Essay on Michele Foucault Biopower

Foucault goes through the way governments have attempted to control populations throughout history, and how power has exercised

The social realm, where the life process has established its own public domain, has let loose an unnatural growth, so to speak, of the natural; and it is against this growth, not merely against society but against the growing social realm, that the private and intimate, on the one hand, and the political (in the narrower sense of the word), on the other, have proved incapable of defending themselves. (43)

It would seem rather apparent that in the institutions Foucault mentions are deluded forms of the panoptic prison, with the same intentions of controlling the masses and doing so economically and efficiently. Nevertheless, I do not concur with Foucault that the system is as prevalent when it comes to society as a whole. Unless the government or your neighbor were conducting sustained espionage, I do not see a strong connection to Foucault’s thought of the omnipresence of those overseeing bodies and connect them with the constant observation a prisoner would experience in a panoptic prison. Nor would I tie that Society attempts to instruct what is universally accepted and what is not. Regardless, many get away with doing things that society is against all the time. Even with that said society often evolves with the times, something that was looked upon with contempt before may now not be seen in the same light. Not to mention, as much as the government would desire to have the efficiency that a panopticon has there is no way without a massive move to remove all forms of privacy would society as a whole have a high correlation to

In “Panopticism”, Michel Foucault proposes an explanation for how power and discipline are instilled and function within society. These ideas were created based on the purification and partitioning systems introduced during the seventeenth century plague. Families were confined to their households and failure to comply with daily roll calls, limited food rations, and immobility resulted in death. The Panopticon created by Bentham provides further support for the concept of constant visibility. This was an architectural arrangement that ensured constant surveillance and individualization of inmates. The Panopticon was considered a source of automatic power because possible observation and examination by guards created order among inmates. The

The panopticon is a prison with a big watch tower in the middle. It was built like this so the prisoners can be efficiently watched and guarded. The prisoners every move was watched and monitored. This was another way of punishment because they weren’t being punished physically, but mentally. The prisoner’s minds were being controlled, instead of their bodies. Foucault believes that modern society is the same way as the prison was run, maybe not to the same extreme, though. Everything is run by the state like for example, schools, hospitals, police stations, jobs, and many more.

Foucault believed that knowledge is a form of power, and that ultimately, through observation you gain power. This main idea allowed for him to realize that, once applied to the real world, knowledge is the most powerful tool one can have. It is evident that Foucault essentially believed that with knowledge, one can control everything around them. Furthermore, having the power to discipline and society. The concept of panopticism developed from the idea of disciplining society. The panopticon was an architectural design with the main purpose of being able to have visibility on everyone that was incarcerated. Prisoners were held in cells, which surrounded a main tower controlled by either a general guard, or the person who upholds the power.

Foucault's analysis of power within institutions is persuasive, specifically his description of Bentham’s Panopticon, and the significance that power plays in modern society. In this essay, I will argue that in numerous contemporary institutions Foucault’s analysis is still relevant as tools are developed to modify and surveille our behavior. Furthermore, Foucault begins by analyzing the situation before the eighteenth century, when public executions, such as Damien's crime of regicide and torture were part of most criminal investigations. Punishment was ceremonial and directed at the prisoner’s body because it was a ritual in which the audience was important. Therefore, public execution reestablished the authority and power of the king.

Foucault sees discipline moving from the body to the soul or mind. Through a lengthy introduction that illustrates the torture and killing of a man in public, we see how punishment and discipline was exerted by physical means and in front of a populace. That discipline and punish is now evolved into a form of confining those to a small space behind walls where the public cannot see them. The punishment is not of the body but of the mind and soul, as Foucault calls it. Foucault argues that a new relationship has been formed between the body and punishment by saying: “from being an art of unbearable sensations, punishment has become an economy of suspended rights.”

The plague that happened in the seventeenth century later demonstrated the work of panopticism. Everything was chaotic in the beginning until things started being regulated. Quarantine was needed for the best of the community and to be able to take control of the situation. Since things were extremely chaotic, people’s freedom were taken away for the sake of others. Of course they didn’t want the virus to spread so they had to keep everyone on track and observe them. This then displayed disciplinary mechanisms. When Foucault talked about the plague, he tried to emphasize on what it took to restore order back to the community. He tried to emphasize on what it took to regain

