carries his insistence on discourse-in-itself
down to the most basic unit of things said: the statement
(nonc). During most of Archaeology, Foucault argues for
and against various notions of what are inherent aspects of
a statement, without arriving at a comprehensive
definition.[2] He does, however, argue that a statement is
the rules which render an expression (that is, a phrase,

a proposition, or a speech act) discursively meaningful.

This concept of meaning differs from the concept of
signification:[4] Though an expression is signifying, for
instance "The gold mountain is in California", it may
nevertheless be discursively meaningless and therefore
have no existence within a certain discourse. [5] For this
reason, the "statement" is an existence
function for discursive meaning.[6]
Being rules, the "statement" has a special meaning in
the Archaeology: it is not the expression itself, but the rules
which make an expression discursively meaningful. These
rules are not the syntax and semantics [7] that makes an
expression signifying. It is additional rules. In contrast
to structuralists, Foucault demonstrates that the semantic
and syntactic structures do not suffice to determine the
discursive meaning of an expression.[8] Depending on
whether or not it complies with these rules of discursive
meaning, a grammatically correct phrase may lack
discursive meaning or, inversely, a grammatically incorrect
sentence may be discursively meaningful - even

meaningless letters (e.g. "QWERTY") may have discursive

meaning.[9] Thus, the meaning of expressions depends on
the conditions in which they emerge and exist within a field
of discourse; the discursive meaning of an expression is
reliant on the succession of statements that precede and
follow it.[10] In short, the "statements" Foucault analysed are
not propositions, phrases, or speech acts. Rather,
"statements" constitute a network of rules establishing
which expressions are discursively meaningful, and these
rules are the preconditions for signifying propositions,
utterances, or speech acts to have discursive meaning.
However, "statements" are also 'events', because, like
other rules, they appear (or disappear) at some time.
Foucault's analysis then turns towards the organized
dispersion of statements, which he calls discursive
formations. Foucault reiterates that the analysis he is
outlining is only one possible procedure, and that he is not
seeking to displace other ways of analysing discourse or
render them as invalid.[11]

Foucault concludes Archaeology with responses to

criticisms from a hypothetical critic (which he anticipates
will occur after his book is read).
Reception
Gilles Deleuze describes The Archaeology of
Knowledge as, "the most decisive step yet taken in the
theory-practice of multiplicities."[12]
Notes
1.

^ Jump up
to:a

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/#3.2

2.

^ Jump up
to:a

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/arch/themes.h

tml
3.

Jump up^ http://www.michelfoucault.com/concepts/index.html

4.

Jump up^ French version p. 117

5.

Jump up^ French version p. 12

6.

Jump up^ French version p. 115

7.

Jump up^ the construction rules, Dits et crits I,

p. 728

8.

Jump up^ French version: p. 108, 11314, 118

19, 134

9.

Jump up^ French version p. 114

10.

Jump up^ Gutting, Gary (1994). The Cambridge

Companion to Foucault. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press. p. 231. ISBN 0-521-40887-3.
11.

Jump up^ Srgio Campos Gonalves, O mtodo

arqueolgico de anlise discursiva: o percurso

metodolgico de Michel Foucault, Histria e-Histria, NEE-UNICAMP (Campinas), v. 1, p. 1-21, Feb 2009, ISSN
1807-1783.
12.

Jump up^ Deleuze, Foucault (1986, p.14).

References

Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Foucault. Trans. Sean Hand.

London: Althone, 1988. ISBN 0-8264-5780-0.

Foucault, Michel. 1969. The Archaeology of

Knowledge. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. London and New
York: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-28753-7

Discipline and Punish

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison (French: Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison)
is a 1975 book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault.
An analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms
behind the massive changes that occurred in
Western penal systems during the modern age, it focuses
on historical documents from France. Foucault argues
against the idea that the prison became the consistent
form of punishment due mainly to
thehumanitarian concerns of reformists. He traces the
cultural shifts that led to the prison's dominance, focusing
on the body and questions of power. Prison is a form used
by the "disciplines", a new technological power, which can
also be found, according to Foucault, in places such
as schools, hospitals, and military barracks.[1]
In a later work, Security, Territory, Population, Foucault
admits that he was somewhat overzealous in his

descriptions of how disciplinary power conditions society;

he qualifies and develops his earlier ideas. [2]
Summary
The main ideas of Discipline and Punish can be
grouped according to its four parts: torture, punishment,
discipline, and prison.[1]
Torture
Foucault begins by contrasting two forms of penalty:
the violent and chaotic public torture of Robert-Franois
Damiens, who was convicted of attempted regicide in the
mid-18th century, and the highly regimented daily
schedule for inmates from an early 19th-century prison
(Mettray). These examples provide a picture of just how
profound the changes in western penal systems were after
less than a century. Foucault wants the reader to consider
what led to these changes and how did western culture
shift so radically.[3]

He believes that the question of the nature of these

changes is best asked by assuming that they weren't used
to create a more humanitarian penal system, nor to more
exactly punish or rehabilitate, but as part of a continuing
trajectory of subjection. Foucault wants to tie scientific
knowledge and technological development to the
development of the prison to prove this point. He defines a
"micro-physics" of power, which is constituted by a power
that is strategic and tactical rather than acquired,
preserved or possessed. He explains that power and
knowledge imply one another, as opposed to the common
belief that knowledge exists independently of power
relations (knowledge is always contextualized in a
framework which makes it intelligible, so the humanizing
discourse of psychiatry is an expression of the tactics of
oppression).[4] That is, the ground of the game of power
isn't won by 'liberation', because liberation already exists
as a facet of subjection. "The man described for us, whom
we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a
subjection much more profound than himself."[5] The

problem for Foucault is in some sense a theoretical

modelling which posits a soul, an identity (the use of soul
being fortunate since 'identity' or 'name' would not
properly express the method of subjectione.g., if mere
materiality were used as a way of tracking individuals then
the method of punishment would not have switched from
torture to psychiatry) which allows a whole materiality of
prison to develop. In What is an Author? Foucault also deals
with notion of identity, and its use as a method of control,
regulation, and tracking.[3]
He begins by examining public torture and execution.
He argues that the public spectacle of torture and
execution was a theatrical forum the original intentions of
which eventually produced several unintended
consequences. Foucault stresses the exactitude with which
torture is carried out, and describes an extensive legal
framework in which it operates to achieve specific
.purposes. Foucault describes public torture as ceremony
:The intended purposes were

To make the secret public (according to Foucault the

investigation was kept entirely secret even from the
accused). The secret of the investigation and the
conclusion of the magistrates was justified by the publicity
of the torture.

To show the effect of investigation on confession.

(According to Foucault torture could occur during the
investigation, because partial proofs meant partial guilt. If
the torture failed to elicit a confession then the
investigation was stopped and innocence assumed. A
confession legitimized the investigation and any torture
that occurred.)

Reflecting the violence of the original crime onto the

convict's body for all to see, in order for it to be manifested
then annulled by reciprocating the violence of the crime on
the criminal.

Enacting the revenge upon the convict's body, which

the sovereign seeks for having been injured by the crime.
Foucault argues that the law was considered an extension

of the sovereign's body, and so the revenge must take the

form of harming the convict's body.
It [torture] assured the articulation of the written on "
the oral, the secret on the public, the procedure of
investigation on the operation of the confession; it made it
possible to reproduce the crime on the visible body of the
criminal; in the same horror, the crime had to be
manifested and annulled. It also made the body of the
condemned man the place where the vengeance of the
sovereign was applied, the anchoring point for a
manifestation of power, an opportunity of affirming the
dissymmetry of forces."[6]
Foucault looks at public torture as the outcome "of a
certain mechanism of power" that views crime in a military
schema. Crime and rebellion are akin to a declaration of
war. The sovereign was not concerned with demonstrating
the ground for the enforcement of its laws, but of
identifying enemies and attacking them, the power of

which was renewed by the ritual of investigation and the

ceremony of public torture.[7]
:Some unintended consequences were

Providing a forum for the convict's body to become a

focus of sympathy and admiration.

Redistributing blame: the executioner rather than the

convict becomes the locus of shame.

