Michel Foucault

In “Discipline and Punishment,” Foucault examines social apparatuses that alter the western penal system. A transition occurred during the mid eighteenth century through the early nineteenth century. Foucault describes punishment in the penal system shifting from a tortuous public spectacle (e.g. death) to a more modern, morally justified, and politically rationalized system (e.g. prison) (7). Foucault disputes the idea that the penal system transitioned out of humanitarian outcries from the public. Instead, Foucault postulates the penal system dramatically shifted out of modern “disciplinary mechanisms that the new class power was developing: that in which they colonized the legal institution” (231). The colonized system defined the power to deprive one of liberty and to command man to perform certain functions(233). Men became mechanized, automatized and systematized, allowing for precise control and surveillance of the body and the mind. In order to accomplish these means, the system needed a more generalized, evenly distributed type of punishment and discipline for the masses. Controlling and disciplining society by means of confinement and surveillance ensures domination and centralization of power.

Foucualt begins by examining Western societies use of torture as punishment. Punishment was created for public display. Torture served as an emotional, dramaturgical rally fueled by the crowds approval or disapproval. In this instance, the crowed was unintentionally given a dominant position in the issuing of punishment. The State viewed torture as a method of revenge displaying the “offense” on the individual’s body. The state commanded others to commit barbaric forms of torture in the sole pursuit of revenge and deterrence (e.g. justice). Foucault saw man’s energy expenditure for torture a futile endeavor. Publicly torturing an individual created disorganization, uncertainty, and societal outrages. It was also politically expensive. Torture as a a form of...