1.3 Power and Foucault Flashcards
(18 cards)
Given the example of Katy, an amazon worker, How would Hobbes, Marx and Foucault view it?
Hobbesian interpretation: state power (more vertical and enforced, sovereign/political power)
Manager is a sovereign
Contract, collective rules enforcement: consent/agreement signed (agree to give work in exchange for safety, wages and benefits)
Order and vertical power
E.g.: police (vertical, state power)
Marxian interpretation: economic power (structural and indirect caused by economics/social)
Wage slavery: structure forces her to sell labor in exchange for wage
Mute compulsion: indirect, structural compulsion (forced by conditions)
Indirect influence and Lack of economic power => alienation and exploitation
Foucault’s interpretation: Disciplinary power (more individual and stems from obedience and productivity)
Individual perspective.
Obedience + productivity: Katy will be efficient in her work
Disciplined actions
Power at work within institutions and within society at large
E.g.: classroom or prisons
What is Foucault views?
Power comes from discipline. His main subject are prisons (quite new system: from punishments to incarceration) from which a new type of power arises (discipline).
According to Foucault what are the two types of power.
In the middle ages there are two powers:
Sovereign power (dominant) and proto-disciplinary power (highly regulated power in monasteries, armies and plague for example)
How would you characterize sovereign power? How does it relate to Hobbes?
Power is highly concentrated in one person (King) so to revolt only need to kill one person.
Sovereign Power characterization: right over live and death. King only cares about obedience (power is not challenged since people hold the duty of obedience)
Power is challenged => negative and violent reaction (e.g., public beheadings)
Hobbes: type of power from which state will emerge (vertical, commanding power)
Did not disappear (still exists) only less dominant (juridico-political power)
How did proto-disciplinary power arised?
Monastery: very regulated place (regime)
Scheduled time (time to eat, pray, what to do)
Space: enclosure and parcellation (clear border between outside and inside of the monastery and clear place for each individual)
Hierarchical supervision and surveillance (very regulated, supervised place)
Exercise: constant training (mediation, etc)
Rules, norms and sanctions: not laws of state
Army:
A typical medieval soldier is a hero. Modern soldiers are obedient and follow the rules (utility and docility)
Soldiers as machines
Organization of times and space (scheduled, schemes, rules)
Modern army: surveillance and hierarchy
Rules norms and testing
Plague:
Strict partial portioning: closing of town and fixed indoors (lockdown)
Individualization: duty of self-report
Surveillance: permanent gaze (guards, observations posts, etc)
Registration: list of reports, information gathering (who is contaminated, who is still alive, who died)
Structured and strict
Power-mediated relation to the body: relation to your own body is mediated by power
New: Medieval King did not care about your health.
Contrast: lepers (forced exclusion as opposed to the forced inclusion during the plague => adhere to rules and surveillance)
What is the object of discipline according to Foucault?
Not the mind, population or a group, but an individual body: how it behaves, moves and speaks.
Does not only ask obedience but also productivity (skill growth or bodily optimization):
E.g.: soldiers should not only follow schedules but optimize their body.
The more you optimize your body the more useful you become and thus the more obedient you become
How would characterize disciplinary power?
Space where disciplinary power operates: subdivided and under constant supervision and recording, fixed places for each individuals (compartmentalization), same rules for everyone, given by a hierarchical figure and with constant examination that rules are being followed.
How does disciplinary power work?
Distributing individual: every individual needs to know their space
Orders individual within space
Division of individual from one another
Controlling bodily individuals: controlling how the body behaves (e.g., smile when you meet customers)
Use of timetables: everyone goes there at the same time/does something at the same time
Breaking down movements of the body
General posture of the body
Organizing genesis: always a goal that you must meet and a trajectory towards it.
Acting towards an end
Composing forces addresses you as an individual, but in relation to other individuals you become a member of something
Articulation with other bodies: composing of individual forces.
What does disciplinary power produces?
Disciplinary power produces individuality
People exist without power, but it teaches you how to relate yourself as an individual
Reminds people of their individuality
Learn to look at yourself as an individual. Main idea is that disciplinary power produces different forms of individuality that teach you how to relate/reflect yourself as an individual
What are the types of individuality?
