Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Foucault: Sovereign and Disciplinary Power

In this paper, I first explain the difference between sovereign and discipline power. I will then examine how disciplinary power is exercised in the Silicon Valley Children's Shelter.
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  1. ChristineMarch 11, 2009 at 4:16 PM

    Michel Foucault: Sovereign and Disciplinary Power

    Foucault characterizes two aspects of power, sovereign and disciplinary, that demonstrate how power is a crucial force in society. These two types of power exemplify forms of punishment that have changed overtime. Sovereign power operates through grotesque, painful, public, organized, and passionate brutality carried out by an executioner in order to instill fear among individuals (1-6). By doing so, punishment acts on the body exercising power through repression. The visibility of this spectacle displays how power conveys horror. The fear produced by the punishment keeps individuals from challenging the king’s authority. In sovereign power, ascending individualism calls for people to gaze up to the individual of sovereign power. With the progress of human nature, Foucault then explains how punishment moves away from punishing the body to the more interior part of society of individualization. Disciplinary power thus becomes the new regime of power.
    Moreover, disciplinary power operates within a privatized, passive, dispassionate, and a calculated form of punishment. Disciplinary power acts on the soul in order to discipline the body (24). It takes a restitutive approach by functioning to correct, restore, and rehabilitate the individual (10). The focus is therefore on the individuality of the subordinate by descending individualism. Regulating all institutions in society is provided by surveillance. Whether it is the student in the classroom or the patient in the hospital, individuals are constantly observed. There are three necessary conditions of disciplinary power; hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and examination. People are observed to ensure norms, to evaluate failure to perform according a norm, and to punish in order to correct them (183). Examinations are used to assess and embody a knowledge which can ultimately exercise power over individuals (187).
    The Silicon Valley Children’s Shelter exercises disciplinary power throughout the institution. The architectural structure of the shelter facilitates hierarchical observation within its spatial design. Enclosed in the gates of the shelter are several offices, cottages, a cafeteria, and a school. The cottages on the left side consist of the misbehaving children, whereas on the right are the behaving children, and close to the office are the cottages for babies. The building is shaped in a way that if one were to stand in the middle of the shelter, it is possible to view the entire vicinity. There is only one entrance and one exit door at the front of a locked office which the children are not allowed to cross. Cameras are present in almost every corner of the shelter, and the children are always observed. The surveillance upholds a power to keep the children under control and disciplined. As a former foster youth who lived at the Shelter, I often felt the presence of a faceless gaze. Many children possessed similar feelings that we were constantly being watched inside the cottages because of the thought of the numerous cameras outside. The idea of being watched was able to induce a type of fear that continues to regulate the shelter.
    Since shelter school is temporary for some children, order is maintained in a specific way. When a student misbehaves or does not perform well, the teacher speaks to the child privately and refers them to counseling if necessary. Children who forget their homework are punished by having to do extra work on their own time. The purpose of the punishment is to proactively rehabilitate the child, to correct, and enhance their individualization. The children also act on certain norms, for example, to behave in a way that will help them get out of the shelter. The children are placed accordingly and organized in a specific manner, misbehaved children are confined to a separate cottage, they receive their meals last, and they have fewer privileges than the behaved children. The children are examined by the individuals at the shelter and by social workers, therefore their behavior, good or bad, is reported in an actual case. This documentation contains both knowledge and power that can be used for or against the child.

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  2. Justin TaMarch 15, 2009 at 5:01 PM

    Great paper. Disciplinary power is clearly being exercised in your institution based on the architectural design of the facility. The children in this shelter school are constantly being surveillance. Do you think that the panopticon is relevant in your institution? Also, what are some ways in which these kids are being normalized? How old are these children?

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  3. MabelMarch 15, 2009 at 8:48 PM

    This is very interesting. The shelter seems to run very similar to a prison. They isolate those whose behavior does not conform to the norms and punish them in an attempt to rehabilitate them. We have seen that prisons have not been proven to be the perfect panopticon, are there any limitations in your institution?

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