POWER/KNOWLEDGE AND GOVERNMENTALITY

Postmodern understanding of social control

MICHEL FOUCAULT

FROM PUNISHMENT TO DISCIPLINE

PANOPTICISM

Using a panopticon to encourage people to regulate their own behaviors.

Panopticon: Technology in which individuals can always be watched, but the people doing the watching cannot be seen

The subject must assume that they are always being watched, even if they are not.

DISCIPLINARY POWER

Corrections/Law Enforcement

Medicine/Psychology

Education (Schools)

Religion

Political Parties

Health and Nutrition

Sexuality

POWER/KNOWLEDGE

We shape our behaviors based on what we know to be right and natural.

How we talk about stuff (Discourse) shapes how we know stuff. Experts shape the discourse

WHAT ARE SOME OTHER FORMS OF PANOPTICISM?

Observation

Bureaucratic

Expertise (Confessional)

Govern

Mentality

Governmentality

Directing the energies and endeavors of others

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Sovereignty:

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Disciplinary:

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Government:

How we understand our own motives and direct our own energies

Means by which “the state” directs the energies and endeavors of its citizens by convincing them to regulate (Regiment) their own actions

POLYMORPHOUS TECHNIQUES OF POWER

• Power is not a Top Down phenomenon
• Power is inherent in the individual
• Society regulates how individual power is exercised
• Individuals are encouraged to regulate their own behaviors in the interests of “the state” (power alignments)
• Individuals who do not “conform” are defined as deviant—subject not to punishment, but to “discipline”
• Criminal--Corrections
• Mentally Ill—Clinics, Mental Hospitals, Drugs

A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas