File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1998/foucault.9807, message 179


Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 16:43:53 +1000
From: Darren <darren.smith-AT-unsw.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: Zero-tolerance policing


One of the reasons for an increase in the incidents of youth delinquency is
the power relations which operate in relation to them. Rebellion comes from
alienation: it is an alternative method of control ie through grafitti art,
crime, music etc. One reason why this rebellion is so visual is the fact
that young people have little control over political/educational/vocational
etc decision-making processes. To take a Marxist angle, young people are
alienated. Rebellion is a means of asserting that control and power
categorizes that alternative model of control as criminal as a means of
silencing it or disarming it.

I'm not saying that increasing youth participation nis the answer but it
certainly is an important consideration.
DS


At 06:19 PM 7/28/98 +1200, you wrote:
>Vunch challengs us to think about 
>
>'the problems of massive high school dropping-out', and 'so much 
>violence in the first place'
>
>
>In talking about human beings we have this strange romantic notion of 
>what is normal. We imagine an idyllic condition  and think that is 
>standard for human beings and somehow we are currently off the gold 
>standard as it were.  It may well be that the massive high school 
>not-dropping-out of a previous era ( when? ) was the oddity, not present 
>conditions. and anyway,  is attendance at high school an indication of 
>the health of a society or simply its prosperity or rate of 
>unemployment? 
>
>I am as much against violence as anyone, indeed my life has been 
>seriously affected by it, but I would challenge anyone who thinks that 
>violence isn't the norm in our society. Indeed Foucault examines 
>Clausewitz's aphorism that war is diplomacy by other means, and reverses 
>it: diplomacy/law is war by other means: the bottom line is who can  
>hurt who more. He says that the law is ultimately founded on the ability 
>to kill. (Power/knowledge, two lectures, I think) I think what is the 
>recent difference is the media attention to forms of violence among the 
>poor, and there potential for affecting the not-poor. Most crimes are 
>committed by the poor against the poor, and these are not frankly what 
>schools or vigilante societies worry about. But the threat to people of 
>property is heavily played up. 
>
>The emphasis on dropping out/crime/unemployment amounts to a kind of 
>package of goods which young people particularly are being sold in order 
>to keep them in line, under supervision in schools, or jobs, and has an 
>impact on parents and teachers as they struggle to help their little 
>charges avoid a fate worse than death. In fact when I reflect on the 
>phrase I just used, the process is exactly the same as the Victorian way 
>of keeping women under control by the threat of exclusion. 
>
>I think that perhaps what is new is the effect of technology; where once 
>young working class men could be effectively reduced in number  - and 
>had some value to their society/govt  - by sending them off to war,  the 
>existence of nuclear weapons makes this an unattractive option, so these 
>poor sods have no use at all. Factory owners usually prefer women 
>because they are more docile and cheaper. We have a high suicide rate 
>for young males, but the effect on the problem is minimal. Maybe Dean 
>Swift had the right idea.
>
>
>Nesta
>
>

   

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