> some time, but actually seeing it in a prison was cream on the cake. The
> prison system here was nothing like the one which Foucault described and
> made his model for the "disciplining" of society.
But isn't that *exactly* what Foucault described? A regime of norms, regulations, pleasures and punishments, which creates its own juridical norms, values, and micro-conflicts? One of the translation issues with Foucault is that he's talking about the inherent violence of civil society, i.e. how immanently uncivil it really is, a very Marxist insight, but his target is the French state, which has its own specific ideology of "the civilizing mission". (Just ask Algeria or Vietnam how that one worked out.)
In other words, when Foucault talks about power, he's not really talking about personal morality or ethical principles, but about the state as one of the key agencies of capitalist accumulation.
-- DRR