Torture
Notes
- A case of torture in 1757 is described to us.The victim Damien was condemned to 'make the amende honorable before the main door of the church of Paris.'
- 80 years later, Leon Faucher drew up his rules 'for the house of young prisoners in Paris.'
- Each rule was separated into 28 divisions. Starting with 'Rising' and ending with bed and silence
- This forms a public execution and a timetable.
- Among so many changes one idea was to be considered; the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle.
- Punishment has been adapted through a jury system.
- Punishment of a less immediately physical kind. Discretion in the art of inflicting pain. The combination of more subtle more subdued sufferings.
- A few decades saw the disappearance of the tortured, dismembered, amputated bodies to public view.
- The body as the major target of penal repression disappeared.
- The Amende honorable was first abolished in France in 1791.
- The practice of torture was abolished practically everywhere by the beginning of the 19th century.
- The idea of punishment was thought to equal. To make the executioner resemble a criminal, judges murderers and to reverse the roles at the last moment, to make the tortured criminal an object of pity and admiration.
- Quote 'the murder that is depicted as a horrible crime is repeated in cold blood, remorselessly.'
- Punishment then will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process.
- The exemplary mechanics of punishment changes its mechanisms.
- The certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment enters that of abstract consciousness.
- Justice no longer takes public responsibility for the violence that is bound up with its practice.
- The apportioning of blame is redistributed.
- In punishment as spectacle a confused horror spread from the scaffold; it enveloped both executioner and condemned; and, although it was always ready to invert the shame inflicted on to the victim into pity or glory, if often turned the legal violence of the executioner into shame.
- Scandal and light to be shifted differently.
- It is now the conviction itself that marks the offender with the unequivocally negative sign.
- The publicity has shifted to the trial and to the sentence; the execution itself is like an additional shame that justice is ashamed to impose on the condemned man.
- So it keeps its distance from the act, tending always to entrust it to others, under the seal of secrecy.
- The disappearance of public executions therefor marks the decline of the spectacle; but it also marks a slackening of the hold on the body.
- One no longer touched the body but only to reach something other then the body itself.
- Imprisonment, confinement, forced labour, penal servitude, prohibition from entering certain areas and deportation directly affect the body.
- The body now serves as an instrument.
- If one intervenes upon it to imprison it, or make it work, it is order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is regarded as a right and as property.
- The body is caught up in a system of constraints, privations, obligations and prohibitions.
- Physical pain is no longer the constituent element of the penalty.
- Manipulating the body of the convict will now be at a distance resulting in a 'proper way' done at a higher aim.
- As a result of this new restraint, a whole army of technicians took over from the executioner.
- The immediate anatomist of pain; warders, doctors, chaplains, psychiatrists, psychologists and educationalists.
- Their presence near the prisoner sings the praises that the law needs.
- This reassures that the body and pain are not ultimate objects of its punitive action.
- Today a doctor must watch over those condemned to death, an alleviator of pain.
- They have to power to take away life but also prevent the patients from feeling it.
- This deprives the prisoner of all rights but does not inflict pain.
- The modern rituals of execution attest to this double process; the disappearance of the spectacle and the elimination of pain.
Review
During the 17th century torture was a way of inflicting punishment onto the body of condemned. The use of hot pincers and sulphuric acid were used by the authorities to display their act of control to public view. It wasn't until after the 18th century that this spectacle of torture was diminished and a new form of punishment was being adapted into a jury system. Leon Faucher created a set of rules for a house of young prisoners in France. These set of rules had been categorized into 28 divisions, the 1st division starting with 'rising' leading onto the last division which was bed and silence. This adaptation formed a public execution and timetable and the use of punishment had become a less immediately psychical kind. This idea of punishment was thought to equal, the executioner seen as the criminal and the murderer seen as the judge. This is so punishment could then be seen as the most hidden part of the penal process and forever changing the mechanisms of punishment. The disappearance of public executions therefore involves the decline of the spectacle but also marks the slackening on the hold of the body. The body can no longer be touched but something that can reach other then the body itself for example imprisonment, confinement, forced labour and deportation can directly affect the body. The body is now serving as an instrument for a system of constraints, privations, obligations and prohibitions. As a result of this system a new army of executioners took over, these anatomist of pain include doctors, chaplains, psychiatrists, psychologists and educationalists. Today these doctors must watch over those condemned bodies and become an alleviator for pain. They have the power to take away life but also have the power to stop the body from feeling any pain. This deprives the prisoner of any rights and causes a double process which involves the disappearance of the spectacle and the elimination of pain.