Distribution => cellular individuality (learn to see yourself as taking a specific place in a room, situating yourself spatially as an individual)
Controlling bodily activity => organic individuality (aware of own body and how to control/manipulate it)
Working towards an end => genetic individuality (work you do is part of your individuality, these targets define you as an individual)
Composing forces => combinatory individuality (by being an individual in a group you learn how to relate yourself as an individual to others)
What reproduces disciplinary power (how does it maintain itself)?
Hierarchical observation: constant supervision
Increasing visibility
Architectural interventions
Hierarchical network of supervisions: that fosters a specific type of behavior
Normalizing judgement: constant judgement/evaluation. Non correct behavior => punishment
Punishment, corrective punishment
Regards
Norms: normal behavior is clear (know exactly how you should behave)
Examination: constantly examined (e.g., exams, learning goals, targets)
Information gathering records are kept about people
Knowledge: about the people (how they behave, what they did wrong/right)
Objectification
How does power relate to knowledge?
Disciplinary power requires a system of administration which produces a lot of knowledge (about individuals). The more you know about people the more power you have over them
Power => knowledge => power
Most human sciences originate from social institutions with disciplinary power
Prison => criminology
School => pedagogy
Disciplined workplace => management
Order society => sociology
Does not discredit social sciences, simply described the process
Human sciences create subjectivities
(e.g., delinquent, Pupil, patient, model employee or Average citizen) => Neutral science is impossible: always connected to this form of power
What is the genealogy of disciplinary society?
15th century: two political ideals/dreams of what a perfect society should be (conflicting ideals)
Pure community: community that excludes the unwanted elements (beggars, vagabonds, madmen, lepers, poor, idle men)
Those who are unwanted from society are excluded from it violently (placed in workhouses, asylums, workhouses, etc.)
Perfectly governed city: model of the plague town. Not about excluding city but governing everyone in the same order and strictly governing that order.
Forced Integration and inclusion
Order through disciplinary power
Perfect management of disorder: no accidents, no social phenomena that are unpredictable.
These ideas of inclusion and exclusion merge from the 19th century
What are the spaces of exclusion in the 19th century?
Institutions of exclusion (e.g., workhouse, asylums, prisons) introduced disciplinary techniques
Spaces in the 19th century: shift from more dungeons to a more school-like model (introduction of discipline)
At the same time, disciplinary techniques are introduced in society as a whole
Spaces of exclusion are a laboratory for new techniques of disciplinary governing that are then widespread.
Disciplinary techniques => Allows us to see who is normal and who is abnormal => allows for more exclusion
Generalized discipline as instrument of exclusion: Discipline produces exclusion => spaces of exclusion which have more exclusive techniques
So, circular movement:
Institutions of exclusion => use discipline => discipline goes to society => allows for more exclusion => institutions of exclusion
What is the model of displinary power?
According to Foucault it’s the panopticon (an architectural model for a prison, circular structure with cells around and in the center a watch tower were guards can see prisoners but prisoner cannot see guards)
Why is that model the paradigm of disciplinary power?
Enclosed space: clear division between inside and outside. Parcellation and individual cells from which people can be watched
Visibility and transparency:
Being watched => internalization of being watched (know you are potentially being watched) => act a certain way
Reversal of visibility: those who are subject to power become very visible, but those in power become more invisible
Opposite of medieval times where the king is the most visible
Hierarchical gaze: observation, study, judgment => knowledge
Power as impersonal architecture: space itself gives power
Ground for further exclusion: misbehave => further excluded (isolation)
What are current applications of the panopticon?
Canvas:
Visibility => Teachers can see more than we can see, and their superiors can see more than teachers see
Parcellation => each have our own account with different access and information
Develops knowledge: whole platform is made to evaluate
Workplace
Can always be seen: constant supervision
Parcellation: everyone is in their assigned space
Develops knowledge: connected computers => Managers can see what you are doing. Often have to work against company metrics
Cities: from more crowded (easier to escape vision) to more parcelized with better observation
What does Foucault say about society and disciplinary power?
Disciplinary power (and panoptic logic) entered society as a whole that is governed by laws and disciplinary power
Characteristics of disciplinary society
Power of norms: constantly guided by what is normal and abnormal behavior
Reversal of visibility: you are constantly watched but who is watching you?
Surveillance and transparency: always should be able to identify yourself.
Self-optimization and obedience
Productivity
Power-knowledge
Difference between disciplinary and sovereign power
All forms of power are not mutually exclusive. They coexist within our society.
