Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" and "Power and Sex"
Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age- Frank Lloyd Wright
Darkness is meant to conceal, light is meant to expose, and there is power intrinsically imbued in both of these. Murderers hide in the dark, waiting for their victims, and the atrocities of different countries are hidden in history and official memos and propaganda. At the same time, light exerts power because it illuminates, it discovers, it creates vulnerability on all it touches. These powers, however, do not simply exist; they are forged within every aspect of life, even the very structures that people live in. Low-income tenement apartments are built so that they are not seen, colored in a drab shade of gray or brick, build alongside one another so that they blend into the background. They have small lawns and even smaller windows so that people walking by cannot get a glimpse of the life inside; darkness is used to hide their sad reality. Victorian mansions, however, do not need to shroud themselves in darkness. Their almost treeless lawns, small front gardens, and large picture windows are meant to illuminate their wealth, showing it off for the entire world to see.
Beginning in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, the nature of punishment began to change. Slowly, the spectacle of justice which accompanied the public executions and torture of the Middle Ages began to recede farther and farther away from the public into the fringes of society as the institution of the prison began to take shape. Hidden by both distance and structure, the large stone/concrete walls and small windows kept the real...
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...to guide its movements. It is not the Panopticon itself which has degraded women, but rather, the people who have caused this through their objectification of women. By using it as a means of implementing their ideology, the people have transformed the Panopticon from a mere tool into a mirror of its time.
Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish.” Literary Theory: An Anthology-Second Edition. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Massachusettes: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 549-566.
Foucault, Michel. “Power and Sex.” Politics. Philosophy. Culture-Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. Ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman. New York, New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc., 1988. 110-124.
Young, Iris Marion. Throwing Like a Girl-Breasted Experience: The Look and the Feeling. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990.
As a result, at the end of the 18th Century, Foucault mockingly tells the story of how our society became “humane” and the public cried out for punishment without torture. When the invention of prisons came about, most people chose to forget the disappearance of public executions. Foucault states: “Today we are rather inclined to ignore it: perhaps in its time, it gave r...
Foucault capitalizes that power and knowledge contribute to the discourse of sex; he discusses how people in power controlled this discourse to repress sex entirely. Foucault talks about the repressive hypothesis in his book. The repressive hypothesis states that whoever holds the power, also controls the discourse on sexuality. Specifically, those in power, according to the repressive hypothesis, exercise to repress the discussion of sex. In addition, Foucault comments that knowledge represents power. Whoever has the power can dictate the language of the population, thus this causes powerful people to also regulate the knowledge of the population. Although Foucault does not agree with every aspect that the repressive hypothesis exclaims, he agrees about the timing of when people started to repress sex. With rise of the bourgeoisie in the 17th century, a rise in tighter control about sex also took place. Foucault stated that the discourse of sex remained
At one point in history punishment and incapacitation were seen as the only logical ways to respond to crime (Pollock, 2010: 318). The majority of people used a religious perspective when viewing criminals. Criminals were believed to be sinners with no ability to change their behavior (Pollock, 2010: 318). From early on punishment was a topic that demanded an intellectual understanding. Two major criminologists from the Classical School were Jeremy...
Genealogy is a verifiable viewpoint and investigative system, which offers an innate evaluate of the present. It furnishes individuals with the basic aptitudes for dissecting also uncovering the relationship between learning, force and the human subject in up to date social order and the calculated devices to see how their being has been formed by recorded strengths. It is an endeavor to ponder the heritages of frameworks of information, and to break down discourses. It tests to uncover the discontinuities and breaks in a discourse; to concentrate on the particular instead of on the general. By righteousness of finishing thus, the reason of genealogy is to show that there have been different methods for deduction and acting, and that cutting edge talks are not any truer than those in past. The most critical reason of genealogy is to show that numerous present day plans are not accurate, yet the result of the workings of force. In "Discipline and Punish" by Micheal Foucault, the object of Foucault genealogy is to let people who have been detained or denied by such frameworks of learning to stand up. Likewise the point is to give current detainees, who are recognized as irregular, watched and dissected by criminologists and jail warders, a voice.