Punishment
Notes
- Joseph de Maistre was to recognize in this relation one of the fundamental mechanisms of absolute power. The power of punishment.
- Instead of taking revenge, criminal justice should simply punish.
- In the worst of murderers, there is only one thing, at least, to be respected when one punishes: his humanity.
- The day had come in the 19th century when this 'man,' discovered in the criminal, would become a target of penal intervention.
- The object that is claimed to correct and transform the domain of a whole series of 'criminoligical' sciences and strange 'penitentiary' practices.
- Punishment was put in order not to alter him but put in order to respect him.
- The 'man' that the reformers set up against the despotism of the scaffold has also become a 'man' measure; not of things, but of power.
- A problem occurs. How is this 'man' measure opposed to the traditional practice of punishment?
- It is like the 18th century has opened up this political crisis of this economy, and in order to resolve it, proposed the fundamental law that punishment must have 'humanity' as its 'measure.'
- During the period of the 18th century crimes seemed to lose their violence. While punishment, reciprocally, lost some of their intensity but at the cost of greater intervention.
- Crime became less violent long before punishment became less severe.
- The shift in the criminality of blood to a criminality of fraud forms part of a complex mechanism.
- Stricter methods of surveillance, tighter partitioning of the population and more sufficient techniques of locating and obtaining information refined punitive practices.
- It was the effort to adjust the mechanisms of power that frame the everyday lives of individuals.
- An adaption and refinement of the machinery that assumes responsibility for and places under surveillance their everyday behavior, their identity, their activity, their apparently unimportant gestures; another policy for that multiplicity of bodies and forces that constitutes a population.
- What was emerging no doubt was not so much a new respect for the humanity of the condemned.
- Justice was becoming more finely tuned closing towards penal mapping of the social body.
- There was to much power on the side of the prosecution. This led judges to be sometimes over severe.
- There was two much power in the hands of the judges, royal magistrates and the 'King' who suspended courts of justice.
- The paralysis of justice was due not so much to a weakening as to a badly regulated distribution of power, to its concentration at a certain number of points and to the conflicts and discontinuities that resulted.
Review
Joseph de Maistre was to recognize one of the fundamental mechanisms of absolute power. This power was recognized to be the power of punishment. Instead of taking revenge on the criminal, criminal justice was put in order to simply punish. In the worst cases of crimes, including murderers, there was only one thing to be respected when ones punishes, this would be the 'mans' humanity. The day had come in the 19th century when this 'man' discovered to be a criminal would become a target of penal intervention. Punishment was put in order not to punish him but in order to respect him. This level of respect had set the 'man' up to become a 'man' of measure, not a measure of things but a measure of power. A problem then occurs. How is this 'man' measure opposed to the traditional practice of punishment. Lane then refers back to the 18th century and explains how it has opened up a political crisis of the economy and in order to resolve it, proposed that the fundamental law that punishment must have 'humanity' as its 'measure.' It was during this 18th century that crimes seemed to lose their violence and punishment lost some of its intensity. Crime became less violent before punishment became less severe. The shift of criminality of blood to fraud formed part of a complex mechanism. Stricter methods of surveillance, tighter partitioning of the population and more sufficient techniques of locating and obtaining information refined the criminal justice service. It was this effort to adjust the mechanisms that frame the everyday lives of the individuals. These individuals are refined under a surveillance that sculpts their identity, activity and apparently unimportant postures. Justice was becoming more finely tuned closing towards penal mapping of the social body. The power of the prosecution was becoming more severe and their was to much power in the hands of the judges, royal magistrates and the 'King' who suspended courts of justice. The paralysis of this justice was due not so much to the weakening of the badly distributed power but to the concentration at a certain number of points and to the conflicts and discontinuous that resulted.
- The following system was said to be introduced when a plague appeared in a town during the 17th century.
- The surveillance of this town during the plague is based on a system of permanent registration; reports from the syndics to the intendants, from the intendants to the magistrates or mayor.
