Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison () is a 1975 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France. Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists. He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Prison is used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks.

Summary

The main ideas of Discipline and Punish can be grouped according to its four parts: torture, punishment, discipline, and prison.

He believes that the question of the nature of these changes is best asked by assuming that they were not used to create a more humanitarian penal system, nor to more exactly punish or rehabilitate, but as part of a continuing trajectory of subjection. Foucault wants to tie scientific knowledge and technological development to the development of the prison to prove this point. He defines a "micro-physics" of power, which is constituted by a power that is strategic and tactical rather than acquired, preserved or possessed. He explains that power and knowledge imply one another, as opposed to the common belief that knowledge exists independently of power relations (knowledge is always contextualized in a framework which makes it intelligible, so the humanizing discourse of psychiatry is an expression of the tactics of oppression). That is, the ground of the game of power is not won by "liberation", because liberation already exists as a facet of subjection. "The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself."

Reception

The publication of the book was "widely noted in major French cultural venues" of the time such as Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Monde. After its publication in English in 1977 it was "widely reviewed in non-academic venues", however scholarly reviews were "far less common".

Law Professor David Garland wrote an explication and critique of Discipline and Punish. Towards the end, he sums up the main critiques that have been made. He states, "the major critical theme which emerges, and is independently made by many different critics, concerns Foucault's overestimation of the political dimension. Discipline and Punish consistently proposes an explanation in terms of power—sometimes in the absence of any supporting evidence—where other historians would see a need for other factors and considerations to be brought into account."

Another criticism leveled against Foucault's approach is that he often studies the discourse of "prisons" rather than their concrete practice; this is taken up by Fred Alford: <blockquote>"Foucault has mistaken the idea of prison, as reflected in the discourse of criminologists, for its practice. More precisely put, Foucault presents the utopian ideals of eighteenth-century prison reformers, most of which were never realized, as though they were the actual reforms of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One can see this even in the pictures in Discipline and Punish, many of which are drawings for ideal prisons that were never built. One photograph is of the panopticon prison buildings at Stateville, but it is evidently an old photograph, one in which no inmates are evident. Nor are the blankets and cardboard that now enclose the cells."</blockquote>

See also

  • Discourse, a Foucauldian concept developed in Discipline and Punish, among other works.
  • Dispositif
  • Drill commands
  • Foucauldian discourse analysis
  • Governmentality
  • The History of Sexuality

References

Further reading

  • Notes on the book at Dave Harris & Colleagues
  • Comments on translation
  • Precursory information on Mettray Prison
  • Notes on Foucault works (including Discipline and Punish) from University of Minnesota Dept of Communication Studies
  • Extensive summary and notes on Discipline and Punish for students of Foucault
  • Excerpt from Discipline and Punish