Creating a site of conflict between the masses and the

sovereign at the convict's body. Foucault notes that public
executions often led to riots in support of the prisoner.
Frustration for the inefficiency of this economy of power
could be directed towards and coalesce around the site of
torture and execution.
Public torture and execution was a method the
sovereign deployed to express his or her power, and it did
so through the ritual of investigation and the ceremony of
executionthe reality and horror of which was supposed to
express the omnipotence of the sovereign but actually
revealed that the sovereign's power depended on the

participation of the people. Torture was made public in

order to create fear in the people, and to force them to
participate in the method of control by agreeing with its
verdicts. But problems arose in cases in which the people
through their actions disagreed with the sovereign, by
heroizing the victim (admiring the courage in facing death)
or in moving to physically free the criminal or to
redistribute the effects of the strategically deployed power.
Thus, he argues, the public execution was ultimately an
ineffective use of the body, qualified as non-economical. As
well, it was applied non-uniformly and haphazardly. Hence,
its political cost was too high. It was the antithesis of the
more modern concerns of the state: order and
generalization. So it had to be reformed to allow for greater
.stability of property for the bourgeoisie
Punishment
The switch to prison was not immediate. There was a
more graded change, though it ran its course rapidly. Prison
was preceded by a different form of public spectacle. The

theater of public torture gave way to public chain gangs.

Punishment became "gentle", though not
for humanitarian reasons, Foucault suggests. He argues
that reformists were unhappy with the unpredictable,
unevenly distributed nature of the violence the sovereign
would inflict on the convict. The sovereign's right to punish
was so disproportionate that it was ineffective and
uncontrolled. Reformists felt the power to punish and judge
should become more evenly distributed, the state's power
must be a form of public power. This, according to Foucault,
was of more concern to reformists than humanitarian
.arguments
Out of this movement towards generalized
punishment, a thousand "mini-theatres" of punishment
would have been created wherein the convicts' bodies
would have been put on display in a more ubiquitous,
controlled, and effective spectacle. Prisoners would have
been forced to do work that reflected their crime, thus
repaying society for their infractions. This would have
allowed the public to see the convicts' bodies enacting

their punishment, and thus to reflect on the crime. But

.these experiments lasted less than twenty years
Foucault argues that this theory of "gentle"
punishment represented the first step away from the
excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more
generalized and controlled means of punishment. But he
suggests that the shift towards prison that followed was the
result of a new "technology" and ontology for the body
being developed in the 18th century, the "technology" of
".discipline, and the ontology of "man as machine
Discipline
The emergence of prison as the form of punishment
for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in
the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Foucault. He
looks at the development of highly refined forms of
discipline, of discipline concerned with the smallest and
most precise aspects of a person's body. Discipline, he
suggests, developed a new economy and politics for
bodies. Modern institutions required that bodies must be

individuated according to their tasks, as well as for training,

observation, and control. Therefore, he argues, discipline
created a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which
enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of
economic, political, and military organizations emerging in
.the modern age and continuing to today
The individuality that discipline constructs (for the
bodies it controls) has four characteristics, namely it makes
:individuality which is

Cellulardetermining the spatial distribution of the

bodies

Organicensuring that the activities required of the

bodies are "natural" for them

Geneticcontrolling the evolution over time of the

activities of the bodies

Combinatoryallowing for the combination of the

force of many bodies into a single massive force

Foucault suggests this individuality can be

implemented in systems that are officially egalitarian, but
:use discipline to construct non-egalitarian power relations
Historically, the process by which
the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth
century the politically dominant class was masked by the
establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian
juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a
parliamentary, representative regime. But the
development and generalization of disciplinary
mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these
processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a
system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was
supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms,
by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially
non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the
disciplines. (222)
Foucault's argument is that discipline creates "docile
bodies", ideal for the new economics, politics and warfare

of the modern industrial age - bodies that function in

factories, ordered military regiments, and school
classrooms. But, to construct docile bodies the disciplinary
institutions must be able to (a) constantly observe and
record the bodies they control and (b) ensure the
internalization of the disciplinary individuality within the
bodies being controlled. That is, discipline must come
about without excessive force through careful observation,
and molding of the bodies into the correct form through
this observation. This requires a particular form of
institution, exemplified, Foucault argues, by Jeremy
Bentham's Panopticon. This architectural model, though it
was never adopted by architects according to Bentham's
exact blueprint, becomes an important conceptualization of
power relations for prison reformers of the 19th Century,
and its general principle is a recurring theme in modern
.prison construction
The Panopticon was the ultimate realization of a
modern disciplinary institution. It allowed for constant
observation characterized by an "unequal gaze"; the

constant possibility of observation. Perhaps the most

important feature of the panopticon was that it was
specifically designed so that the prisoner could never be
sure whether they were being observed at any moment.
The unequal gaze caused the internalization of disciplinary
individuality, and the docile body required of its inmates.
This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they
believe they are being watched, even if they are not. Thus,
prisons, and specifically those that follow the model of the
Panopticon, provide the ideal form of modern punishment.
Foucault argues that this is why the generalized, "gentle"
punishment of public work gangs gave way to the prison. It
was the ideal modernization of punishment, so its eventual
.dominance was natural
Having laid out the emergence of the prison as the
dominant form of punishment, Foucault devotes the rest of
the book to examining its precise form and function in our
society, laying bare the reasons for its continued use, and
.questioning the assumed results of its use

Prison
In examining the construction of the prison as the
central means of criminal punishment, Foucault builds a
case for the idea that prison became part of a larger
"carceral system" that has become an all-encompassing
sovereign institution in modern society. Prison is one part of
a vast network, including schools, military institutions,
hospitals, and factories, which build a panoptic society for
its members. This system creates "disciplinary
careers"[8] for those locked within its corridors. It is
operated under the scientific authority
of medicine, psychology, and criminology. Moreover, it
operates according to principles that ensure that it "cannot
fail to produce delinquents."[9] Delinquency, indeed, is
produced when social petty crime (such as taking wood
from the lord's lands) is no longer tolerated, creating a
class of specialized "delinquents" acting as the police's
.proxy in surveillance of society

The structures Foucault chooses to use as his starting

positions help highlight his conclusions. In particular, his
choice as a perfect prison of the penal institution at
Mettray helps personify the carceral system. Within it is
included the Prison, the School, the Church, and the workhouse (industry) - all of which feature heavily in his
argument. The prisons at Neufchatel[disambiguation
needed]

, Mettray, and Mettray Netherlands were perfect

examples for Foucault, because they, even in their original

state, began to show the traits Foucault was searching for.
They showed the body of knowledge being developed
about the prisoners, the creation of the 'delinquent' class,
and the disciplinary careers emerging.[10]
Criticism
Five theoretical arguments in favor of rejecting the
:Foucauldian model of panopticism may be considered
Displacement of the panoptical ideal by (1
,mechanisms of seduction

Redundancy of the panoptical impulse brought (2

about by the evident durability of the self-surveillance
functions which partly constitute the normal, socialized,
,Western subject
Reduction in the number of occasions of any conceivable (3
need for panoptical surveillance on account of simulation,
,prediction and action before the fact
,Supplementation of the panopticon by the synopticon (4
5) Failure of panoptical control to produce reliably
docile subjects.[11]
The first point concerns Zygmunt Baumans argument
that the leading principle of social order has moved from
panopticism to seduction. This argument is elaborated in
his 1998 essay On postmodern uses of sex.[12]
The second argument concerns surveillance
redundance, and it is increasingly relevant in the age
of Facebook and online self-disclosure.[citation needed]

The third argument for post-panopticism, concerning

:action before the fact, is articulated by William Bogard
The figure of the Panopticon is already haunted by a
parallel figure of simulation. Surveillance, we are told, is
discreet, unobtrusive, camouflaged, unverifiable all
elements of artifice designed into an architectural
arrangement of spaces to produce real effects of discipline.
Eventually this will lead, by its means of perfection, to the
elimination of the Panopticon itself . . . surveillance as its
own simulation. Now it is no longer a matter of the speed
at which information is gained to defeat an enemy. . . .
Now, one can simulate a space of control, project an
indefinite number of courses of action, train for each
possibility, and react immediately with pre-programmed
responses to the actual course of events . . . with
simulation, sight and foresight, actual and virtual begin to
merge. . . . Increasingly the technological enlargement of
the field of perceptual control, the erasure of distance in
the speed of electronic information has pushed surveillance

beyond the very limits of speed toward the purest forms of

anticipation.[13]
Anticipation is evident in emergent surveillance
technologies such as social network analysis.[citation needed]
Fourth, the Synopticon concerns the surveillance of
the few by the many.[14] Examples of this kind of
surveillance may include the theatre, the coliseum, and
celebrity tabloid reporting. This reversal of the Panoptical
polarity may have become so marked that it finally
deconstructs the panoptical metaphor altogether. [11]
The fifth point concerns the self-defeating nature of
panoptical regimes. The failure of surveillance states is
illustrated by examples such as prison riots, asylum subcultures, ego survival in Gulag or concentration camp,
[and] retribalization in the Balkans.[11]
In their 2007 article, Dobson and Fisher[15] lay out an
alternative model of post-panopticism as they identify
three panoptic models. Panopticism I refers to Jeremy