In his view, the very architecture of school buildings, hospitals, prisons, and state buildings were designed to depict power (Foucault 1984, 190). To Foucault, power employed the “mechanism of panopticism” to observe and control (Foucault 1984, 206). The idea of panopticism here is being used to denote a system where institutions use open spaces as a means of exercising power. For example, Foucault saw great similarities in the spatial design of the military camp and high schools, hospitals, and prisons. In Foucault’s words, “this infinitely scrupulous concern with surveillance is expressed in the architecture by innumerable petty mechanisms” (Foucault 1984, 191). These ‘mechanisms’ Foucault refers to here include the unending tests, documentation and paper work that is carried out on students, patients, and military personnel, and it was through this that conclusions were made on whether a person conformed to societal expectations or not. Furthermore, conclusions can then be made on a person’s mental state, guilt, educational level, military competence, and so on. This led Foucault to ask if “the disciplines have now become the new law of modern society”? (Foucault 1984, 196). It is important to mention here that although Foucault viewed knowledge as controlling and stifling, he also saw it as productive and useful, and thus he insists that “we must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it “excludes”, it “represses”, it “censors”, it “abstracts”, it “masks”, it “conceals”. In fact, power produces reality, domains of objects, and rituals of truth” (Foucault 1984, 204-205). What this means is that although power can be used as a tool by institutions as discussed above, it can also be used by individuals to

In the writings of Michel Foucault is the quote: “..one can speak of the formation of a disciplinary society in this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social ‘quarantine’, to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of ‘panopticism’. Not because the disciplinary modality of power has replaced all the others; but because it has infiltrated the others, sometimes undermining them, linking them together..” (Page 324) Foucault thought of our society as a “disciplinary society”, meaning that power has been widely developed and spread throughout organized institutions that achieve obedience and discipline in which citizens comply with. There are rules and regulations that we all must conform to in order the continue

In many communities, one has to act normal in order to fit in the crowd, or else they will be classified as abnormal and excluded from the community. As Foucault states, “On the one hand, the lepers are treated as plague victims; the tactics of individualizing disciplines are imposed on the excluded; and, on the other hand, the universality of disciplinary controls makes it possible to brand the ‘leper’ and to bring into play against him the dualistic mechanisms of exclusion” (Foucault, 1995). The Panopticon has branded the ‘leper’ as the plague causing the people around this person to exclude this person from society. The goal of the Panopticon is to keep the community pure without any person there to pollute and push back their progress. Social control and discipline is taken in action in this situation, the Panopticon enforces people to view this person as abnormal and not fit to be part of this society. As Foucault states, “So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations. All that was needed was that the separations should be clear and the openings well arranged” (Foucault, 1995). If the Panopticon was used correctly, the community will not go against it which will make discipline to be less of a punishment and more

For example, medical discourse dismisses other ways of treating people like holistic medicines. Forms of knowledge are linked to discourses, knowledge simple refers to the particular construction or version of a phenomenon that has received the stamp truth (Burr,2003). Though knowledge is not a direct perception of reality because different cultures have different perception of how the world is, this makes the idea of ‘truth ‘problematic. All knowledge comes observing from one perspective or another. Discourse, knowledge and practices are then related to power. Power is influenced by particular world views which generate certain ways of acting and marginalise others. For example, sexuality in the Victorian era was monitored, classified and regulated and eventually sexuality was seen as taboo by some and society became obsessed with policing it, then parents obsessed with preventing child masturbation but as years have passed society’s view on sexuality shifted and now see sexuality as something important to our identity and there are professionals who provide help for those who need it which suggests that Power isn’t always about repression but it also produces opportunities. Foucault studied the forms of power that have dominated us through the years; the monarchical power, disciplinary power and bio power. He suggest that society has no ordered development, no

Foucault begins his ideas on power through the hypothesis that institutions create power that people in their positions posses. Power recognition 's difficult because to the naked eye power is seen to be held by the people, but Foucault shows that in truth, power is created by the institutions and transferred to those people within their respective positions. It 's hard to recognize the power in institutions due to the lack of knowledge in society and this mistake is based on the idea that whoever is holding a position of power actually created that power, but in reality the power has always existed just transferred from one position holder to the next. It 's a sobering thought that Foucault had over the idea that power transfers. In his

Many published articles about Foucault’s work are available, one author being O’Farrel (2005) who praises Foucault’s writing as a modern cultural icon; his theories seem radical for the time they were set in; O’Farrel claiming him as a Gay Saint due to his theories behind homosexuality or radical militant in protest committees. She highlights his style of writing well, in his words “the obligation to tell all, even to satisfy the jury of assembled specialists”; in order to find his underlining meanings or arguments in his articles the detail has to be stripped (O’Farrel, 2005). This review is based on two things; the work that I discuss will lack the detail he provides in his arguments and that his published work covers a wide range of disciplines. So for this essay I have chosen three diverse topics to try gain a full understanding of Foucault’s work: ‘Alternatives to the Prison (1976)’; ‘The Crisis of Medicine or the Crisis of Anti-medicine (1974)’; ‘Spaces of Security (1978).’ This essay aims to critically discuss these three articles and find Foucault’s underlying messages.