> >There is nothing in Discipline and Punish, for
> example, once we
> >leave out the French philosophy, w hich isn't that
> much of it, that
> >Marxists and historical materialists should not
> hestitate to adopt
> >if it had adequate empirical support.
> >
> >--jks
>
> What political direction, if any, does _Discipline
> and Punish_
> suggest, though? Foucault ably makes an implicit
> argument that the
> result of Benthamite reforms (emphasis on the
> rehabilitation of the
> soul, etc.) may be an even more effective instrument
> of social
> control than spectacular torture of the body
> conducted in the name of
> pre-modern sovereigns, though the advocacy of
> Benthamite reforms was
> cloaked in the mantle of humanitarianism. In the
> USA, however, the
> trend in criminal justice, for the last couple of
> decades, has been
> toward the reversals of the very reforms that were
> objects of
> Foucault's critique: return of capital punishment;
> execution of the
> mentally ill or retarded; trials of juvenile
> offenders as adults;
> reintroduction of chain gangs; and so on (though
> prison overcrowding
> has also led to a counter-trend that calls for
> addiction treatment &
> the like rather than incarceration) -- in short,
> preference for
> punishment rather than rehabilitation (symbolized by
> the execution of
> Karla Fay Tucker).
>
> Yoshie
I'm not sure whether by political direction you mean an explanatory application--is there empirical support for the Foucault of D&P given the trends noted--or a more practical application, which would in any case depend on the former. More than enough adequate empirical support attests that panopticism is still very much of political relevance. Not so much on the spectacular level, perhaps, since "the minute disciplines, the panopticism of every day may well be below the level of emergence of the great apparatuses and the great political struggles" (D&P, p. 223). But more, for example, on the rehabilitation side; on how minute, and not minute discplines act as "a set of physico-political techniques" on, say, a (disenfranchised, for what it's worth) convicted felon going for a job interview, or the example of the "Stigma" focus group, or, in the future perhaps, someone seeking addiction treatment from a faith-based organization. On the disciplines as an "infra-law," extending "the general forms defined by law to the infinitesimal level of individual lives; or [as] they appear as methods of training that enable individuals to become integrated into . . . general demands" (p. 222). In this way, Foucault offers a political direction for seeing how those with certain legal, medical, or economic case histories are useful as a part of the "surplus population," or how they are, in their beleagured state, re-appropriated into a "mainstream." Granted the disciplining and transition are not necessarily seamless.
One political direction, then, for a materialist, would be a consideration of how englightening _Discipline and Punish_ is in regards to the maintenance of surplus population. The empirical support would come from the lives and "case histories" of those that make up the surplus population, and the gaps between these lives and the institutions they move in and out of. Yes? No?
pg. 301:
The carceral network does not cast the unassimilable into a confused hell; there is no outside. It takes back with one hand what it seems to exclude with the other. It saves everything, including what it punishes. It is unwilling to waste even what it has decided to disqualify.
end quote.
(Much of it comes down to gauging the balance and particular uses between punishment and rehabilitation.)
Alec
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