Benthams original conceptualization of the panopticon,

and is it the model of panopticism that Foucault responds
to in Discipline and Punish. Panopticism II refers to
an Orwellian Big Brother ideal of surveillance. Panopticism
III, refers to the high-technology human tracking systems
that are emergent in the 21st century. These geographical
information systems (GIS) include technologies such as
cellphone GPS, RFIDs (radio-frequency identification tags),
and geo-fences. Panopticism III is also distinguished by its
:costs
Panopticon III is affordable, effective, and available to
anyone who wants to use it. Initial purchase prices and
monthly service fees are equivalent to cell-phone costs. In
less than five years, the cost of continuous surveillance of a
single individual has dropped from several hundred
thousand dollars per year to less than $500 per year.
Surveillance formerly justified solely for national security
and high-stakes commerce is readily available to track a
spouse, child, parent, employee, neighbor, or stranger. [15]

References
^ Jump up to:a

1.

Schwan, A., & Shapiro, S. (2011).

How to read Foucault's discipline and punish. London :

Pluto Press, 2011.
2.

Jump up^ Security, Territory, Population, p.48-50

(2007)
^ Jump up to:a

3.

Sargiacomo, M. (2009). Michel

Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

Journal Of Management And Governance, 13(3), 269-280.
4.

Jump up^ Discipline and Punish, p.26-27 (1977)

5.

Jump up^ "Discipline and Punish", p. 30 (1977)

6.

Jump up^ "Discipline and Punish", p.55 (1977)

7.

Jump up^ "Discipline and Punish", p.57 (1977)

8.

Jump up^ Discipline and Punish, p.300 (1977)

9.

Jump up^ Discipline and Punish, p.266 (1977)

10.

Jump up^ MODEL PRISONS - View Article - The

New York Times 1873

11.

^ Jump up to:a

b c

Boyne, Roy (2000). Post-

Panopticism, Economy and Society, 29:2, 285-307.

12.

Jump up^ Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization: The

Human Consequences, Cambridge: Polity. 1999 On

postmodern uses of sex, in Mike Featherstone (ed.) Love
and Eroticism, London: Sage.
13.

Jump up^ Bogard, W. (1996). The Simulation of

Surveillance , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14.

Jump up^ Mathiesen, T. (1997) The viewer

society, Theoretical Criminology 1(2).

15.

^ Jump up to:a

Dobson, J. E., and P. F. Fisher.

2007. The Panopticon's changing geography. Geographical

Review 97 (3): 307-323.

The History of Sexuality

The History of Sexuality (French: LHistoire de la
sexualit) is a three-volume study of sexuality in
the western worldby French historian and
philosopher Michel Foucault. The first volume, The Will to
Knowledge (La volont de savoir), was first published in
1976 by ditions Gallimard; an English translation
by Robert Hurley was published by Allen Lanein 1978. It
was followed by The Use of Pleasure (l'usage des plaisirs),
and The Care of the Self (le souci de soi), both published in
.1984
In The History of Sexuality, Foucault examines the
emergence of "sexuality" as a discursive object and
separate sphere of life. He argues that the notion that
every individual has a sexuality is a relatively recent
development in Western societies. In Volume I, Foucault
explores the "repressive hypothesis", the idea that western
society suppressed sexuality from the 17th to the mid-20th
century due to the rise of capitalism and bourgeois society.

Foucault maintains that the hypothesis is incorrect, and

that discourse on sexuality proliferated during this period,
during which experts began to examine sexuality in a
scientific manner, encouraging people to confess their
sexual feelings and actions. In the 18th and 19th centuries,
he argues, society takes an increasing interest in
sexualities that did not fit within the marital bond: the
"world of perversion" that includes the sexuality of
children, the mentally ill, the criminal and the homosexual.
According to Foucault, by the 19th century sexuality was
being readily explored both through confession and
scientific enquiry. In the second two volumes, Foucault
deals with the role of sex in Greek and Roman
antiquity. The History of Sexuality received a mixed
reception, with some reviewers praising the book and
.others criticizing Foucault's scholarship
Background

Publication
Three volumes of The History of Sexuality were
published before Foucault's death in 1984. The first
volume, The Will to Knowledge (previously known as An
Introduction in EnglishHistoire de la sexualit, 1: la
volont de savoir in French) was published in France in
1976, and translated in 1977, focusing primarily on the last
two centuries, and the functioning of sexuality as an
analytics of power related to the emergence of a science of
sexuality, and the emergence of biopowerin the West. The
work was a further development of the account of the
interaction of knowledge and power Foucault provided
in Discipline and Punish (1975).[1]
The second two volumes, The Use of Pleasure (Histoire
de la sexualit, II: l'usage des plaisirs) and The Care of the
Self (Histoire de la sexualit, III: le souci de soi) dealt with
the role of sex in Greek and Roman antiquity. The latter
volume deals considerably with the
ancient technological development of

the hypomnema which was used to establish a permanent

relationship to oneself. Both were published in 1984, the
year of Foucault's death, the second volume being
.translated in 1985, and the third in 1986
In his lecture series from 1979 to 1980 Foucault
extended his analysis of government to its "...wider sense
of techniques and procedures designed to direct the
behaviour of men", which involved a new consideration of
the "...examination of conscience" and confession in
early Christian literature. These themes of early Christian
literature seemed to dominate Foucault's work, alongside
his study of Greek and Roman literature, until the end of his
life. However, Foucault's death left the work incomplete,
and the planned fourth volume of his History of
Sexuality on Christianity was never published. The fourth
volume was to be entitledConfessions of the Flesh (Les
aveux de la chair). The volume was almost complete before
Foucault's death and a copy of it is privately held in the
Foucault archive. It cannot be published under the
restrictions of Foucault's estate.[2]

Volume I: The Will to Knowledge

Part I: We "Other Victorians"
Part One, entitled "We Other Victorians", opens with
a discussion of what Foucault calls the "...repressive
hypothesis", the widespread belief among late 20thcentury westerners that sexuality, and the open discussion
of sex, was socially repressed during the late 17th, 18th,
19th and early 20th centuries, a by-product of the rise
of capitalism and bourgeois society. Arguing that this was
never actually the case, he asks the question as to why
modern westerners believe such a hypothesis, noting that
in portraying past sexuality as repressed, it provides a
basis for the idea that in rejecting past moral systems,
future sexuality can be free and uninhibited, a "...garden of
earthly delights".[3]
Part II: The Repressive Hypothesis

We must... abandon

the hypothesis that

modern industrial

societies ushered in an
age of increased sexual
repression. We have not
only witnessed a visible
explosion of unorthodox
sexualities; but and this
is the important point a
deployment quite
different from the law,
even if it is locally
dependent on procedures
of prohibition, has
ensured, through a
network of
interconnecting
mechanisms, the
proliferation of specific
pleasures and the
multiplication of disparate
sexualities.

