JLO63O, 4/12 Foucault

“… he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection… It is a perpetual victor that avoids any physical confrontation and which is always decided in advance” (99).

I was exceptionally intrigued by Michel Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punish.’ He wrote about the discipline modality of power, how it’s infiltrated, and its transformations in history. He starts with the early story about the plague and the lepers, and the practices of Confinement. Under this power, there was around-the-clock surveillance over each and every individual. Power was exercised without division and power was mobilized and visible. It was the perfectly governed society.
The later story Foucault tells is about the ingenious structure of the Panopticon and its generalizable model of functioning.



This structure was made so that it was possible to see and recognize all movement from one major watchtower. This idea of knowing that there is someone watching over you effects your conscious and the fear of being caught outside of your assigned domain. Before you even have the chance of stepping out your assigned unit into the foreseeable eyes of a governing power, you instead inscribe yourself in the power relation and function unconsciously under ideology. Thus without confrontation, you have ‘become the principle of your own subjection’ (99).

This reminds me of a quote from Althusser, “ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their existence” (44). Althusser says that Ideological state apparatuses reinforce and assign ideologies of who we are and our functions in society, much like how the lepers knew that they were a diseased people that should be confined. It tells us how to act and behave in your place in society.


To add onto Foucault and throw our modern day apparatus into this mix, we can see power transformations from a direct confrontation of power, to a ‘watchtower’ unit of power, to a repressive state apparatus. Governing powers, no matter how direct or indirect presence, have repeatedly inculturated ideological codes of behavior in its institutional structures.