Week 8 - Illegalities & Delinquency ch. + Carceral ch.

The group began with a brief outline of the chapters.  Then we turned, as per usual, to a few orienting questions from the group:

1. Relationship between emergence, transition, and moment (pp. 257, 264, 283, 296).
What marks the duration of a moment for Foucault?
How does the temporality of a moment relate to his historical work of genealogy?

2. "In short, penality does not simply check illegalities... It differentiates them... It provides them with economy."  (page 272)  What is the sense of economy here?  Circulation?  Arrangement?  Multiplicity?

3. Discussion of transformation of delinquency into discourse (284).  What is the notion of discourse here?  What work is that doing?

4. Foucault describes imprisonment as a "technical project" and involves a "technical mutation" (257).  One question here is: What is Foucault's conception of the technical?  A second: What is informing this conception? (Was Foucault reading Simondon? Why don't I already know the answer to this?) Or who else...?)  A third concerns: how does Foucault's category of technics inflects his categories of temporality?

5. Mechanisms (302), technique (303), technology (???).  How are these functioning for Foucault?

6. How do we see Foucault operating in contemporary milieu?
 - The spectacle of torture (262).  Is this preserved today?  Are there contemporary festivals?
 - With respect to viral videos of, e.g., police brutality, is this a counter-surveillance?  What does it mean in terms of surveillance? Is it resistance?

7.Claims about necessity and 'must' on the last page (308).  What's going on here?


Discussion

We focused on discussing relation between "success" and "telescoping" as two temporal notions (or perhaps historiographical analytics, & perhaps also as two modalities of 'transition'?).

Transition - Txy

Succession - Judgment of the summation of a series (x, not-x, y, ....)

Telescoping - [picture to follow]

Week 7 - Complete and Austere Institutions

Week 7

Complete and Austere Institutions

Group Generated Chapter Outline:

• Self-evident deprivations of liberty and transformation of individual (double foundation) (232-233)
• Prison as part of an active field  (235)
• Prison as omni-disciplinary, “exhaustive”
• Prison to Penitentiary (235-248)
• Birth of the delinquent (248-255)
• Twins: penitentiary technique and delinquent (255)

Group Questions:

• Why is the reality of delinquency non-corporal (255)?
• What’s the relationship between the non-corporeal reality of delinquency and the body of knowledge made possible by this new procedure?
• Difference between how MF and Marx understand political economy?
• What’s the role of reform in the transition from the prison to the penitentiary?
• Can we elaborate on the relationship between viewing the prison as a field, site,  institution?
• What does MF mean by “technological ensemble,” and how is that different from an apparatus (255)?
• Can the distinctions made on 231 be mapped onto MF’s essay on the history of origins verse history of emergence?
• How to take/read the shift from in context on page 237-8?

Group Thoughts/Comments/Responses:

• Understanding reform
• What do we mean by analytic in this context? The lens, methodology, through which we look at a field of study.
• Reform as a way of tracing transitions/how MF traces movement in the archive. A retelling of reform?
• What type of thing is MF trying to see? If he wants to see an active field (an active technological ensemble), then one would have to look at the pressures of initiations. The prison and reform movements seem to go hand in hand (mutually transformative)
• gets to his power/knowledge - the way you’re looking changes what you are looking at
• 235 “the theory of the prisons…” Clear positioning of the theoretical components
• theory sets up not expectations, already suggesting the next move in historical development
• This chapter has a lot of movement (historical and field of activity) - the reform does a lot of the work
• 264, prison and reform as a package verse prison as an inert thing. “In a very strange way….”  
• When the model is active field, how do we know we are accounting for variations, since he treats reform as part of the field of prison
• Reform as not contained exclusively within the prison but as just one of the forces as constituted with the prison
• Recognition of the difficulty of drawing this distinction and how can be procede
• Analytic rather and Metaphysic
• Does the metaphysic verse methodological distinction really work?
• Is MF bracketing the question of morality, and what are the consequences? Normative is a better term. Good reform/Bad reform
• Does his analytic alight the possibility of a normative? His analytic makes it difficult for us to think we have access to normative distinction; the analytic as designed to block that possibility (could backfire)
• The non-corporeal reality (255); the french translation “in corporal”

Week 6: Panopticism

Questions:

1. Page 200 – Foucault gives three functions to the dungeon and argues that Bentham only uses one – enclosure, but isn't there a way to read Foucault's take on Bentham and argue that Bentham is actually using all three functions of the dungeon in his formulation of panopticism?