 Foucault, 1976.[4]
Proceeding to go into further depth in Part Two, "The
Repressive Hypothesis," Foucault notes that from the 17th
century to the 1970s, there had actually been a
"...veritable discursive explosion" in the discussion of sex,
albeit using an "...authorized vocabulary" that codified
where one could talk about it, when one could talk about it,
and with whom. He argues that this desire to talk so
enthusiastically about sex in the western world stems from
the Counter-Reformation, when the Roman Catholic Church
called for its followers to confess their sinful desires as well
as their actions. As evidence for the obsession of talking
about sex, he highlights the publication of the book My
Secret Life, anonymously written in the late 19th century
and detailing the sex life of a Victorian gentleman. Indeed,
Foucault states that at the start of the 18th century, there
was an emergence of "...a political, economic, and
technical incitement to talk about sex,"...with selfappointed experts speaking both moralistically and
rationally on sex, the latter sort trying to categorize it. He

notes that in that century, governments became

increasingly aware that they were not merely having to
manage "subjects" or "a people" but a "population", and
that as such they had to concern themselves with such
issues as birth and death rates, marriage, and
contraception, thereby increasing their interest and
changing their discourse on sexuality.[5]
Entering the second chapter of this section, "The
Perverse Implantation", Foucault argues that prior to the
18th century, discourse on sexuality focuses on the
productive role of the married couple, which is monitored
by both canonical and civil law. In the 18th and 19th
centuries, he argues, society ceases discussing the sex
lives of married couples, instead taking an increasing
interest in sexualities that did not fit within this union; the
"world of perversion" that includes the sexuality of
children, the mentally ill, the criminal and the homosexual.
He notes that this had three major effects on society.
Firstly, there was increasing categorization of these
"perverts"; where previously a man who engaged in same-

sex activities would be labeled as an individual who

succumbed to the sin of sodomy, now they would be
categorised into a new "species," that of homosexual.
Secondly, Foucault argues that the labeling of perverts
conveyed a sense of "pleasure and power" on to both those
studying sexuality and the perverts themselves. Thirdly, he
argues that bourgeoisie society exhibited "blatant and
fragmented perversion," readily engaging in perversity but
regulating where it could take place.[6]
Part III: Scientia Sexualis
In part three, "Scientia Sexualis", Foucault explores the
development of the scientific study of sex, the attempt to
unearth the "truth" of sex, a phenomenon which Foucault
argues is peculiar to the West. In contrast to the West's
sexual science, Foucault introduces the "ars erotica" which
he states has only existed in Ancient and Eastern societies.
Furthermore, he argues that this scientia sexualis has
repeatedly been used for political purposes, being utilized
in the name of "public hygiene" to support state racism.

Returning to the influence of the Catholic confession, he

looks at the relationship between the confessor and the
authoritarian figure that he confesses to, arguing that as
Roman Catholicism was eclipsed in much of Western and
Northern Europe following the Reformation, the concept of
confession survived and became more widespread,
entering into the relationship between parent and child,
patient and psychiatrist and student and educator. By the
19th century, he maintains, the "truth" of sexuality was
being readily explored both through confession and
scientific enquiry. Foucault proceeds to examine how the
confession of sexuality then comes to be "constituted in
scientific terms," arguing that scientists begin to trace the
cause of all aspects of human psychology and society to
sexual factors.[7]
Part IV: The Deployment of Sexuality
In part four, "The Deployment of Sexuality," Foucault
explores the question as to why western society wishes to
seek for the "truth" of sex. Chapter one, "Objective", lays

out Foucault's argument that we need to develop an

"analytics" of power through which to understand sex.
Highlighting that power controls sex by laying down rules
for it to follow, he discusses how power demands
obedience through domination, submission, and
subjugation, and also how power masks its true intentions
by disguising itself as beneficial. As an example, he
highlights the manner in which the feudal absolute
monarchies of historical Europe, themselves a form
ofpower, disguised their intentions by claiming that they
were necessary to maintain law, order, and peace. As a
leftover concept from the days of feudalism, Foucault
argues that westerners still view power as emanating from
law, but he rejects this, proclaiming that we must
"...construct an analytics of power that no longer takes law
as a model and a code," and announcing that a different
form of power governs sexuality. "We must," Foucault
states, "at the same time conceive of sex without the law,
and power without the king."[8]

In the second chapter, "Method", Foucault explores

what he means by "Power", explaining that he does not
mean power as the domination or subjugation exerted on
society by the government or the state, but instead
remarks that power should be understood "as the
multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in
which they operate." In this way, he argues, "Power is
everywhere . . . because it comes from everywhere,"
emanating from all social relationships and being imposed
throughout society bottom-up rather than top-down. [9]
Part V: Right of Death and Power over Life
In part five, "The Right of Death and Power over Life,"
Foucault asserts that the motivations for power over life
and death have changed. As in feudal times the "right to
life" was more or less a "right to death" because sovereign
powers were able to decide when a person died. This has
changed to a "right to live," as sovereign states are more
concerned about the power of how people live. Power
becomes about how to foster life. For example, a state

decides to execute someone as a safe guard to society not

as justified, as it once was, as vengeful justice. This new
emphasis on power over life is called Biopower and comes
in two forms. First, Foucault says it is "centered on the body
as a machine: its disciplining, the optimization of its
capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase
of its usefulness and its docility, its integration into systems
of efficient and economic controls."[10] The second form,
Foucault argues, emerged later and focuses on the "species
body, the body imbued with the mechanics of life and
serving as the basis of the biological processes:
propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life
expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that
cause these to vary.[11] Biopower, it is argued, is the source
of the rise of capitalism, as states became interested in
regulating and normalizing power over life and not as
.concerned about punishing and condemning actions
Scholarly reception

The reception of The History of Sexuality among

.scholars and academics has been mixed
19761989
Historian Jane Caplan calls The History of
Sexuality "certainly the most ambitious and interesting
recent attempt to analyse the relations between the
production of concepts and the history of society in the
field of sexuality", but criticizes Foucault for using "an
undifferentiated concept" of speech and an imprecise
notion of "power".[12] Gay activist Dennis Altman describes
Foucault's work as representative of the position that
homosexuals emerged as a social category in 18th and
19th century western Europe.[13] Feminist Germaine
Greer writes that Foucault rightly argues that, "what we
have all along taken as the breaking-through of a silence
and the long delayed giving of due attention to human
sexuality was in fact the promotion of human sexuality,
indeed, the creation of an internal focus for the individual's
preoccupations."[14]

Historian Peter Gay writes that Foucault is right to

raise questions about the "repressive hypothesis", but that
"his procedure is anecdotal and almost wholly
unencumbered by facts; using his accustomed technique
(reminiscent of the principle underlying Oscar Wilde's
humor) of turning accepted ideas upside down, he turns
out to be right in part for his private reasons." [15] Classicist
Page duBois describes The Use of Pleasure as "one of the
most exciting new books in the field of classical studies"
and "an important contribution to the history of sexuality",
but adds that Foucault "takes for granted, and thus
'authorizes,' exactly what needs to be explained: the
philosophical establishment of the autonomous male
subject".[16] Historian Patricia O'Brien writes that Foucault
was "without expertise" in dealing with antiquity, and
that The History of Sexuality lacks "the methodological
rigor of Foucault's earlier works, and especially
of Discipline and Punish."[17]

1990present
Classicist David M. Halperin writes in One Hundred
Years of Homosexuality (1990) that the appearance of the
English translation of the first volume of Foucault's work in
1978, together with the publication of K. J. Dover's Greek
Homosexuality the same year, marked the beginning of a
new era in the study of the history of sexuality. [18] He
suggests that The History of Sexuality may be the most
important contribution to the history of western morality
since Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of
Morality (1887).[19] Scholar Camille Paglia rejects Halperin's
views as uninformed, calling The History of Sexuality a
"disaster" and claiming that much of it is fantasy
unsupported by the historical record. Paglia observes that
the book "is acknowledged even by Foucault's admirers to
be his weakest work".[20]
Jurist and economist Richard Posner calls The History
of Sexuality "a remarkable fusion of philosophy and
intellectual history", adding that Hurley's translation is

brilliant and that the book is lucidly written. [21] Historian

Michael Mason writes that in The History of
Sexuality Foucault presents what amounts to an argument
"against the possibility of making historical connections
between beliefs about sex and sexual practices". Mason
writes that Foucault's argument is only acceptable if one
accepts the need to shift attention from "sexuality" to "sex"
in thinking about the sexual culture of the last three
centuries, and that Foucault does not make a case for such
a need.[22] Literary critic Alexander Welsh criticizes Foucault
for failing to place Sigmund Freud in the context of 19th
century thought and culture.[23]Historian Roy
Porter calls The History of Sexuality, "a brilliant enterprise,
astonishingly bold, shocking even, in its subversion of
conventional explanatory frameworks, chronologies, and
evaluations, and in its proposed alternatives." Porter credits
Foucault with discrediting the view, proposed for example
by Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization (1955), that
"industrialization demanded erotic austerity." [24]

Classicist Bruce Thornton writes that The Use of

Pleasure, the second volume of The History of Sexuality, is
"usually quite readable, surveying the ancient evidence to
make some good observations about the various
techniques developed to control passion." However,
Thornton criticizes Foucault for limiting his scope to "fourthcentury medical and philosophical works".
[25]

Philosopher Roger Scruton dismisses The History of

Sexuality as "mendacious", and calls his book Sexual

Desire (1986) an answer to Foucault's work.[26] Romana
Byrne criticizes Foucault's argument that the scientia
sexualis belongs to modern Western culture while the ars
erotica belongs only to Eastern and Ancient societies,
arguing that a form of ars erotica has been evident in
Western society since at least the eighteenth century. [27]
References
Footnotes
1.