- At the beginning of the 'lock up' the role of each of its inhabitants is laid down, one by one this document bears 'the name, age, sex of everyone, not with standing his condition:' a copy is sent to the indendant of the quarter, another to the office or town hall, another to enable the syndic to make his daily role call.
- Everything that may be observed during the course of the visits- deaths, illnesses, complaints, irregularities- is noted down and transmitted to the intendants and magistrates.
- The magistrates have complete control over medical treatments.
- They appointed a physician in charge; no other practitioner may treat, no apothecary prepare medicine, no confessor visit a sick person without having received from him a written note 'to prevent anyone from concealing and dealing with those sick of the contagion, unknown to the magistrates.'
- Five or six days after the beginning of the quarantine, the process of the houses one by one begins.
- This process includes making all inhabitants leave and removing all furniture. Once this all done perfume is let off all around the room just shortly after concealing all the cracks and holes in the room with wax. Once this is done the perfume is set alight.
- Four hours later the residents are set to return.
- This enclosed segmented space is observed at every minute, in which the individuals are inserted into a fixed place.
- All movements are recorded and power is exercised without division.
- According to the continuous hierarchical figure, each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living beings, the sick and the dead, all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism.
- The plague is met by order. Its function is to set out every possible confusion.
- That of the disease when the bodies are mixed together; that of the evil, which is increased when the fear and death overcome prohibitions.
- Against the plague, which is a mixture, discipline brings into play its power.
- The plague as a form, at once real and imaginary, of disorder had its medical and political correlative discipline.
- Behind the disciplinary mechanisms can be read the haunting memory of contagions, of the plague, of rebellions, crimes, vagabondage, desertions, people who will appear and disappear, live and die in disorder.
- The plague stricken town, traversed through out with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in an instinctive way over all individual bodies- this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city.
- In order to make rights and laws function according to pure theory, the jurists place themselves in imagination in the state of nature; in order to see perfect disciplines functioning, rulers dreamt of the state of the plague.
- Underlying disciplinary projects the image of the plague stands for all forms of confusion and disorder.
- Just as an image of the leper, cut off from all human contact, underlies projects of exclusion.
- It was the 19th century that the leper was the symbolic inhabitant.
- These included beggars, vagabonds, madmen and the disorderly.
- Treat lepers as 'plague victims.'
- Project the subtle segmentation's of discipline of the confused space of interment, combine it with the methods of analytical distribution proper to power, individualize the excluded, but use procedures of individualization to mark exclusion.
- This was what was operated regularly by disciplinary power from the beginning of the nineteenth century in the psychiatric asylum, the penitentiary, the reformatory, the approved school and to some extent the hospital.
- Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a double mode.
- Mad/Sane, Dangerous/Harmless, Normal/Abnormal.
- Who he is; Where must he be; How he is to be characterized; How a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way.
- The existence of a whole set of techniques and institutions for measuring, supervising and correcting the abnormal brings into play the disciplinary mechanisms to which the fear of the plague gave rise.
- All the mechanisms of power which, even today, are disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him and to alter him, are composed of two forms from which they distantly derive.
- Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition.
- We know the principle on which it is based.
- At the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the periphery building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other.
- All that is needed then is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, patient, a condemned man, a worker or a school boy.
- The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and recognize immediately.
- In short it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions- to enclose, to deprive of light and hide- it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two.
- Hence the major effect of the panopticon; to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.
- The panopticon was also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behavior to train and correct individuals.
- To experiment with medicines and monitor their effects.
- To try out different punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and characters, and seek the most effective ones.
- The panopticon is a privileged place for experiments on men, and for analyzing with complete certainty the transformations that may be obtained from them.
-These disciplines, with classical age has elaborated in specific relatively enclosed spaces, barracks, schools, workshops, and whose total implementation had been imagined only at the limited and temporary scale of a plague stricken town, Bentham dreamt of transforming into a network of mechanisms that would be everywhere and always alert, running through society without interruption in space or in time.
- The panoptic arrangement provides the formula for this generalization.
- The basic functioning of a society penetrated through and through with disciplinary mechanisms.
- The formation of what might be called in general a disciplinary society.
