Midterm: Foucault's "Discipline"

‘Discipline’ may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a ‘physics’ or an ‘anatomy’ of power, a technology.

This is a passage taken from Michel Foucault’s “Panopticism,” a chapter out of Discipline and Punish. The chapter begins by describing a community under quarantine as a result of the plague. The community is heavily disciplined and is, consequently, very prepared to handle this kind of crisis; all of the people in the houses, the observation decks, the gates, and the cells know their specific role in carrying-out this quarantine. While these measures taken to fight off the plague successfully protect the community, Foucault introduces the panopticon as a means of establishing power over the community in addition to protecting it.

Bentham’s Panopticon is building in which the people in each cell are unable to see anyone else but they can be observed by onlookers in a tower without knowing that they are being watched. The key idea behind the panopticon is that it instills paranoia into the people; it disciplines them into behaving a certain way. A prisoner knows that at any given moment, their actions can be observed by an all-seeing eye; thus, they are forced to follow the rules all of the time out of fear of being caught and consequently punished.

In regards to the passage, Foucault states that discipline is neither an “institution” nor an “apparatus” meaning that he is not literally suggesting that efficient governments install panopticons in every building of their city. Rather, the panopticon is as an apocalyptic image that symbolizes Foucault’s thesis of the chapter: One type of efficient government is one that is based on discipline where members of the community are watched and thus, induced to follow rules and conform to social norms. Furthermore, Foucault clarifies that discipline encompasses “instruments” such as surveillance cameras that are installed behind mirrors or underneath glass spheres so no one can tell which way the camera is facing. Discipline also encompasses “procedures” such as leaving empty police cars on the median of bridges to induce drivers to drive slowly. Foucault calls discipline a type of power that works more like an “anatomy” meaning that it is like a system that functions on its own. The people who slow down their cars when passing police stations are essentially disciplining themselves; there is no police officer or government official forcing them to feel paranoid.

Foucault also asserts that there are multiple “levels of application” of discipline that hint at an apocalyptic theme of the unavoidability of this type of all-seeing, all-knowing government: On one level, the discipline established by this kind of government is inescapable because we can never know when we or if we are being watched. On a second level, this type of discipline is inescapable because it is already infused into many aspects of our lives, from the cameras that watch our children in school hallways to the patrol cars hidden away behind trees next to highways. The apocalyptic aspect of the second level is that our society already engages in this type of discipline, sometimes without even realizing it.