Jump up^ Bernasconi 2005. p. 310.

2.

Jump up^ Foucault 1999. pp. 34, 47

3.

Jump up^ Foucault 1976. pp. 114.

4.

Jump up^ Foucault 1976. p. 49.

5.

Jump up^ Foucault 1976. pp. 1536.

6.

Jump up^ Foucault 1976. pp. 3749.

7.

Jump up^ Foucault 1976. pp. 5373.

8.

Jump up^ Foucault 1976. p. 7791.

9.

Jump up^ Foucault 1976. p. 92102.

10.

Jump up^ Foucault 1976. p. 139.

11.

Jump up^ Foucault 1976. p. 139.

12.

Jump up^ Caplan 1981. p. 165.

13.

Jump up^ Altman 1982. p. 48.

14.

Jump up^ Greer 1985. p. 198.

15.

Jump up^ Gay 1985. pp. 468-9.

16.

Jump up^ duBois 1988. p. 2.

17.

Jump up^ O'Brien 1989. p. 42.

18.

Jump up^ Halperin 1990. p. 4.

19.

Jump up^ Halperin 1990. p. 62.

20.

Jump up^ Paglia 1993. p. 187.

21.

Jump up^ Posner 1992. p. 23.

22.

Jump up^ Mason 1995. pp. 172-3.

23.

Jump up^ Welsh 1994. p. 128.

24.

Jump up^ Porter 1996. pp. 248, 252.

25.

Jump up^ Thornton 1997. p. 246.

26.

Jump up^ Scruton 2005. p. 55.

27.

Jump up^ Byrne 2013. pp. 1-4.

Bibliography
Books

Altman, Dennis (1982). The Homosexualization of

America. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-4143-2.

Bernasconi, Robert (2005). Honderich, Ted, ed. The

Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. ISBN 0-19-926479-1.

Byrne, Romana (2013). Aesthetic Sexuality: A Literary

History of Sadomasochism. New York:
Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4411-0081-8. External link in |
title= (help)

Caplan, Jane (1981). The Cambridge Women's Studies

Group, ed. Women in Society: Interdisciplinary Essays.
London: Virago. ISBN 0-86068-083-5.

duBois, Page (1988). Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis

and Ancient Representations of Women. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-16757-7.

Foucault, Michel (1979) [1976]. The History of

Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction. London: Allen
Lane. ISBN 0-7139-1094-1.

Foucault, Michel (1999). Religion and culture: Michel

Foucault. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-92362-X.

Gay, Peter (1985). The Bourgeois Experience, Victoria

to Freud, Volume I: Education of the Senses. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 0-19-503728-6.

Greer, Germaine (1985). Sex and Destiny: The Politics

of Human Fertility. London: Picador. ISBN 0-330-28551-3.

Halperin, David M. (1990). One Hundred Years of

Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love. New
York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90097-2.

Macey, David (1993). The Lives of Michel Foucault.

London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-0091753443.

Mason, Michael (1995). The Making of Victorian

Sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19285312-0.

McGee, R. Jon; Warms, Richard L.

(2011). Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History.
New York: McGraw Hill. ISBN 0078034884.

Miller, James (1993). The Passion of Michel Foucault.

New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671695507.

Mills, Sara (2004). Michel Foucault. London:

Routledge. ISBN 978-0415245692.

O'Brien, Patricia (1989). Hunt, Lynn, ed. The New

Cultural History. London: University of California. ISBN 0520-06429-1.

Paglia, Camille (1993). Sex, Art, and American Culture:

Essays. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-017209-2.

Posner, Richard (1992). Sex and Reason. Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-67480279-9.

Porter, Roy (1996). Keddie, Nikki R., ed. Debating

Gender, Debating Sexuality. New York: New York University
Press. ISBN 0-8147-4655-1.

Scruton, Roger (2005). Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from

a Life. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-8033-0.

Smart, Barry (2002). Michel Foucault. London:

Routledge. ISBN 978-0415285339.

Thornton, Bruce S. (1997). Eros: The Myth of Ancient

Greek Sexuality. Boulder, Colorado: Westview
Press. ISBN 0-8133-3226-5.

Welsh, Alexander (1994). Freud's Wishful Dream Book.

Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03718-3.
Journals

Foucault, Michel (1982). "Critical Inquiry, 1982, Vol 8,

No. 4".

Foucauldian discourse analysis

Foucauldian discourse analysis is a form
of discourse analysis, focusing on power relationships in
society as expressed through language and practices, and
based on the theories of Michel Foucault.
Theory
Besides focusing on the meaning of a given discourse,
the distinguishing characteristic of this approach is its
stress on power relationships. These are expressed through
language and behavior, and the relationship between
language and power.[1][2] The method analyzes how the
social world, expressed through language, is affected by
various sources of power.[1] As such, this approach is close
to social constructivism, as the researcher tries to
understand how our society is being shaped (or
constructed) by language, which in turn reflects existing
power relationships.[1][2] The analysis attempts to
understand how individuals view the world, and studies
categorizations, personal and institutional relationships,
ideology, and politics.[3]

The approach was inspired by the work of both Michel

Foucault and Jacques Derrida, and
by psychoanalysis and critical theory.[3]
Foucauldian discourse analysis, like much of critical
theory, is often used in politically oriented studies. It is
preferred by scholars who criticize more traditional forms of
discourse analysis as failing to account for the political
implications of discourse.[4]
Process
Kendall and Wickham outline five steps in using
"Foucauldian discourse analysis". The first step is a simple
recognition that discourse is a body of statements that are
organized in a regular and systematic way. The subsequent
four steps are based on the identification of rules on:

how those statements are created;

what can be said (written) and what cannot;

how spaces in which new statements can be made are

created;

making practices material and discursive at the same

time.[5]

Areas of study
Studies employing the Foucauldian discourse analysis
may for example look at how figures in authority use
language to express their dominance, and request
obedience and respect from those subordinate to them. In
a specific example, a study may look at the language used
by teachers towards students, or military officers towards
conscripts. This approach could also be used to study how
language is used as a form of resistance to those in power.
[1]

References
1.

^ Jump up to:a

b c d

Lisa M. Given (2008). The

Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. SAGE.

p. 249. ISBN 978-1-4129-4163-1. Retrieved 22
February 2012.
2.

^ Jump up to:a

Rodrigo Magalhes; Ron Sanchez

(2 November 2009). Autopoiesis in organization theory and

practice. Emerald Group Publishing. p. 152. ISBN 978-184855-832-8. Retrieved 22 February 2012.

3.

^ Jump up to:a

Robin Wooffitt (23 April

2005). Conversation analysis and discourse analysis: a

comparative and critical introduction. SAGE.
p. 146. ISBN 978-0-7619-7426-0. Retrieved 22
February 2012.
4.

Jump up^ Robin Wooffitt (23 April

2005). Conversation analysis and discourse analysis: a
comparative and critical introduction. SAGE.
p. 147. ISBN 978-0-7619-7426-0. Retrieved 22
February 2012.

5.

Jump up^ Gavin Kendall; Gary Wickham (8

February 1999). Using Foucault's methods. SAGE.
p. 42. ISBN 978-0-7619-5717-1. Retrieved 22
February 2012

Discourse
Discourse (from Latin discursus, "running to and
from") denotes written and spoken communications such
as:

In semantics and discourse analysis: Discourse is a

conceptual generalization of conversation within each
modality and context of communication.

