Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 08:25:39 -0400
From: John Sproule <jsproule-AT-usit.net>
Subject: Re: {3} Disciplinary power and surveillance


At 12:12 AM 7/19/96 GMT, sbinkley-AT-pipeline.com wrote:

[Material from my prior post deleted]
 
>I find your line of questioning fascinating and I'm certain that it points
>towards fruitful disclosures.  Certainly one of Foucault's greatest betes
>noires was the psychoanalytic tradition, though unfortunately he stopped
>short of a full analysis of its 20th century implications.   

Although most of what we have been discussing draws from Discipline and
Punish, the History of Sexuality, vol. 1 provides what I think is a very
cogent critique of all depth psychology.  In this work, he re-examines the
repressive hypothesis and points out the power implications of the so-called
confessional techniques.  Taken together, the objectifying power of the
disciplinary methods and the subjectifying power of the confessional
techniques should caution us that the human sciences are inherently
intertwined with Bio-Power.
 
>I just think it is important to emphasize the historical character of the
>functions played by certain disciplinary mechanisms in establishing
>normalizing power relations, and most of all, the ultimately transient
>nature of those functions.... are prisons today still the privileged site
>of the development and dissemination of normative power, or was his focus
>on the prisons only part of his survey of the emergence of disciplinary
>regimes in France?   
> 
>It is true that he became active in prison reform at the time of D&P, but
>perhaps this was misguided? Perhaps he was making the same mistake in his
>own work?  I'd be curious to know: why did he think prisons were important
>both in 1789 and in 1972?   
> 
>In any case, your discussion seems to be about "the very disciplinary
>techniques that the institutionalized human sciences have grown up with
>[and that] now seem to be operating to bring these groups to heel."  When
>you say "techniques", do you mean the professional discourses of
>psychoanalysis or does techniques refer to the overall practice?  
> 
>sb

To start with your last question, I think that some of our apparent
disagreement may be due to my using the term "disciplinary techniques" in
the more general sense.  I have in mind the three aspects that Foucault
delineates: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement, and
examination.  The objectifying power of the human sciences seem to build
upon these basic methods, distinguished mostly by their focus of study.

Your question as to why Foucault should have become interested in prison
reform to begin with is a good one, and I am not familiar enough with his
biography to venture a guess.  I am assuming that his interest in the
history of prisons was because of his interest in the current prison scene.
I think that Foucault used this particular focus of study to derive some
much more general conclusions about disciplinary power.  His touching upon
industry, schools, public health, and the military suggests that he could
have started from one of these areas of study and made essentially the same
points.  Perhaps they even would have provided an exemplary model such as
the panopticon did in the study of judicial punishment.

Are we misguided to still rely upon model of the panopticon in our efforts
to analyse the working of power in our present moment, this seems to be an
excellent point.  As noted above, disciplinary power and the model of the
panopticon seem to emphasize what might be called objectifying power, and
they do not take into much account the confessional techniques that Foucualt
delineates in HS vol 1.  I don't know how well these two strands to his
thinking were ever brought together in some sort of comprehensive critique
of power.  I would suspect that it is much more difficult to be aware of how
the mere act of talking about ourselves provides a foothold for the workings
of power, taking us up into larger processes with their own strategic ends.

John Sproule
Knoxville, TN