FREE SUBJECT POWER AND DISCIPLINE MICHEL FOUCAULT MICHEL

FREE SUBJECT, POWER, AND DISCIPLINE MICHEL FOUCAULT

MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926 -1954) • Born October 15, 1926, Poitiers, France. • An early victim of AIDS, he died in Paris on June 25, 1984. • French philosopher and historian, but also had a strong influence in humanistic and social scientific disciplines • One of the most influential and controversial scholars of post-World War II

BACKGROUND • Son and grandson of long line of successful surgeons and physicians • Born to a solidly privilege family • He had an upper class education and went to many international gestured institutions. • He gained a reputation as a sedulous, brilliant and eccentric student. • After graduating, he spent his career criticizing the power of the Martin Bourgeois capitalist state including its police, law courts, prisons, doctors and psychiatrists. • Also, taught in a variety of universities in where he gained a wide following among young people as he became a committed leader revolutionary figure by protesting on behalf of homosexuality, and other marginalized groups.

MAJOR WORKS • History of madness in the Classical Age(1961) • The Birth of the Clinic (1963) • The order of things (1970) • Discipline and Punish (1975) • The will to Knowledge (1976)

FREE SUBJECT • Foucault being a major figure in the 20 th century, his work was meant to historically invest the production of truth. • He believed culture makes human beings into subjects. • His work considered of three modes of objectification: First mode, he stated that we are the productive subject, the subject who labors in the analysis of wealth and economics. Second mode, the subject is "dividing practices. " The subject is either divided inside himself or divided from others. Third mode, is the way human being turns into a subject. " • Foucault notes that he believes " solidly in human freedom. " He also argues against 19 th century of existentialist views of an abstract freedom and "free" subject, and says that freedom is a practice rather than a goal to be achieved. Knowledge starts with rules and constraints, not freedom. Freedom is also a condition for the exercise of power.

POWER IS EVERYWHERE • Foucault's goal was to work nothing less than how power works and than to change its direction. • His primary focus was on the distribution of power based on the role of institutions like the prison system, schools, and hospitals. Also, how power impacts our society. • He believed power can be necessary, productive and a positive force in our society instead of a negative force; he defined power as something that does not affect another physically. • Most of his studies would consider how knowledge and power were utilized. • The use of term 'power-knowledge' was to signify that power is constituted through accepted forms of knowledge, scientific understanding and truth. • Power to him was also a major source of social discipline and conformity.

DISCIPLINE = THE BIRTH OF THE PRISON • In 1975, Foucault published Discipline and Punish which is his genealogical expose of the artifices of power-knowledge that had resulted in the naturalization of the "criminal character". • Foucault particularly emphasizes how much reform also becomes a vehicle of more effective control: "to punish less, perhaps; but certainly to punish better" • Basing his studies on the Renaissance Era, he thought techniques of punishment such as public execution were meant to attack the body. He describes how today's methods are an attack on the human soul, and not the body. • He was fascinated by the mechanisms of prison surveillance school discipline, systems for the administration and control of populations, and the promotion of norms about bodily conduct, including sex. • Among contemporary instruments of discipline, the surveillance camera must be counted of one of the most representative.