The totality of codified language (vocabulary) used in

a given field of intellectual enquiry and of social practice,
such as legal discourse, medical discourse, religious
discourse, et cetera.[1]

In the work of Michel Foucault, and that of the social

theoreticians he inspired: discourse describes an entity of
sequences, of signs, in that they are enouncements
(noncs), statements in conversation.[2]
As discourse, an enouncement (statement) is not a
unit of semiotic signs, but an abstract construct that allows
the semiotic signs to assign meaning, and so communicate
specific, repeatable communications to, between, and
among objects, subjects, and statements.[2] Therefore, a

discourse is composed of semiotic sequences (relations

among signs that communicate meaning) between and
among objects, subjects, and statements.
The term "discursive formation" (French: formation
discursive) conceptually describes the regular
communications (written and spoken) that produce such
discourses, such conversations. As a philosopher, Michel
Foucault applied the discursive formation in the analyses of
large bodies of knowledge, such as political
economy and natural history.[3][4]
In the first sense-usage (semantics and discourse
analysis), the term discourse is studied in corpus
linguistics, thestudy of language expressed
in corpora (samples) of real world text. In the second
sense (the codified language of a field of enquiry) and in
the third sense (a statement, un nonc), the analysis of
a discourse examines and determines the connections
among language and structure and agency.
Moreover, because a discourse is a body of text meant
to communicate specific data, information, and knowledge,

there exist internal relations in the content of a given

discourse; likewise, there exist external relations among
discourses. As such, a discourse does not exist per se (in
itself), but is related to other discourses, by way of interdiscursivity; therefore, in the course of intellectual enquiry,
the discourse among researchers features the questions
and answers of What is . . .? and What is not. . . .,
conducted according to the meanings (denotation and
connotation) of the concepts (statements) used in the
given field of enquiry, such as anthropology, ethnography,
and sociology; cultural studies and literary theory;
the philosophy of science and feminism.
The humanities
In the humanities and in the social sciences, the
term discourse describes a formal way of thinking that can
be expressed through language; the discourse is a social
boundary that defines what statements can be said about a
topic.
Discourse affects the person's perspective; it is
impossible to avoid discourse. For example, two notably

distinct discourses can be used about

various guerrillamovements describing them either as
"freedom fighters" or "terrorists". In other words, the
chosen discourse provides the vocabulary, expressions and
perhaps also the style needed to communicate.
Discourses are embedded in different rhetorical genres
and metagenres that constrain and enable them. That is
language talking about language, for instance theAmerican
Psychiatric Association's DSMIV manual tells which terms
have to be used in talking about mental health, thereby
mediating meanings and dictating practices of the
professionals of psychology and psychiatry. [5]
Discourse is closely linked to different theories
of power and state, at least as long as defining discourses
is seen to mean defining reality itself. This conception of
discourse is largely derived from the work of French
philosopher Michel Foucault.
Modernism
Modern theorists were focused on achieving progress
and believed in the existence of natural and social laws

which could be used universally to develop knowledge and

thus a better understanding of society.[6] Modernist
theorists were preoccupied with obtaining the truth and
reality and sought to develop theories which contained
certainty and predictability.[7] Modernist theorists therefore
viewed discourse as being relative to talking or way of
talking and understood discourse to be functional.
[8]

Discourse and language transformations are ascribed to

progress or the need to develop new or more accurate

words to describe new discoveries, understandings, or
areas of interest.[8] In modern times, language and
discourse are dissociated from power and ideology and
instead conceptualized as natural products of common
sense usage or progress.[8] Modernism further gave rise to
the liberal discourses of rights, equality, freedom, and
justice; however, this rhetoric masked substantive
inequality and failed to account for differences, according
to Regnier.[9]
Structuralism

Structuralist theorists, such as Ferdinand de

Saussure and Jacques Lacan, argue that all human actions
and social formations are related to language and can be
understood as systems of related elements. [10] This means
that the individual elements of a system only have
significance when considered in relation to the structure as
a whole, and that structures are to be understood as selfcontained, self-regulated, and self-transforming
entities.

[11]

In other words, it is the structure itself that

determines the significance, meaning and function of the

individual elements of a system. Structuralism has made
an important contribution to our understanding of language
and social systems.[12] Saussures theory of
language highlights the decisive role of meaning and
signification in structuring human life more generally. [10]
Postmodernism
Following the perceived limitations of the modern era,
emerged postmodern theory.[6] Postmodern theorists
rejected modernist claims that there was one theoretical
approach that explained all aspects of society. [7] Rather,

postmodernist theorists were interested in examining the

variety of experience of individuals and groups and
emphasized differences over similarities and common
experiences.[8]
In contrast to modern theory, postmodern theory is
more fluid and allows for individual differences as it
rejected the notion of social laws. Postmodern theorists
shifted away from truth seeking and instead sought
answers for how truths are produced and sustained.
Postmodernists contended that truth and knowledge is
plural, contextual, and historically produced through
discourses. Postmodern researchers therefore embarked on
analyzing discourses such as texts, language, policies and
practices.[8]
French social theorist Michel Foucault developed a
notion of discourse in his early work, especially
the Archaeology of knowledge (1972). In Discursive
Struggles Within Social Welfare: Restaging Teen
Motherhood,[13] Iara Lessa summarizes Foucault's definition
of discourse as systems of thoughts composed of ideas,

attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that

systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of
which they speak." Foucault traces the role of discourses in
wider social processes of legitimating and power,
emphasizing the construction of current truths, how they
are maintained and what power relations they carry with
them. Foucault later theorized that discourse is a medium
through which power relations produce speaking subjects.
[8]

Foucault (1977, 1980) argued that power and knowledge

are inter-related and therefore every human relationship is

a struggle and negotiation of power.[14] Foucault further
stated that power is always present and can both produce
and constrain the truth.[8] Discourse according to Foucault
(1977, 1980, 2003) is related to power as it operates by
rules of exclusion. Discourse therefore is controlled by
objects, what can be spoken of; ritual, where and how one
may speak; and the privileged, who may speak. [15] Coining
the phrases power-knowledge Foucault (1980) stated
knowledge was both the creator of power and creation of
power. An object becomes a "node within a network." In his

work, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault uses the

example of a book to illustrate a node within a network. A
book is not made up of individual words on a page, each of
which has meaning, but rather "is caught up in a system of
references to other books, other texts, other sentences."
The meaning of that book is connected to a larger,
overarching web of knowledge and ideas to which it
relates.
One of the key discourses that Foucault identified as
part of his critique of power-knowledge was that
of neoliberalism, which he related very closely to his
conceptualization of governmentality in his lectures on
biopolitics.[16] This trajectory of Foucault's thinking has been
taken up widely within Human Geography.
Notes
1.

Jump up^ . revue-texto.net. June 2001. |

first1= missing |last1= in Authors list (help); Missing or
empty |title= (help);

^ Jump up to:a

2.

M.

Foucault (1969). L'Archologie du savoir. Paris: ditions

Gallimard.
3.

Jump up^ M. Foucault (1970 [1966]). The Order

of Things. Pantheon. ISBN 0-415-26737-4. Check date
values in: |date= (help)

4.

Jump up^ Compact Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus

and Wordpower Guide (2001). Oxford University Press, New
York.

5.

Jump up^ Catherine F. Schryer and Philippa

Spoel. Genre Theory, Health-Care Discourse, and
Professional Identity Formation. Journal of Business and
Technical Communication 2005; 19;
249http://jbt.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/3/249

6.

^ Jump up to:a

J. Larrain (1994). "Ideology and

cultural identity: Modernity and the third world presence".

Cambridge: Polity Press.
7.

^ Jump up to:a

Steven Best & Douglas

Kellner (1997). The postmodern turn. The Guilford

Press. ISBN 1-57230-221-6.

8.

^ Jump up to:a

b c d e f g

9.

Jump up^ Regnier, 2005

10.

^ Jump up to:a

Strega, 2005

D. Howarth (2000). Discourse.

Philadelphia, Pa.: Open University Press.ISBN 0-335-200702.

11.

Jump up^ D. Howarth (2000). Discourse.

Philadelphia, Pa.: Open University Press. p. 17.ISBN 0-33520070-2.

12.

Jump up^ Sommers, Aaron. Discourse and

Difference "University of New Hampshire Cosmology

Seminar" [1]
13.

Jump up^ I. Lessa (2006). "Discursive struggles

within social welfare: Restaging teen motherhood". British

Journal of Social Work 36 (2): 283
298.doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch256.
14.

Jump up^ Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews

and Other Writings, 1972--1977. M Foucault. Selected

interviews and other writings 1972,1977, 1980 - Pantheon
15.

Jump up^ M. Foucault (1972). Archaeology of

knowledge. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 0-415-28752-9.

16.

Jump up^ Foucault, M. (2008) The Birth Of

Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collge de France, 1978-1979.

