“The relation of each individual to his disease and to his death passes through the representatives of power, the registration they make of it, the decisions they make on it.”
We can relate this to Karl Marx and Althusser and there notion of ideology and different classes in our society. As Marx says “he who has the gold rules.” The dominating class is the one who sets these so called rules that our society follows know as ideologies. This quote is telling us that we as individuals are diseased and we follow our death to following these representations of power. The more we follow the power and the one that is in power the more that this notion will carry on into our future generations. The decisions that we make will dictate what happens to our future generations. For example if we see a movie and we are becoming so into the fact that nothing surprises us anymore then we will come out of the movie not being shocked when something shocking really does happen to us. We can also relate this notion to Jameson simulacra and how nothing affects us anymore. It also connects to the waning of affect. We see things so much on TV and are the community that they don’t even faze us anymore.
“This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing links and centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which 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.
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I don't think you fully understand exactly what Foucault is getting at. Look back at your quote and notice the emphasis on the fact that those individuals with the disease are being regulated by the representatives of power. Therefore, the sick have no control over what is going on. Think about the way that this reflects in everyday life where you are monitored in a shape or form, for example going to a parking lot and being caught on CCTV, people looking at your facebook page etc. It happens whether you are aware of it or not. Surveillance acts to instill certain ideologies into society without having to constantly enforce them represssively (RSA - Althussar). For your post class please take the time to analyse Foucault and base your post-class blog on him again because class with greatly help your understanding. :)
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