Foucault s Discipline And Punishment - 1211 Words

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries experienced a surge of social reform movements linked to the Enlightenment, which transformed society into the modern culture seen today. Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish examines how punishment was viewed and enacted prior to the â€Å"humane† awakening of the eighteenth century, while establishing the progression of change that shifted punishment from the body to the soul. Foucault was a student and professor of philosophy and psychology during the twentieth century, which influenced his writings and political activism. Discipline and Punish is a result of his active participation in prison reform, in which he outlines the history of the modern penal system and how it is linked to modern society,†¦show more content†¦Spectacle and purposeful pain on the body was the norm of the time, however, Foucault contrasts this episode with a timetable for prisoners some eighty years later, a rigid schedule meant to control and reform the prisoner’s soul. By stating how â€Å"it was a time of great ‘scandals’ for traditional justice, a time of innumerable projects for reform,† (Foucault, 7) it becomes clear that the aim of these four parts are to gradually demonstrate how one follows the other. Torture of the body became punishment of the soul, which depended on discipline, ultimately creating the modern prison system. Foucault’s structure facilitates the audience to comprehend the forces behind this transformation. Part one, Torture ¸ elucidates how torture and execution was â€Å"an organized ritual for the marking of victims and the expression of the power that punishes.† (Foucault, 34) Within part two, Punishment ¸ the beginning of the â€Å"humanization† process is exposed by reform movements that called for a redisposition of power, the goal was â€Å"not to punish less, but to punish better.† (Foucault, 82) Thus was born the idea of a pr ison, a space where one’s soul could be corrected and reformed. Discipline presents how institutions were created in order to observe individuals’ behavior and to compare their behavior to the ‘norm’, and that perpetual observation could coerce people into this normative behavior. In this section, Foucault introduces Bentham’s