Daisy, Foucault

Michel Foucult’s article, “Discipline and Punish,” primarily stated that our society is of surveillance. He said, “the individual is carefully fabricated in it,” (this society of surveillance)(101). We do not realize it is because we have normalized it. It has been a part of society since the beginning of time. This reminded me of Althusser’s idea that both the author and the reader function naturally in ideology. Discipline and punishment have always been driving forces within our society, yet we fail to think of them as anything but normal.
I found Foucult’s article to be extremely interesting by the way he used history to show the presence of discipline within our society. He began the article by talking about the precautionary measures that were put in place when the plague came to America. The way the people in power dealt with the plague was by isolation of society. There was hierarchy put into place among individuals to monitor the isolated individuals, having a person of lesser power answer to a person of higher power, and so on. Throughout the entire isolation the individuals within their homes where monitored and no one could leave their houses except for the supervisors. The individuals were powerless, yet this method worked as a way to control society. The fear that was instilled within the individuals was a way to keep them insides their home. Baurdrillard would say that this fear is still a way to control our society, and the media is the one responsible.
Foucult builds on the idea of surveillance by talking about the panopticon, which was Bentham’s architectural design for a prison. The idea of the prison is that the prisoners are “totally seen, without seeing,” and the inspector “sees everything without every being seen” (98). The idea behind this is that the prisoners will never try to escape because they think they are always being watched. Here again, fear of punishment was instilled within the prisoners. This reminded me of the theory behind ideology. Although we never see the ones in power, we are always functioning within ideology. Power is visible throughout all aspects of society and most of the time we do not realize it because we have become so used to it. The powerful thing about ideology is that we cannot see it, but we see its effects and know it is real.