> On Tue, March 31, 2009 3:38 pm, Philip Pilkington wrote:
>
> > 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.)
I'm actually not being a smartass when I say this, but: did you read what I wrote? This has nothing to do with translation issues or anything else. My claim is that these institutions which are supposed to generate the norms, value judgements etc. are totally fucked and they no longer function. The prisons, for example, nowadays, with their serious overcrowding seem to resemble some sort of basic social segregation where troubled elements can be fenced in from society. There is very little in the way of aspiring to inculcate a regime of norms into the prisoner.
The reason I used the prison example was because it was the example Foucault used in his most famous work. But I could have used many others: school systems which no longer socialise children properly, which are called to this task because the family unit - another Foucault favourite - is no longer socialising children properly either, financial institutions with no regulation, psychiatric institutions which force those with major mental illness back onto the street. These are all (barring the financial institutions) the so-called repressive institutions Foucault attacked. And this, I would argue, shows dysfunctioning institutions which no longer instill norms and instead produce an increased proclivity toward social violence (in the broad sense of the term). To put it in standard psychological terms: a disintegration in social cohesion has led to a highly anomic state. And I believe Foucault's theories promoted this tendency...
>
>
> 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
>
He definitely is talking about social norms. In all of his works he talks about social norms.
Denis Claxton wrote:
Whoa. You're reading it waaaaay wrong.
4118 is the sum of 3.624 property crime and 494 violent crime.
So, as a matter of interest what are the comparisons between 1960 and now when its read properly?