Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Sovereign and Disciplinary Power and Dictatorship

In this essay, I compare sovereign and disciplinary power, and explain how both were present in the tactics used by the 1976-83 Argentinean dictatorial regime.
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2 comments:

  1. pwinickiMarch 11, 2009 at 1:19 PM

    1) When analyzing sovereign power and disciplinary power we find a switch from the collective to the individual. As in Demian’s case, sovereign power, which relies on law, is an effort by the state to reiterate its might and power through public physical torture. The body of one individual becomes the vehicle through which the state instills fear on the collective. While in disciplinary power, punishment as a spectacle is ended, and takes the form of taking rights away (9). Contrary to sovereign power, sentences are not meant to punish but to correct, switching the effects from the collective to the individual. Individualization is the result of this new form of power: individuals are created through the different disciplinary institutions that exist in society, such as school, hospitals, and prisons (descending individualism). This is achieved through the establishment of small penal mechanisms that target the realm of behavior that the legal system cannot regulate. Disciplinary punishment has the function of reducing gaps between behavior and the norm, through training and corrective mechanism (179).
    Additionally, disciplinary power switches its focus from the body to the soul, which it attempts to correct. Nevertheless, body and soul are closely connected: the body is the intermediary to access the soul, thus it is still affected. At the same time, constraining the soul, shapes the “utility and submission” of the body (10, 24). As the sentence seeks to treat and normalize the criminal, technicians, such as the psychiatrists, doctors, and educationists, replace the sovereign power’s executioner (11). In disciplinary power, scientific knowledge and power become entangled as ways to deploy the latter, which in turn further develops the former, e.g., human science establishes norms, that allow one to recognize those who deviate from them, and to prescribe the adequate treatment for the criminal (23).
    Contrastingly to sovereign power, disciplinary power is decentralized throughout society and exercised through strategic positions that function as a “piece of machinery,” this is, power cannot be possess nor be concentrated in the state.

    2) I believe that both forms of power were present in the tactics used by the 1976-83 Argentinean dictatorial regime, though neither of them were applied in their absolute form. State terror tactics, in the form of mass disappearances, were utilized in an effort to eradicate individuals deemed as subversive. Such disappearances embodied elements of both forms of power. Kidnappings often occurred with tremendous public demonstrations of force: cars, trucks, vans and helicopters surrounded the victims’ homes or individuals were captured from the streets in plain daylight (Cerruti 66). One could argue that, similar to the sovereign power’s punishment, these public displays were aimed to create fear among the entire population and to remind them of the power of the state—however, in this instance, the state violated the law.
    Despite the fact that the kidnappings were public, the punishments of individuals were carried out privately. To avoid any brutal spectacles that may have lead to revolt, in a society where anti-establishment movements had emerged, it became increasingly necessary to make punishment invisible. As in disciplinary power, the punishment – tortures and, in many instances, subsequent deaths – was carried out in clandestine detention centers, thus, it became the “most hidden part of the…process.” Nevertheless, the body, not the soul of the prisoner, remained at its main focus (9).
    The state aimed to break society’s sense of community and solidarity through fear and hostile tactics, which led to individualization. This goal was achieved through violence as well as through the police’s “unceasing observation;” cover and uncover agents created “ a permanent account of individuals’ behavior.” Thus, the police was simultaneously repressive and disciplinary, making spaces that were out of reach to other disciplinary institutions, visible (214, 215). These panoptic tactics, where individuals assume that they are under constant observation, created a form of self-surveillance; people were apprehensive of their everyday interactions, such as talking and acting freely, because they feared that their actions would have brought repercussions from the state upon them, “preventing them to come into contact with his [/her] companions” (200). Consequently, there were fewer possibilities for collective action to take place as a result of this individual and/or group isolation.

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  2. UnknownMarch 15, 2009 at 7:51 PM

    I think you have a really interesting take on dictatorship. I typically would think of such a system as one that uses sovereign power, but your justification for the presence of disciplinary makes total sense and frames actions within such a form of government in an entirely different light.

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