Review
A plague appeared in a town during the seventeenth century a following system appeared to be introduced while keeping surveillance on its inhabitants. This surveillance was based on a system of permanent registration; reports from the syndics to the intendants, from the intendants to the magistrates or mayor. At the beginning of the lock up each of the inhabitants would be bound to give all information about themselves, this contained their name, age, sex and current condition they were in. The magistrates have complete control over the medical treatment, appointed a physician in charge and granted no access to any other practitioner, this is to prevent anyone dealing with those sick of the contagion unknown to the magistrates. Six days after the quarantine the process of purifying the houses began, four hours later the residents are set to return but are only allowed to return to a fixated place and will be surveyed continuously. They will be recorded and power is exercised without division, according to the continuous hierarchical figure, each individual will be constantly located, examined and distributed. All this constitutes a model of disciplinary mechanism, the plague is met by order; its function is to set out every possible confusion. Against the plague, which is of analysis, discipline brings into play its power, the plague as a form, at once real and imaginary, of disorder had its medical and political correlative discipline.Behind the disciplinary mechanisms can be read the haunting memory of contagions, of the plague, of rebellions, crimes, vagabonds, desertions, people who will appear and disappear, live and die in disorder. The plague stricken town is traversed throughout with surveillance and observation this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city, jurists place themselves in the state of this governed nature and rulers dreamt of nothing more then the mechanisms behind the plague. The plague stands for all confusion and disorder, it was the 19th century that the leper was the symbolic inhabitant these included beggars, vagabonds, madmen and the disorderly. These lepers were soon being treated as plague victims, individualization of these characters marked exclusion, this was what was operated regularly by disciplinary power in the psychiatric asylum, the penitentiary, the reformatory, the approved school and to some extent the hospital. Generally speaking, authorities exercised individual control functions according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding, these were mad/sane; dangerous/harmless and normal/abnormal. This was then constructed to set out the guidelines of who is he; where he must be; how he must be characterized; how he is to be recognized; how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way. All mechanisms of power, which even today, are disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him, to alter him, are composed of these two forms which they instantly deprive.
Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition, we know the principle on what it is based, the architectural formation of this composition creates a set of places we know today as schools, prisons and hospitals. The panoptic mechanisms arranges spatial units that make it possible to see constantly and recognize immediately, in short this operates in three functions- to enclose, to deprive of light, and to hide- it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. This is to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power, this is the major effect of the panopticon model. The panoptican was also a laboratory that could be used to carry out experiments, to alter behavior and to train and correct individuals. There was also experiments with medicines on many inmates in order to seek out which medicines were suited best, they would also try out different punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and character, in order to seek the most effective ones. These disciplines with classical age had elaborated in relatively enclosed places. Bentham dreamt of transforming into a network of mechanisms that would be everywhere and always alert, running through society without interruption in space or time, the panopticon provides the formula for this generalization. This basic functioning of a society penetrated through and through with disciplinary mechanisms could be a formation of what might be called in general a disciplined society.
Foucault, M (1975). Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison. London: Penguin Books.
- Crime became less violent long before punishment became less severe.
- The shift in the criminality of blood to a criminality of fraud forms part of a complex mechanism.
- Stricter methods of surveillance, tighter partitioning of the population and more sufficient techniques of locating and obtaining information refined punitive practices.
- It was the effort to adjust the mechanisms of power that frame the everyday lives of individuals.
- An adaption and refinement of the machinery that assumes responsibility for and places under surveillance their everyday behavior, their identity, their activity, their apparently unimportant gestures; another policy for that multiplicity of bodies and forces that constitutes a population.
- What was emerging no doubt was not so much a new respect for the humanity of the condemned.
- Justice was becoming more finely tuned closing towards penal mapping of the social body.
- There was to much power on the side of the prosecution. This led judges to be sometimes over severe.
- There was two much power in the hands of the judges, royal magistrates and the 'King' who suspended courts of justice.
- The paralysis of justice was due not so much to a weakening as to a badly regulated distribution of power, to its concentration at a certain number of points and to the conflicts and discontinuities that resulted.