New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
References

M. Foucault (1977). Discipline and Punish. New

York: Pantheon. ISBN 0-394-49942-5.

M. Foucault (1980). "Two Lectures," in Colin Gordon,

ed., Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews. New
York: Pantheon.

M. Foucault (2003). Society Must Be Defended. New

York: Picador. ISBN 0-312-42266-0.

A. McHoul & W. Grace (1993). A Foucault primer:

Discourse, power, and the subject. Melbourne: Melbourne
University Press. ISBN 0-8147-5480-5.

J. Motion & S. Leitch (2007). "A toolbox for public

relations: The oeuvre of Michel Foucault". Public Relations
Review 33 (3): 263268.doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2007.05.004.

R. Mullaly (1997). Structural social work: Ideology,

theory, and practice (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University
Press. ISBN 0-7710-6673-2.

B. Norton (1997). "Language, identity, and the

ownership of English". TESOL Quarterly (Teachers of
English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.
(TESOL))31 (3): 409
429. doi:10.2307/3587831. JSTOR 3587831.

Research as resistance: Critical, indigenous and antioppressive approaches.(2005). In Brown L. A., Strega S.
(Eds.), Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press.

S. Strega (2005). The view from the poststructural

margins: Epistemology and methodology reconsidered. In
L. Brown, & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as resistance
(pp. 199235). Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press.

J. Sunderland (2004). Gendered discourses. New

York: PalgraveMacmillan.

Panopticism
Panopticism is a social theory named after
the Panopticon, originally developed by French
philosopher Michel Foucault in his book, Discipline and
Punish.
Background
Jeremy Bentham proposed the panopticon as a circular
building with an observation tower in the centre of an open
space surrounded by an outer wall. This wall would contain
cells for occupants. This design would increase security by
facilitating more effective surveillance. Residing within cells
flooded with light, occupants would be readily
distinguishable and visible to an official invisibly positioned
in the central tower. Conversely, occupants would be
invisible to each other, with concrete walls dividing their
cells. Due to the bright lighting emitted from the watch
tower, occupants would not be able to tell if and when they
are being watched, making discipline a passive rather than
an active action. Although usually associated with prisons,
the panoptic style of architecture might be used in other

institutions with surveillance needs, such as schools,

factories, or hospitals[citation needed].
Foucault's Discipline and Punish
In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault builds on
Bentham's conceptualization of the panopticon as he
elaborates upon the function of disciplinary mechanisms in
such a prison and illustrated the function of discipline as an
apparatus of power. The ever-visible inmate, Foucault
suggests, is always "the object of information, never a
subject in communication".[1] He adds that,
"He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who
knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of
power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself;
he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he
simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle
of his own subjection" (202-203).[2]
Foucault offers still another explanation for the type of
"anonymous power" held by the operator of the central
tower, suggesting that, "We have seen that anyone may
come and exercise in the central tower the functions of

surveillance, and that this being the case, he can gain a

clear idea of the way the surveillance is practiced". [3] By
including the anonymous "public servant," as part of the
built-in "architecture" of surveillance, the disciplinary
mechanism of observation is decentered and its efficacy
improved.
As hinted at by the architecture, this panoptic design
can be used for any "population" that needs to be kept
under observation or control, such as: prisoners,
schoolchildren, medical patients, or workers:
"If the inmates are convicts, there is no danger of a
plot, an attempt at collective escape, the planning of new
crimes for the future, bad reciprocal influences; if they are
patients, there is no danger of contagion; if they are
madmen there is no risk of their committing violence upon
one another; if they are schoolchildren, there is no copying,
no noise, no chatter, no waste of time; if they are workers,
there are no disorders, no theft, no coalitions, none of
those distractions that slow down the rate of work, make it
less perfect or cause accidents".[1]

By individualizing the subjects and placing them in a

state of constant visibility, the efficiency of the institution is
maximized. Furthermore, it guarantees the function of
power, even when there is no one actually asserting it. It is
in this respect that the Panopticon functions automatically.
Foucault goes on to explain that this design is also
applicable for a laboratory. Its mechanisms of
individualization and observation give it the capacity to run
many experiments simultaneously. These qualities also
give an authoritative figure the "ability to penetrate mens
behavior" without difficulty.[1] This is all made possible
through the ingenuity of the geometric architecture. In light
of this fact Foucault compares jails, schools, and factories
in their structural similarities.
Examples in the late 20th and early 21st centuries
A central idea of Foucaults panopticism concerns the
systematic ordering and controlling of human populations
through subtle and often unseen forces. Such ordering is
apparent in many parts of the modernized and now,
increasingly digitalized, world of information.

Contemporary advancements in technology and

surveillance techniques have perhaps made Foucaults
theories more pertinent to any scrutiny of the relationship
between the state and its population.
However, while on one hand, new technologies, such
as CCTV or other surveillance cameras, have shown the
continued utility of panoptic mechanisms in liberal
democracies, it could also be argued that electronic
surveillance technologies are unnecessary in the original
"organic" or "geometric" disciplinary mechanisms as
illustrated by Foucault. Foucault argues, for instance,
that Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon provides us with a
model in which a self-disciplined society has been able to
develop. These apparatuses of behavior control are
essential if we are to govern ourselves, without the
constant surveillance and intervention by an "agency" in
every aspect of our lives. The Canadian historian Robert
Gellately has observed, for instance, that because of the
widespread willingness of Germans to inform on each other

to the Gestapo that Germany between 1933-45 was a

prime example of Panopticism. [4]
Panoptic theory has other wide-ranging impacts for
surveillance in the digital era as well. Kevin Haggerty and
Richard Ericson, for instance, have hinted that
technological surveillance "solutions" have a particularly
"strong cultural allure" in the West.[5] Increasingly visible
data, made accessible to organizations and individuals
from new data-mining technologies, has led to the
proliferation of dataveillance, which may be described as
a mode of surveillance that aims to single out particular
transactions through routine algorithmic production. In
some cases, however, particularly in the case of mined
credit card information, dataveillance has been
documented to have led to a greater incidence of errors
than past surveillance techniques.[6]
According to the tenets of Foucault's panopticism, if
discursive mechanisms can be effectively employed to
control and/or modify the body of discussion within a
particular space (usually to the benefit of a particular

governing class or organization), then there is no longer

any need for an "active agent" to display a more overtly
coercive power (i.e., the threat of violence). Since the
beginning of the Information Age, there exists a debate
over whether these mechanisms are being refined or
accelerated, or on the other hand, becoming increasingly
redundant, due to new and rapid technological
advancements.
Panopticism and capitalism
Foucault also relates panopticism to capitalism:
"[The] peculiarity of the disciplines [elements of
Panopticism] is that they try to define in relation to the
multiplicities a tactics of power that fulfils three criteria:
firstly, to obtain the exercise of power at the lowest
possible cost (economically, by the low expenditure it
involves; politically, by its discretion, its low exteriorization,
its relative invisibility, the little resistance it arouses);
secondly, to bring the effects of this social power to their
maximum intensity and to extend them as far as possible,
without either failure or interval; thirdly, to link this

'economic' growth of power with the output of the

apparatuses (educational, military, industrial or medical)
within which it is exercised; in short, to increase both the
docility and the utility of all elements of the system" (218).
[2]

"If the economic take-off of the West began with the

techniques that made possible the accumulation of capital,
it might perhaps be said that the methods for
administering the accumulation of men made possible a
political take-off in relation to the traditional, ritual, costly,
violent forms of power [i.e. torture, public executions,
corporal punishment, etc. of the middle ages], which soon
fell into disuse and were superseded by a subtle, calculated
technology of subjection. In fact, the two processes - the
accumulation of men and the accumulation of capital cannot be separated; it would not be possible to solve the
problem of the accumulation of men without the growth of
an apparatus of production capable of both sustaining
them and using them; conversely, the techniques that
made the cumulative multiplicity of men useful accelerated

the accumulation of capital ... The growth of the capitalist

economy gave rise to the specific modality of disciplinary
power, whose general formulas, techniques of submitting
forces and bodies, in short, 'political anatomy', could be
operated in the most diverse political rgimes, apparatuses
or institutions" (220-221).[2]
Panopticism and Information Technology
Building onto Foucault's Panopticism and Bentham's
original Panopticon, Shoshana Zuboff applies the Panoptical
theory in a technological context in her book, "In the Age of
the Smart Machine."[7] In chapter nine, Zuboff provides a
very vivid portrayal of the Information Panopticon as a
means of surveillance, discipline and, in some cases,
punishment in a work environment.[8] The Information
Panopticon embodies Bentham's idea in a very different
way. Information Panopticons do not rely on physical
arrangements, such as building structures and direct
human supervision.[9] Instead, a computer keeps track of a
workers every move by assigning him or her specific tasks
to perform during their shift. Everything, from the time a

task is started to the time it is completed, is recorded.

