Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Talk about the disciplinary society is frequently linked to the idea of a society of total surveillance and adjustment. However, in his seemingly most popular and at the same time highly complex book Discipline and Punish , Foucault (1977) describes the disciplinary society not as a social reality but as a program of disciplining individuals. Thus it was the “dream” of the old authoritarian police to establish a society organized along military lines, functioning like the cogs of a machine. This aspiration did indeed have historical configurations: in the “social disciplining” (Gerhard Oestreich) of an administrative and regulatory organization of society, already being instituted in early modern times, aimed at producing obedient individuals; and in an unprecedented process of rationalization of power, provoking Weber to speak of the “iron cage” of bureaucratic rulership in modern societies. Foucault's intention, however, is not to point out historical continuities and general principles shaping society, like “capitalism,” “modernity,” or “rationalization.” Rather, the disciplinary society is the effect of micro mechanisms of power and has itself to be distinguished from a type of power that donated the name: discipline does not refer to an institution, but designates a technology of power. It is unacquainted with a ruling center as it unfolds beyond the state. It is a mechanism ... log in or subscribe to read full text