(Flynn 1996, 28) One important aspect of his analysis that distinguishes him from the predecessors is about power. According to Foucault, power is not one-centered, and one-sided which refers to a top to bottom imposition caused by political hierarchy. On the contrary, power is diffusive, which is assumed to be operate in micro-physics, should not be taken as a pejorative sense; contrarily it is a positive one as ‘every exercise of power is accompanied by or gives rise to resistance opens a space for possibility and freedom in any content’. (Flynn 1996, 35) Moreover, Foucault does not describe the power relation as one between the oppressor or the oppressed, rather he says that these power relations are interchangeable in different discourses. These power relations are infinite; therefore we cannot claim that there is an absolute oppressor or an absolute oppressed in these power relations.
"...having a good start, not only do I fully intend to be the greatest architect who has yet lived, but fully intend to be the greatest architect who will ever live. Yes, I intend to be the greatest architect of all time." - Frank Lloyd Wright
In Western cultures imprisonment is the universal method of punishing criminals (Chapman 571). According to criminologists locking up criminals may not even be an effective form of punishment. First, the prison sentences do not serve as an example to deter future criminals, which is indicated, in the increased rates of criminal behavior over the years. Secondly, prisons may protect the average citizen from crimes but the violence is then diverted to prison workers and other inmates. Finally, inmates are locked together which impedes their rehabilitation and exposes them too more criminal
In 1757 through 1837 there was a shift in prison rules and laws. They established a new form of law that removed torture and established punishment by the law. Punishment has many consequences because it was created to be a source to stop the criminal behavior from occurring again. However, torture was removed because it focused on a physical penalty. Foucault main point is that he wants to challenge the system by using history by explaining how the system has changed over time and how the new power and genealogy presents power and rules. Also, how the system is it affected by the power relations in punishment and the structure of society. Torture and punishment are inhumane and punishment doesn’t focus on criminal acts and focuses
Foucault, Michel. “Panopticism.” Ways of Reading. Fifth ed. Ed. David Barholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999, 312-342. Print.
...ns constitute a structural network of supervision, in which individuals may not only be subjected to power, but also play a role in employing and exercising power. Moreover, individuals internalize such and act accordingly. As such, there has been a greater possibility for intervention in individuals’ lives, not only in terms of illegal actions but also crimes against abnormalities. The aim of contemporary discipline is the transformation of individuals into productive forces of society. The basic functioning of society rests on such. Ultimately, the nineteenth century penal regime- not limited to the judicial system- has been largely successful in exerting disciplinary power. Not only has disciplinary power dispersed outside the walls of prison, but moreover, members of society have remained unaware of its presence, as they conform to and participate in it.
Incarceration has been the center of the United States justice system ever since the opening of the nation’s first prison. In order to understand how the aspects of the first corrections institutions correlate to later correctional practices seen today. Whether it was temporary or permanent, there has always been some form of detainment for offenders, and they were always held against their will. Imprisonment of offenders in earlier times was done primarily to hold the accused until the authorities determined the offender’s actual punishment. Jails and prisons create a vicious and expensive cycle of crime that usually just end up overcrowding correctional facilities.
The origin of the word prison comes from the Latin word to seize. It is fair to say that the traditionally use of prison correspond well with the origin of the word; as traditionally prison was a place for holding people whilst they were awaiting trail. Now, centuries on and prisons today is used as a very popular, and severe form of punishment offered to those that have been convicted. With the exception however, of the death penalty and corporal punishment that still takes place in some countries. Being that Prison is a very popular form of punishment used in today's society to tackle crime and punish offenders, this essay will then be examining whether prison works, by drawing on relevant sociological factors. Furthermore, it will be looking at whether punishment could be re-imagined, and if so, what would it entail?
In the early modern era in Europe, public executions were the primary punishment given to members of society who were involved in criminal behavior. This form of punishment served to showcase the absolute power of the state, King and church to take away the life of any citizen who disrupts peace. It was a way to make the criminal justice system visible and effective in an era when the criminal justice system was in its beginning stages of demonstrating orderliness (Spierenburg). More specifically, it was a relatively straightforward and psychological way to evoke deterrence. The potential of gruesome violence, public persecution and religious betrayal were tools thought to be strong enough to make public executions a successful form of deterrence because within the community, social bonds and religion were the foundation of everyday life.... ...
Bordo, S. 1993. "Feminism, Foucault, and the Politics of the Body." In C. Ramazanoglu, (Ed.): Up Against Foucault. Explorations of some Tensions between Foucault and Feminism. London and New York: Routledge.181 -202.
Young, Iris Manon. Breasted Experience: The Look and the Feeling. From Throwing Like a Girl. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990.