Essay about Analysis of Discipline and Punish

Though it may seem that the debate over the death penalty only most recently surfaced, the dreadful tradition of capital punishment arrived in the United States at the time of the colonists. In the 17th century, most people were hung, beheaded, burned alive, or crushed under stones. All of these were in public, where a large crowd gathered to watch the horrible sight, similar to the tradition in old Europe. Eventually, the 19th century favored hanging as the most common form of execution. This marked the start of a more humane approach accepted as constitutional as executions moved away from the public eye. More developments came in the 1800’s as a movement to abolish capital punishment arose. This effort was stalled for a time during the Civil

This part of the paper will provide a comparison with a theorist previously discussed in a lecture. The theorist with whom Michael Foucault’s arguments will be compared to is Emile Durkheim. Durkheim sees crime as functional. He says that if there was no crime, all our values would be dispersed--these values are laws. These laws are observed by sanctions and punishments attached to it. However, in order for these laws to exist, there must be a punishment, thus, for there to be a punishment, there has to be crime. Repressive law, according to this classical theorist was based on punishing for the evil doing of the criminal through revenge. Durkheim believes that a crime is not collective and when one goes against the core values of society, one threatens the entire order of society. Therefore, this theorist would agree with Foucault that when disciplining a criminal, he or she should be stripped of their freedom and when

and sometimes discipline, of societies around the globe. The first official legal use of the death

Modern day power originates from the mind in that we give certain figures power based upon man-made forms of value or worth like money. The definition of power has fluctuated throughout time, and while the past may have emphasized the more violent aspects, today, we have shifted towards a more control based interpretation. Both Michael Foucault and John Berger delve into the idea of power and its functionality. Based on their texts, in our current socio-cultural setting, power is best exploited when the concept behind the power is deindividualized for many purposes, internalized by the people, and integrated throughout society to the point that its origins is mystified.

In the Penal Colony, executions were once acceptable and legal because people approved of them. An example is when the officer explained, “How we all took in the expression of transfiguration on the martyred face! How we held our cheeks in the glow of this justice.” ( Kafka, pg.10) The officer and the audience saw it not as

Philosopher Michel Foucault’s work Discipline and Punish speaks about the changes punishment and discipline have taken. Punishment has always been used to discourage criminals from unlawful acts. In the beginning, punishment was aimed at the body through things like corporal punishment. Now with prison systems in place, the aim is at what Foucault calls the “soul”. Foucault questions if these new methods of punishment and discipline are indeed affective.

The United States has emerged into a disciplinary society where power is not only in certain institutions or is undivided in a particular social class, but power is dispersed through the people. The oppression by abiding people to discipline helps portray the diffusion of power. In order to analyze and fully comprehend how the United States consists of a disciplinary society it is best if we look through a Foucault lens. One of the reasons why its best to look at it through Foucault’s lenses is because he has always been interested in the way that knowledge and power increase knowledge. Also, according to Foucault, people ae dominated by surveillance, knowledge and discipline.

Overall through execution early-modern European monarchies and governments were able to control the population through terror and fear, as well as use religion and religious sanction to remove those who challenged the head of state. Execution and torture played a huge role within early-modern Europe, and through this one can observe that the role these actions played within Europe impacted society and individuals to a maximum extent. Execution, was a large weapon of terror for European monarchies, and through this terror monarchs were able to control the population, and execute those who disturbed internal stability and peace. Executioners were considered by many to be the sole distributor of justice within a kingdom, and without their pivotal role, the

Capital punishment used to be a routine universal practice. The torrid history surrounding executions dates back thousands of years and includes the majority of civilizations around the world. Throughout history, the death penalty has been utilized as a tool to manage society. Hammurabi, a successful Babylonian king, established what many scholars thought to be the first code of laws. Charles F. Horne, author of “The Code of Hammurabi,” explains: “The code . . . regulates in clear and definite strokes the organization of society” and these “grim retaliatory punishments take no note of excuses or explanations, but only of the fact” (Horne Online). Obviously, Hammurabi was aware of the advantages of capital punishment and eagerly supports it! Furthermore, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, “In 1612, Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which provided the death penalty for even minor offenses such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indians” (DPIC Online). While capital punishment is clearly unnecessary for such trivial delinquencies, it is evident that this practice has been widely employed and passed down through the ages.

Capital punishment has always been a major controversy ever since the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional. Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, became extremely popular as a use of “punishment” for ones illegal actions. The death penalty was first established during 1834 for crimes committed such as “idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, murder, manslaughter, poisoning, bestiality, sodomy, adultery, man stealing, and false witness in case rebellion” (Bohm).

In the chapter, “The body of the Condemned,” Foucault addresses the evolution of the punishment system and how it has gone from being a public spectacle to something that is done behind closed doors. Foucault opens the chapter with an extremely descriptive and gory representation of a public execution. The purpose of this was to display how execution have changed from being in the public eye to behind closed doors using the electric chair and legal injections. It was done in this fashion to deter individuals from committing heinous crimes. Today, the cost of prison time, fines, etc.. deter individuals instead. Punishment has become less about effecting the body and more about the changing the souls and integrating them back into society.

Capital punishment, also known as a death penalty, it has been around quite a while, longer than most of us would think. A death penalty used to be the only justice for almost all crime back in the seventh century B.C and it is call Draconian Code of Athens. However, there are so many centuries that practice death penalty. However, it was during the eighteenth century B.C when the king of Hammurabi of Babylon established the first death penalty laws also known as the Code of Hammurabi (an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; meaning the same amount of punishment to the offender as he or she acted on behave

Michel Foucault is a very famous French intellectual who practiced the knowledge of sociology. Foucault analyzed how knowledge related to social structures, in particular the concept of punishment within the penal system. His theory through, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, is a detailed outline of the disciplinary society; in which organizes populations, their relations to power formations, and the corresponding conceptions of the subjects themselves. Previously, this type of punishment focused on torture and dismemberment, in which was applied directly to bodies. Foucault mentions through his literary piece, “the soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy: the soul is the prison of the body (p.30). However, today, the notion of punishment involves public appearances in a court and much more humane sentences. However, it is important to note and to understand the idea of power and knowledge; it is fundamental to understand the social system as a whole.

Towards his later work Foucault realizes that the mechanisms of exclusion or separation (Madness and Civilization) and of surveillance or correction (Discipline and Punish), although still a way for the power of the state to exercise sovereignty over the subjects, were not the predominant mechanism of domination of the modern state. Since the eighteenth century, the construction and isolation or punishment of alterity gives way to a new mode in which the sovereign exercise his right over the people:

"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."[4]