Review
Joseph de Maistre was to recognize one of the fundamental mechanisms of absolute power. This power was recognized to be the power of punishment. Instead of taking revenge on the criminal, criminal justice was put in order to simply punish. In the worst cases of crimes, including murderers, there was only one thing to be respected when ones punishes, this would be the 'mans' humanity. The day had come in the 19th century when this 'man' discovered to be a criminal would become a target of penal intervention. Punishment was put in order not to punish him but in order to respect him. This level of respect had set the 'man' up to become a 'man' of measure, not a measure of things but a measure of power. A problem then occurs. How is this 'man' measure opposed to the traditional practice of punishment. Lane then refers back to the 18th century and explains how it has opened up a political crisis of the economy and in order to resolve it, proposed that the fundamental law that punishment must have 'humanity' as its 'measure.' It was during this 18th century that crimes seemed to lose their violence and punishment lost some of its intensity. Crime became less violent before punishment became less severe. The shift of criminality of blood to fraud formed part of a complex mechanism. Stricter methods of surveillance, tighter partitioning of the population and more sufficient techniques of locating and obtaining information refined the criminal justice service. It was this effort to adjust the mechanisms that frame the everyday lives of the individuals. These individuals are refined under a surveillance that sculpts their identity, activity and apparently unimportant postures. Justice was becoming more finely tuned closing towards penal mapping of the social body. The power of the prosecution was becoming more severe and their was to much power in the hands of the judges, royal magistrates and the 'King' who suspended courts of justice. The paralysis of this justice was due not so much to the weakening of the badly distributed power but to the concentration at a certain number of points and to the conflicts and discontinuous that resulted.
Panopticism
Notes
- The surveillance of this town during the plague is based on a system of permanent registration; reports from the syndics to the intendants, from the intendants to the magistrates or mayor.
- At the beginning of the 'lock up' the role of each of its inhabitants is laid down, one by one this document bears 'the name, age, sex of everyone, not with standing his condition:' a copy is sent to the indendant of the quarter, another to the office or town hall, another to enable the syndic to make his daily role call.
- Everything that may be observed during the course of the visits- deaths, illnesses, complaints, irregularities- is noted down and transmitted to the intendants and magistrates.
- The magistrates have complete control over medical treatments.
- They appointed a physician in charge; no other practitioner may treat, no apothecary prepare medicine, no confessor visit a sick person without having received from him a written note 'to prevent anyone from concealing and dealing with those sick of the contagion, unknown to the magistrates.'
- Five or six days after the beginning of the quarantine, the process of the houses one by one begins.
- This process includes making all inhabitants leave and removing all furniture. Once this all done perfume is let off all around the room just shortly after concealing all the cracks and holes in the room with wax. Once this is done the perfume is set alight.
- Four hours later the residents are set to return.
- This enclosed segmented space is observed at every minute, in which the individuals are inserted into a fixed place.
- All movements are recorded and power is exercised without division.
- According to the continuous hierarchical figure, each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living beings, the sick and the dead, all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism.
- The plague is met by order. Its function is to set out every possible confusion.
- That of the disease when the bodies are mixed together; that of the evil, which is increased when the fear and death overcome prohibitions.
- Against the plague, which is a mixture, discipline brings into play its power.
- The plague as a form, at once real and imaginary, of disorder had its medical and political correlative discipline.
- Behind the disciplinary mechanisms can be read the haunting memory of contagions, of the plague, of rebellions, crimes, vagabondage, desertions, people who will appear and disappear, live and die in disorder.
- The plague stricken town, traversed through out with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in an instinctive way over all individual bodies- this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city.
- In order to make rights and laws function according to pure theory, the jurists place themselves in imagination in the state of nature; in order to see perfect disciplines functioning, rulers dreamt of the state of the plague.
- Underlying disciplinary projects the image of the plague stands for all forms of confusion and disorder.
- Just as an image of the leper, cut off from all human contact, underlies projects of exclusion.
- It was the 19th century that the leper was the symbolic inhabitant.
- These included beggars, vagabonds, madmen and the disorderly.
- Treat lepers as 'plague victims.'
- Project the subtle segmentation's of discipline of the confused space of interment, combine it with the methods of analytical distribution proper to power, individualize the excluded, but use procedures of individualization to mark exclusion.
- This was what was operated regularly by disciplinary power from the beginning of the nineteenth century in the psychiatric asylum, the penitentiary, the reformatory, the approved school and to some extent the hospital.
- Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a double mode.
- Mad/Sane, Dangerous/Harmless, Normal/Abnormal.
- Who he is; Where must he be; How he is to be characterized; How a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way.
- The existence of a whole set of techniques and institutions for measuring, supervising and correcting the abnormal brings into play the disciplinary mechanisms to which the fear of the plague gave rise.