The three functions are to enclose, to deprive of light, and to hide. Bentham's conception just encloses and drops the other two. On 201, he discusses how there is a hiding and a deprivation of light. Rather than a systemic change and functional inversion, perhaps Bentham's discussion represents more a systemic inversion and functional change. Are the guardians subject to a kind of enclosure? Is Foucault conducting an argument against the see/seeable dyad? What are the stakes? The touching touch would be a phenomenological example that is expressive of a certain type of ontology that goes beyond the perceptive?

2. What is the social for Foucault and how does it function in Foucault's genealogy? Is the social operating as part of the analytic or the object of the analytic? (209, 212, 214-215) What is the distinction between society and population?

The social exists in a strange vacuum (or empty material) for Foucault as what is produced through power or the material through which power moves. Is the social operating as a kind of analytic (a particular conceptualization of the social such that he is applying it to the archives) or whether the social is what emerges from the archive or both? Are society and the social different?

The social could be a set of relationships that makes power possible or the social is what results from relations of power? But Power can also produce a particular kind of society, in this case disciplinary society, so a certain kind of society is the product of a certain modality of power. Is the distinction between disciplinary society as its produced or discipline produces a certain kind of society? Sometimes, the social seems like the material setting through which power moves producing a kind certain kind of society. What's the status of the social? Is it an empty signifier? What's the status of old form of power vis-a-vie the new form of power? As the social shifts, this shift becomes constitutive of of a new form of disciplinary society. Are human multiplicities the social? Is this the metaphysical Foucault? When the problem of power becomes a transcendental one and ceases to be historical, is this a problem or metaphysical move? The distinction doesn't need have to be transcendental or historically specific.

Is there another option where society is historically produced? Why is society be produced rather than disciplinary culture? Where do we want to stop asking ourselves about how things get produced? Power as a relational concept provides a repetitive architecture for his argument that is similar to the social, perhaps. But what is the concern here? Is there a causal relation between disciplinary power and the social? How are society, power, and history correlated? Is society synonymous with a system power? The ordering of human multiplicities is interesting as a universal is because it is anthropologically capacious. The concept of society is a particular creation of a particular socio-historical time. Ordering of human multiplicity is a problem that is solved a number of ways. Power doesn't produce the problem of human multiplicities, this problem is given. Universal not because of generality, but because of repetition. Would we be comfortable with the idea that other ways of organizing groups of people still had to organize and this organization is a problem that can be solved in a lot of different ways. It is not always solved by the production of something called the social – the problem persists. This an abstraction. Power is the conduct of conduct – is this an ordering of human multiplicities? He seems to not sufficiently accounting for the presence of something called the social in his analytical apparatus – why not conduct or culture or class relations? Is trying to account for society? No. Power is the assurance of the ordering.

3. 202 – Is sovereign power 'real' for Foucault ? What is Latour's take?

For Latour, the complicity of others is inherent in power – along this line, can sovereign power exist for Foucault? Can power be wielded for Foucault? Does this connect to the surface/depth distinction? It might be that Foucault would accept that sovereign power is relational or perhaps Foucault just didn't dig into sovereign power with the same attention that he did disciplinary power.

In the panopticon, you don't need depth. Sovereign power acts on the depth of bodies. Disciplinary power acts on the surface of certain encounters. Sovereign power (constraining) has passed to disciplinary power (surface). In disciplinary power, the moment of contact is ephemeral between the examiner and examined. Disciplinary power is non-corporal and continuous, while sovereign power is a discontinuous application of power – a spectacle.

Latour isn't interested in describing historical shifts of power, or even in describing history, but it seems he is more interested tiny shift or transitions of things (which isn't to say they are nonhistorical), or modalities of power. There is a distinction between Latour the social scientist and Foucault the historian. What Foucault does for history, Latour does for history?

