Punishment as Metaphor
Foucault explains how the very nature of punishment is metaphorical. That’s because what is being punished is usually a stand-in for something more abstract. Inflicting pain on the body for stealing something is trading pain for money, for instance. As Foucault elaborates:
The guillotine takes life almost without touching the body, just as prison deprives of liberty or a fine reduces wealth. It is intended to apply the law not so much to a real body capable of feeling pain as to a juridical subject, the possessor, among other things, of the right to exist. It had to have the abstraction of the law itself. (13)
Here, the body is a metaphor for a “juridical subject,” which refers to a more abstract concept of personhood which comes into being through being recognized by the law. The law is actually trying to inflict pain on life and liberty, but does it through the body that is its metaphor.
Institutional Similes
A simile is when something is said to be like something else. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault talks about how different institutions, like the school, the army, and the factory, started to be similar as well. Here is how Foucault talks about the “general method” of disciplinary power and how similar “principles” were at play in different contexts:
They were at work in secondary education at a very early date, later in primary schools; they slowly invested the space of the hospital; and, in a few decades, they restructured the military organization. They sometimes circulated very rapidly from one point to another (between the army and the technical schools or secondary schools), sometimes slowly and discreetly (the insidious militarization of the large workshops). (138)
Here, we get a real sense of the force of simile, showing how different things are similar. Hospitals, schools, armies, and factories ostensibly have different purposes and involve different people. But they start to look similar because of the principles of hierarchical observation which train people within them to act accordingly at all times.