- All the mechanisms of power which, even today, are disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him and to alter him, are composed of two forms from which they distantly derive.
- Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition.
- We know the principle on which it is based.
- At the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the periphery building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other.
- All that is needed then is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, patient, a condemned man, a worker or a school boy.
- The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and recognize immediately.
- In short it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions- to enclose, to deprive of light and hide- it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two.
- Hence the major effect of the panopticon; to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.
- The panopticon was also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behavior to train and correct individuals.
- To experiment with medicines and monitor their effects.
- To try out different punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and characters, and seek the most effective ones.
- The panopticon is a privileged place for experiments on men, and for analyzing with complete certainty the transformations that may be obtained from them.
-These disciplines, with classical age has elaborated in specific relatively enclosed spaces, barracks, schools, workshops, and whose total implementation had been imagined only at the limited and temporary scale of a plague stricken town, Bentham dreamt of transforming into a network of mechanisms that would be everywhere and always alert, running through society without interruption in space or in time.
- The panoptic arrangement provides the formula for this generalization.
- The basic functioning of a society penetrated through and through with disciplinary mechanisms.
- The formation of what might be called in general a disciplinary society.
Review
A plague appeared in a town during the seventeenth century a following system appeared to be introduced while keeping surveillance on its inhabitants. This surveillance was based on a system of permanent registration; reports from the syndics to the intendants, from the intendants to the magistrates or mayor. At the beginning of the lock up each of the inhabitants would be bound to give all information about themselves, this contained their name, age, sex and current condition they were in. The magistrates have complete control over the medical treatment, appointed a physician in charge and granted no access to any other practitioner, this is to prevent anyone dealing with those sick of the contagion unknown to the magistrates. Six days after the quarantine the process of purifying the houses began, four hours later the residents are set to return but are only allowed to return to a fixated place and will be surveyed continuously. They will be recorded and power is exercised without division, according to the continuous hierarchical figure, each individual will be constantly located, examined and distributed. All this constitutes a model of disciplinary mechanism, the plague is met by order; its function is to set out every possible confusion. Against the plague, which is of analysis, discipline brings into play its power, the plague as a form, at once real and imaginary, of disorder had its medical and political correlative discipline.Behind the disciplinary mechanisms can be read the haunting memory of contagions, of the plague, of rebellions, crimes, vagabonds, desertions, people who will appear and disappear, live and die in disorder. The plague stricken town is traversed throughout with surveillance and observation this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city, jurists place themselves in the state of this governed nature and rulers dreamt of nothing more then the mechanisms behind the plague. The plague stands for all confusion and disorder, it was the 19th century that the leper was the symbolic inhabitant these included beggars, vagabonds, madmen and the disorderly. These lepers were soon being treated as plague victims, individualization of these characters marked exclusion, this was what was operated regularly by disciplinary power in the psychiatric asylum, the penitentiary, the reformatory, the approved school and to some extent the hospital. Generally speaking, authorities exercised individual control functions according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding, these were mad/sane; dangerous/harmless and normal/abnormal. This was then constructed to set out the guidelines of who is he; where he must be; how he must be characterized; how he is to be recognized; how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way. All mechanisms of power, which even today, are disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him, to alter him, are composed of these two forms which they instantly deprive.
Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition, we know the principle on what it is based, the architectural formation of this composition creates a set of places we know today as schools, prisons and hospitals. The panoptic mechanisms arranges spatial units that make it possible to see constantly and recognize immediately, in short this operates in three functions- to enclose, to deprive of light, and to hide- it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. This is to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power, this is the major effect of the panopticon model. The panoptican was also a laboratory that could be used to carry out experiments, to alter behavior and to train and correct individuals. There was also experiments with medicines on many inmates in order to seek out which medicines were suited best, they would also try out different punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and character, in order to seek the most effective ones. These disciplines with classical age had elaborated in relatively enclosed places. Bentham dreamt of transforming into a network of mechanisms that would be everywhere and always alert, running through society without interruption in space or time, the panopticon provides the formula for this generalization. This basic functioning of a society penetrated through and through with disciplinary mechanisms could be a formation of what might be called in general a disciplined society.
Foucault, M (1975). Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison. London: Penguin Books.
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