[10]

Workers are given a certain amount of time to complete

the task based on its complexity. All this is monitored by

supervision from a computer. Based on the data, the
supervisor can monitor a workers performance and take
any necessary action when needed.
The Information Panopticon can be defined as a form
of centralized power that uses information and
communication technology as observational tools and
control mechanisms.[11] Unlike the Panopticon envisioned by
Bentham and Foucault, in which those under surveillance
were unwilling subjects, Zuboffs work suggests that the
Information Panopticon is facilitated by the benefits it offers
to willing participants.
In chapter ten of In the Age of the Smart Machine,
Zuboff provides the example of DIALOG, a computer
conferencing system used at a pharmaceutical corporation
in the 1970s.[12] The conferencing system, originally
intended to facilitate communication among the
corporations many branches, quickly became popular with

employees. Users of DIALOG found that the system

facilitated not only innovation and collaboration, but also
relaxation, as many employees began to use the system to
joke with one another and discuss non-work related topics.
[13]

Employees widely reported that using the system was a

positive experience because it created a culture of shared

information and discussion, which transcended the
corporations norms of formality and hierarchy that limited
the spread of information between divisions and employees
of different ranks.[14] This positive culture was enabled by
the privacy seemingly offered by the conferencing system,
as discussion boards could be made to allow access only to
those who were invited to participate.[12] The Panoptic
function of the conferencing system was revealed,
however, when managers were able to gain access to the
informal discussion boards where employees posted offcolor jokes.[15] Messages from the discussion were posted
around the office to shame contributors, and many of
DIALOGs users, now knowing there was a possibility that
their contributions could be read by managers and fearing

they would face disciplinary action, stopped using the

system.[16] Some users, however, kept using the system,
raising the question of whether remaining users modified
their behavior under the threat of surveillance, as prisoners
in Benthams Panopticon would, or whether they believed
that the benefits offered by the system outweighed the
possibility of punishment.
Zuboffs work shows the dual nature of the Information
Panopticon participants may be under surveillance, but
they may also use the system to conduct surveillance of
others by monitoring or reporting other users
contributions. This is true of many other information and
communication technologies with Panoptic functions
cellphone owners may be tracked without their knowledge
through the phones GPS capabilities, but they may also
use the device to conduct surveillance of others. Thus,
compared to Benthams Panopticon, the Information
Panopticon is one in which everyone has the potential to be
both a prisoner and a guard.

It is argued by Foucault that industrial management

has paved the way for a very disciplinary society. [17] A
society that values objectivity over everything else. The
point of this is to get as much productivity from the workers
as possible. Contrasting with Bentham's model prison,
workers within the Information Panopticon know they are
being monitored at all times. Even if a supervisor is not
physically there, the computer records their every move
and all this data is at the supervisor's finger tips at all
times. The system's objectivity can have a psychological
impact on the workers. Workers feel the need to conform
and satisfy the system rather than doing their best work or
expressing concerns they might have.[18]
The Information Panopticon diverts from Jeremy
Bentham's model prison by adding more levels of control.
[19]

While the Bentham's model prison system is made up of

inmates at the lowest level monitored by a guard, the

Information Panopticon can have various levels. A company
or firm can have various satellite locations, each monitored
by a supervisor, and then a regional supervisor monitoring

the supervisors below him or her. Depending on the

structure and size of a firm, information Panopticons can
have several levels, each monitoring all the levels beneath
it.
Now, the efficiency of the Information Panopticon is in
question. Does it really lead to a better work place and
higher productivity, or does it simply put unnecessary
stress on the people being monitored? A major criticism of
the system is its objectivity.[20] It is solely based on
numbers, therefore not allowing for human error. According
to Zuboff, some people find the system to be highly
advantageous, while others think it is very flawed because
it does not account for the effort a worker puts into a task
or things outside of a worker's control. [21] Furthermore, the
lack of direct supervision only adds to a potentially
precarious situation.
Post-Panopticism
Theoretical arguments in favor of rejecting the
Foucauldian model of Panopticism may be considered
under five general headings:[22]

1.

Displacement of the Panoptical ideal by mechanisms

of seduction,

2.

Redundancy of the Panoptical impulse brought about

by the evident durability of the self-surveillance functions
which partly constitute the normal, socialized, Western
subject,

3.

Reduction in the number of occasions of any

conceivable need for Panoptical surveillance on account of
simulation, prediction and action before the fact,

4.

Supplementation of the Panopticon by the Synopticon,

5.

Failure of Panoptical control to produce reliably docile

subjects.
The first point concerns Zygmunt Baumans argument
that the leading principle of social order has moved from
Panopticism to seduction. This argument is elaborated in
his 1998 essay On postmodern uses of sex.[23]
The second argument concerns surveillance
redundance, and it is increasingly relevant in the age
of Facebook and online self-disclosure. Is the metaphor of a
panopticon appropriate for voluntary surrender of privacy?

The third argument for post-Panopticism, concerning

action before the fact, is articulated by William Bogard:
The figure of the Panopticon is already haunted by a
parallel figure of simulation. Surveillance, we are told, is
discreet, unobtrusive, camouflaged, unverifiable all
elements of artifice designed into an architectural
arrangement of spaces to produce real effects of discipline.
Eventually this will lead, by its means of perfection, to the
elimination of the Panopticon itself . . . surveillance as its
own simulation. Now it is no longer a matter of the speed
at which information is gained to defeat an enemy. . . .
Now, one can simulate a space of control, project an
indefinite number of courses of action, train for each
possibility, and react immediately with pre-programmed
responses to the actual course of events . . . with
simulation, sight and foresight, actual and virtual begin to
merge. . . . Increasingly the technological enlargement of
the field of perceptual control, the erasure of distance in
the speed of electronic information has pushed surveillance

beyond the very limits of speed toward the purest forms of

anticipation.[24]
This kind of anticipation is particularly evident in
emergent surveillance technologies such as social network
analysis.
The Synopticon concerns the surveillance of the few
by the many.[25] Examples of this kind of surveillance may
include the theatre, the Coliseum, and celebrity tabloid
reporting. This reversal of the Panoptical polarity may
have become so marked that it finally deconstructs the
Panoptical metaphor altogether.[22]
Finally, the fifth point concerns the self-defeating
nature of Panoptical regimes. The failure of surveillance
states is illustrated by examples such as prison riots,
asylum sub-cultures, ego survival in Gulag or concentration
camp, [and] retribalization in the Balkans. [22]
In their 2007 article, Dobson and Fisher[26] lay out an
alternative model of post-panopticism as they identify
three panoptic models. Panopticism I refers to Jeremy
Benthams original conceptualization of the panopticon,

and is it the model of panopticism that Foucault responds

to in his 1975 Discipline and Punish. Panopticism II refers to
an Orwellian Big Brother ideal of surveillance. Panopticism
III, the final model of panopticism, refers to the hightechnology human tracking systems that are emergent in
this 21st century. These geographical information
systems (GIS) include technologies such as cellphone
GPS, RFIDs (radio-frequency identification tags), and geofences. Panopticism III is also distinguished by its costs:
Panopticon III is affordable, effective, and available to
anyone who wants to use it. Initial purchase prices and
monthly service fees are equivalent to cell-phone costs. In
less than five years, the cost of continuous surveillance of a
single individual has dropped from several hundred
thousand dollars per year to less than $500 per year.
Surveillance formerly justified solely for national security
and high-stakes commerce is readily available to track a
spouse, child, parent, employee, neighbor, or stranger. [26]
The Cornell University professor and information
theorist Branden Hookway introduced the concept of a

Panspectrons in 2000: an evolution of the panopticon to the

effect that it does not define an object of surveillance
more, but everyone and everything is monitored. The
object is defined only in relation to a specific issue. [27]
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b c

"Part Three: Discipline 3.

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Foucault, Michel. Discipline and

Punishment. Vintage Books, New York: 1995.

3.

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4.

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Haggerty, "The new politics of surveillance and visibility,"
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