Part 1: Torture
i. The body of the condemned
In the 1700-1800's, the public spectacle, festival or carnival, of public torture or punishment is abolished. Punishment gradually becomes hidden and individual, (p. 8-10). Secondly, punishment no longer is a process visited upon the body (p. 10-16), but is replaced by a non-corporal penal system. Foucault proposes studying the penal system as a part of Human Science (p. 23). Furthermore, Power and Knowledge relations (p. 27) as a part of the Body Politic (with elements, resources, and forces) and the Technology of Power over both body and soul (p. 30), are intricately involved in understanding both human relations and human science.
ii. The spectacle of the scaffold
Historically, though the punishment was a human spectacle, the legal process leading up to was concealed in secrecy (p. 35). With interrogation under torture (p. 42-46): the accused self-condemned, in confession, leading to public execution which is public and slow for political purposes (control or political ritual). The right to punishment was the sovereign's right to make war on "his" enemies or "enemies of the people" (aka, Homeland Security or any Communist leadership "of the people" initiative). Punishment was triumph (p. 52) revealing truth and power (p.55). (A counter-power spectacle via literature produced a hero-villain who triumphed in crime against the powers that be, p. 68-9).
Part 2: Punishment
i. Generalized punishment
Since the industrial revolution gave rise to new common wealth and therefore new material crime, judicial/penal reform shifted the object to material and the scale to punishment that matches the crime. The goal was to reach a target that is subtle yet widespread (p. 89). Thus eventuated "the political project of rooting out illegalities, generalizing the punitive function and delimiting the power to punish," (p. 101).
ii. The gentle way in punishment
Reform progresses with appropriate penalties to prevent, punish crime, and thus control the body of society: reduce attractiveness of crime, increase fear of penalty, modulate punishment, and above all make punishment seem natural and in one's own interest, (p. 104-110). Control of behavior results from particular knowledge of individuals, (p. 125). The power to punish still exudes from: 1. super-power (like the monarchies) but extends to 2. society as a whole conforming individuals, and 3. keeping individuals in line (p. 130-131). These three develop into three technologies of power.
Part 3: Discipline
i. Docile bodies:
The birth of the individual is the moment of subjugation for discipline, as a soldier or citizen of the regime. Obedience and usefulness go hand-in-hand, (p. 138).
a. The art of distributions
Disciplined individuals are distributed in time and space, (p. 142). This extends to education where students are arranged and controlled in time and space according to their usefulness to the regime, (p. 147).
b. The control of activity
The time-table or schedule controls activity, (p. 149). Students are assessed, classified and assigned.
c. The organization of geneses
Capitalize on the time of individuals, mechanically adding up and arranging them, in sequential steps for training (p. 159).
d. The composition of forces
A precise system of command is required to control the masses of individuals (p. 166). Four types of individuals emerge: cellular (spatially distributed), organic (activities coded), genetic (timely), combinatory (composition of forces), (p. 167).
ii. The means of correct training
Disciplinary power trains, (p. 170).
a. Hierarchical observation
Architecture is designed to provide hierarchical view of all in subjection constantly (p. 173).
b. Normalizing judgment
Punishment and Reward are both used to control human behavior, all under the auspices of bringing every individual into or under the power of the Norm (p. 184).
c. The examination
School, with successions of examinations, is uninterrupted exercise of power (p. 186-187). Furthermore, the examination is documentation of the individual (p. 189) and creates each individual into a case.
iii. Panopticism
Modern society seems to limit extreme exercise of power however, in reality, universal panopticism exerts a "machinery that is both immense and minute," (p. 223) supporting, reinforcing, producing a hierarchy of Power symbolically suspended by Law. Law represents the regime in power, which in the case of democracy is defined as of the people, by the people, and for the people. The "experts in normality" (p. 228), in administration, function as judge (from the penal system) in industry, education, government, and social organization.
a. Complete and austere institutions
The prison as an institution is always in the process of reform and certain codes prevail throughout: isolation or deprivation of social engagement, (p. 236); deprivation of imagination or reflection, (p. 239); deprivation of self-determination or complete knowledge and control of the "reformation" of the individual, (p. 244).
b. Illegalities and delinquency
A technology or science - penitentiary science - develops from the growth industry of the penal system (p. 257). However, the system cannot help but produce fraternity among offenders and thus profligates delinquency (p. 266). Reform measures, historically, simply repeat the past - mistakes (p.270).
c. The carceral
The penitentiary saint illumines the coercive technologies of behavior embedded in the prison, in education, industry, government, religion (1852 in Mettray, p. 293). The prison is transformed from "punitive procedure to a penitentiary technique, (p. 298). In the system is a new form of law: "a mixture of legality and nature, prescription and constitution, the norm, (p.304).
Foucault ends in concluding that he has laid a historical foundation, a background, to "various studies of the power of normalization and the formation of knowledge in modern society," (p. 308).
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