2. The Genie Subjected and Aestheticizing: Subject Formation in Foucault
2.1. Drilling not Grilling – Subjection in Foucault’s Mid-Works
2.1.1. Disciplinary Power
If we are to see how the subject is produced in DP we must look at the system of power which produces it; discipline. From the outset, Foucault summarises the book as “a correlative history of the modern soul and of a new power to punish”.119 The work tracks the development of the system of incarceration from the 18th to the 19th century. Over this time society rejected forms of torture and public execution, embracing seemingly more humane ways of dealing with criminality. However, this should not be read as ‘Whig history’ of the progress of mankind, but as stemming from the rise of a new form of power (and with a concomitant effect on subjectivity). As Foucault makes clear, “the criticism of the reformers [of the penal system] was not directed so much at the weakness or cruelty of those in authority, as at a bad economy of power.”120 The new form of power, discipline, came about as a means of more effectively regulating its subjects. It is thereby linked from the start to its ability to influence subject formation.
Discipline can most clearly be defined in contrast to the form of power that precedes it for Foucault, sovereignty. Sovereign power is epitomised by European monarchies of the early modern period, with authority manifest in the glory of the ruler. Importance is attached
118 N. Luxon, ‘Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish’, in Oxford Handbook, 2019, p. 1.
119 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1995, p. 23.
120 Ibid., p. 79.
to ceremony and ritual, with the enacting of punishment “to be understood not only as a judicial, but also as a political ritual”.121 The offender is seen as having injured the sovereign, whose might is rehabilitated by corporeally punishing the criminal. Under this regime, power is something that is possessed by an individual, who exercises that power over those subject to it. The subject is also conceived of in a certain way – the individual is a “juridical subject”, almost property of the sovereign to be put under total control.122 They are treated as a subject chiefly in the sense of being subjected to the influence of others.
This contrasts with power relations under discipline, which take a “management-oriented conception of human beings”.123 Rather than dominating the subject through direct interference, discipline uses subtle and pervasive management techniques to mould the subject in the desired fashion. Foucault outlines two such techniques - hierarchical observation and normalizing judgement - which “the examination combines”.124 Thus, we see both techniques determining the constitution of the subject through the site of the examination. In the examination, the subject is overseen coercively. Their observer is in a higher hierarchical position (such as that of a prison warden to prisoner), creating the opportunity for power to be applied on them. Further, through observation different information about the subject can be gathered and compared to others in a process of normalizing judgement. In this way, any deviation of the subject from the norm can be corrected – “disciplinary punishment is essentially corrective” for Foucault.125 The exam also results in the production of documentation. Bringing these aspects together, “the examination, surrounded by all its documentary techniques, makes each individual a ‘case’”, locating them within a network of classifying information.126 This creates the subject as the object of knowledge to be understood by disciplinary power.
This is combined with aspects of strict control of the subject, further shaping it in a specific form. This occurs through the operation of discipline on the body, leading to the production of what Foucault terms ‘docile bodies’.127 Through processes that act on the material of the
121 Ibid., p. 47.
122 C.G. Prado, Starting with Foucault, 1995, p. 55.
123 Ibid., p. 56.
124 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1995, p. 187.
125 Ibid., p. 179.
126 Ibid., p. 191.
127 This is most developed in eponymous first chapter of Part 3 in DP. (Ibid., pp. 135-169.)
body, such as the ordering of space, prescription of exercises, and rigorous scheduling, the body is moulded into the object that disciplinary power desires. As scholar C.J. Heyes puts it,
“this new mechanics of power operated on the individual body to manipulate its movements and gestures with an eye to shaping their overall economy rather than merely their signification.”128 By controlling the body, it is fashioned into something susceptible to further control, not only restrictively but also productively. Disciplinary practices train the body, habituating the subject to act the way that power desires. Drawing on examples not only from prisons, but the increasingly professionalised military and education, Foucault declares that
“the chief function of the disciplinary power is to train”.129 These institutions take any individual and makes them into the kind of subject they wish.
This can be seen in the Panopticon figure. For Foucault, Bentham’s Panopticon was not simply a design for a model prison but “power reduced to its ideal form”.130 Here, the mechanisms of discipline could most efficiently play out. The design of the facility created a totalising system of surveillance, whereby the prisoners were always potentially subject to the gaze of hierarchical observation and corrective measures if they deviate from the desired norm. This is the case even if they are not actually being watched. Through the design of the Panopticon, the inmate can never know if they are under surveillance or not. They must therefore act as if they always are. As Foucault puts it, “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”.131 In this respect, the Panopticon is able not only to delineate the subject as an object of knowledge under disciplinary power, but further will determine their subjectivity. As the prisoner must behave in accordance with the possibility of disciplinary judgement, they come to be formed in a way amenable to discipline. For Foucault, the Panopticon could thus “be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behaviour; to train or correct individuals.”132
128 C.J. Heyes, Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 28.
129M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1995, p. 170. This productive aspect of training is also where we can see an emancipatory potential for the subject of discipline. By training them, discipline may not only be determining the subject, but also equipping them with a means to shape their own subjectivity, as we will later see.
130 Ibid., p. 205.
131 Ibid., p. 201.
132 Ibid., p. 203.