4. 215 - How do we parse the distinction between discipline as an apparatus, modality of power, or institution? How do these map to 'spaces'/domains of discipline?

How do disciplines interact with one another? He seems to both want to say that these disciplinary mechanisms or techniques are internal to the institution but also some how escape and become deinstitutionalize? How does the swarm work?

How is the panoptical gaze, once it is internalized, different then the the internalization of the religious gaze internalized? Rather than transcendental identity based on the threat/hope of the afterlife, the disciplinary society offers reward and conditioning as an aspirational goal. You don't have to be a believer in disciplinary society. So there is a psychological difference, there is no intentionality – disciplined at a level below conscious intentionality. We would need to historicize this claim. Is an ominiscient god the disciplinification (spelling?) of religion? Is Santa Clause an icon of the disciplinary society? How do we think through disciplinary relations psychologically?

Other Questions:

1. Clarification (205) – What does Foucault mean when he says discipline is a mechanism power reduced to its ideal form?

2. What are the methodological implications of types of archival documents Foucault uses, such as 'edicts' or 'proposals?' ? What if he used different 'documents' such as lived experience?

3. Can we parse these distinctions: mixture versus purity (206), surface versus depth (216-217), horizontal conjunctions (219) and verticality

4. Is there a causal importance to the panopticon?   

Week 5 The Means of Correct Training

Questions:

1.    the system of oppression specifically through the gaze

2.    page 181  links between indulgences, the good/bad scale, truth, and individual

3.    difference between the circle and the pyramid and the significance of the head of the pyramid

4.    177 what kind of a whole is constituted by the apparatus of disciplinary power and how do we figure this whole if we are to try to map out the whole, what would that look like

5.    191

6.    183 distinction between penality of norm and penality of law.  How is F. conceptualizing norm?  What must a norm be for law not to fall under it as a species? What is Foucault’s concept of norm?

7.    185 “it is not simple at level of consciousness….” Ideology of human sciences.  Circulations of knowledge and power and the method.

8.    What he means by “epistemological thaw?”

9.    Relationship between disciplinary power and biopower?

●     Difference between law and norm page 184 “how power of norm functions…”

○     F. using word norm differently than how we use it in contemporary philosophy.  using it to talk about the middle point of an average

○     the norm is normal

○     a way that discipline functions because you want to be normal

●     treatment of law 183 distinction between belief in natural law developed by norms and changed by practice

○     imposition of human sciences

●     the gaze as a normalizing power

○     gender neutral bathrooms

○     freak shows, the pleasure in looking

○     the mean defining the outliers 184

○     normalizing gaze - examination

■     examination in school differs from doctor examining

■     normalizing relation, the gaze of the teacher/doctor established relation with other person who comes under the scrutiny

○     Bentham - legal positivism (opposite of natural law - attempt to derive true laws by divine or scientific inquiry)

○     not always good to be norm (ex. school, want an A+, not average grade)

■     how would we specify this difference?

●     the law the norm fills the  field because no matter where you are, you show up on the curve.  the law does not. you always stand out when you break the law

●     we think of statistics as turning you into a number and taking away your individuality

●     normalizing, everyone gets individuated in a different way

●     192-194 explains positive definition of power and notion of individualization

●     exhaust data comes out of the relationship between the examiner and examinee that comes back into crafting the norm.

○     intentionality in data collection?

○     bottom 190 opens up two correlative

○     difference in degree or difference in kind?

○     anachronism?  inscriptions on files, no mention of information or data at this time.  those concepts are so powerful today but not available during his time. Techniques precede data.

○     technology of writing accompanies examination. documents, files, have historicity prior to our own concept of these technologies in modern times

●     dynamic relationship between algorithm and individual. produce population management strategies that feeds back into the individual

○     process of individualization

○     not telling story of how norms change or what kind of individuals this process makes

■     cant think of norms as mathematical number, it is a whole process that circulates through 185 on technology

■     is he telling story of how normalization of political investment

●     epistemological thaw 185

○     what is the valence of the term knowledge in this passage

○     does it make it possible to know things we didn’t know before or does it make it possible to have a whole other category of knowledge that we didn’t have before?

