Summary
In part 2, we saw that transformations in punishment were tied to transformations in social organization. In particular, there was a movement from a more concentrated form of social power, residing in the king, to a more distributed or generalized form of power, residing in the people. As a consequence, there was a movement from the king punishing criminals to society developing norms that prevented crime and reformed criminals. Foucault calls this “discipline”: how people are disciplined into correct behavior. In part 3, Foucault explores the mechanisms by which society disciplines its subjects, or people. He is particularly interested in how institutions are designed to carry out this work. He has already discussed the institution of the prison, and he will return to it again. But he is interested in other institutions, too, like the factory or the school, and he will argue these function like prisons in a way as well.
Foucault begins the first chapter of this part, “Docile Bodies,” by describing the routine of a soldier. The soldier is a representative of discipline: he follows a strict schedule at a specified time and place. In particular, he is trained and observed by his supervisors in the barracks. Foucault argues that other institutions operate like a barracks, even if the work of disciplining is not as obvious as it is for the soldier. In a factory, for instance, every worker has a role to play at a particular time on the assembly line. So, too, does a school regiment children into different grades and then schedule their day to maximize their education. In each institution bodies are “docile” because they can be manipulated and controlled. They learn to move and act in a certain way according to the needs of the institution.
Foucault spells out a few principles that are at play across these different institutions. One is enclosure: whether a barracks or a factory or a hospital or a school, there is a specific space that the institution has designated to it. Second is partitioning: this space is divided so that every individual has his own place. The soldier works in this room; the student sits at this desk; the patient lies in that bed. Third, the space has “functional sites,” or is aimed at producing some goal. The assembly line is making some kind of object, for instance, and each individual in their place is contributing their part to making that object. Finally, institutions have ranks, or a hierarchy. Schools have different grades; the military has different officer positions, and so on. This helps to organize the functioning of the institution.
Foucault asks us to notice that these spaces are “mixed,” by which he means both “real” and “ideal.” They are real in that there really are different sections of an institution; there really are different desks in the classroom, just as there really are different classrooms within the school a whole. But they are also ideal in that the role of “student” or the ranks of different grades are ideas. What institutions like the school do is combine the real and the ideal, giving abstract ideas like rank real places in which people can see what they are supposed to do or where they are supposed to be.
That last part is important: people learn what is expected of them in a certain space at a certain time and in turn learn to do what is needed to contribute to the functioning of an institution. This doesn’t mean people are just puppets. On the contrary, Foucault thinks the rise of these disciplined institutions marks a movement from thinking of people as machines that need to be operated to animals that need to be trained. People learn to play a role within an institution and adapt to the roles others play. In order to do so, they have to internalize the norms and expectations of a place.
Foucault says that this way of organizing society, through norms rather than, say, corporal punishment, opened up the body to new kinds of study. People wanted to figure out the best way of training people, the best way for people to internalize norms. How do you produce norms? And how do you make people feel they need to operate within those norms? For Foucault, the answer lies in the hierarchical nature of institutions. If people always feel they are being observed by someone above them, they will act as they are expected to act. Observation, then, becomes the key to maintaining the functioning of institutions. So long as people feel they are under observation, they will behave.
This is why institutions become full of “examinations.” In school, this is obvious enough, when students take tests and so on. But Foucault means examination in a wider sense, too. Think about how doctors in a hospital “examine” a patient. Or a soldier’s clothes might be examined for cleanliness and order. The point is that individuals who are being disciplined are always being studied. You’re always being tested. And that also means you’re an intersection of power and knowledge. In being examined, you see yourself as under the power of someone else, at the same time that you become a source of knowledge for that person. And this turns into a circular loop: because the knowledge produced by your body will be used to discipline another’s body. Disciplining you becomes a case study in disciplining others.
Analysis
This chapter brings to the fore many of the important themes in Foucault’s analysis. One is the relation between power and knowledge, a relation that crystallizes in the role of “examinations.” Foucault thinks power and knowledge are intimately linked, so that power produces new kinds of knowledge at the same time that it operates through knowledge. The ways in which things are understood shape how they are controlled, while at the same time, things that are controlled can be examined in order to be better understood. Understanding this dynamic is central to understanding Foucault’s book as a whole.
The link between power and knowledge is also one of the ways in which power can’t be concentrated in a particular place. If power is about how we know things, then it’s everywhere, not just in the position of, for instance, the king. Societies are organized around how they conceptualize different kinds of people or different kinds of functions. And this organizing happens without monarchical decree; instead, it operates through social norms and common sense. The unspoken assumptions structure society as much as laws and police do.
Another theme is the importance of institutions in understanding how society works. As we say, it doesn’t make sense to locate power just in the figure of a king. But it also doesn’t make sense to say power belongs to some other big concept like the State or the Law. Rather, we can see how lots of institutions that are intermediate between the state and the individual shape everyday life. These institutions include the church, the school, and the barracks. Because institutions are smaller and more immediate to people, they have a bigger impact in shaping behavior than something large and abstract like the law.
It might be surprising to see Foucault talk about so many institutions as being very similar. A barracks and a school and a prison would seem to have different functions in society, and they house different people. But Foucault can see a similarity because he’s a bit of structuralist: someone who sees how different things can have the same form. These institutions are all similar because of the ways in which they confine and discipline their members. Foucault is more interested in patterns that involve lots of different places and things than he is in the details of any one thing in particular.
Other theorists have also pointed to the importance of institutions, especially the school, in shaping conformity and adherence to social values. Louis Althusser, a French Marxist philosopher of the same generation as Foucault, argued that societies are able to maintain inequality because of ideology, which convinces oppressed people to accept their position in society as natural. Althusser thought that, in the past, the church was the main institution for instilling this ideology. Now, he thinks, it is the school, because everyone has to go to school and it is in school that individuals learn social norms and to submit to authority. This is one resonance between Althusser and Foucault. But Foucault goes a step further, as we’ll see in the next chapter, to claim that this pressure to conform is everywhere, not just in the institution of the school.