■     doctor as technician versus doctor as healer

○     organization - epistemological thought in medicine

■     different in kind and in degree.  difference in categorization

○     in French (un blocking, unfreezing de-blocking)

○     circulates knowledge differently

○     thaw - remove dogmatic, allow for change

○     discipline maintains power by arranging objects 187

●     two kinds of power: power to restrict or power to discipline but also positive power

○     is this idea in discipline and punish?  it is present in Foucault’s other works

○     Spinoza has similar distinction

○     Foucault distinguishes two modes of knowledge

■     depth power over surface powers

○     not in terms of positive or negative power

■     what increases/decreases the capacity of the body

○     power produces reality

○     discipline, can we describe it in negative terms?

■     no, discipline is productive

■     sovereign power can be productive

■     disciplinary power doesn’t operate reductively

■     deduction and repression are terms he comes back to

■     we shouldn’t always see power as repressive

●     production include negative repressing power, it produces knowledge, the multiplicity of it could include deduction

●     ontological claim?

●     power is productive and producing the individual, but not in a mysterious ontological sense, but is productive of one kind of object, which produces files, which produces other individuals. We tend to think individuals are more interesting than files, things with dignity

○     humble technicians with instruments and devices

●     is there a distinction between individuals and subjects

○     what power means, way in which certain actions modify others. power exists only when it is put into actions. power does not function or consent in itself. transference of power to a few. relationship of power can be result of prior or permanent consent. (The Subject in Power)

○     subject connotes agency whereas individual can be numerical distinction

●     importance of writing on 192

○     heroization. objectification and subjection

○     subjection - subjectiviation - connotation with subjection in English, but subjectiviation is also the process of making a subject. a double process of making a subject that is bound to itself or subjected to who it is. a life as being repressed.  productive of the subject.

○     subject is bound to the limits of its own constitution

●     the whole is absolutely indiscreet and discreet p 177

○     176 insidious extension by means of surveillance disciplinary power…

○     mechanism, integrated system, network of relations

○     177 functions like a piece of machinery

○     apparatus as a whole, indiscrete and discrete functionality

■     how does is form a whole and what kind of whole is it?

■     the mean as discrete and indiscrete

■     the power in the school, shift to disciplinary forms of power

■     the whole in terms of production of subjecthood, power doesn’t work just when boss is on the floor, but norms are established that all abide by

■     the whole as whatever institution he is discussing

■     174 pyramid system as uninterrupted network - the whole

■     rules become apart of ones own subjecthood

■     discrete means it is silent

■     a localized whole

■     the worry over the constitution of the limits over the boundary of the whole. disciplinary power is everywhere phenomenon

■     analysis through modality of economics

●     surveillance as economic operator

○     same techniques at work, makes seamless movement into economics

"The Subject and Power"

JSTOR Link here.

Docile Bodies Session 4; 10/22/15

10/22/2015: Critical Genealogies Meeting Notes

Questions:

1. What constitutes the convergence of a multiplicity of minor processes? p. 138

2. How does Foucault’s methodology interrupt the genetic time of disciplinary power? P. 160

3. p. 139 “Discipline is a political anatomy of detail.” – IS there a connection btw F’s method and

the affective disposition which he brings to it? Reciprocity

4. p. 160 Disciplinary methods: dynamism, specific chunks of time established; how much consistency and how much dynamism?

5. p. 152 “time penetrates the body and with it all the meticulous controls of power” – How does this relate to previous regime, is this a new form of how torture operated on the body in the old regime?

6. p. 156 Can we understand disciplinary power as a link that illuminates nature and the natural imaginary -à biopower à cellular analytic, how is nature being mobilized? NATURE

7. p. 169 parenthetical – Making a link between military and rise of bourgeoisie? Or not.

8. Composition -à at two levels,  bodies /// and forces

----

With regard to question 8, use of the word machine……

……..

Distribution ----

Composition of forces ---- meta-, second order, relation between parts and wholes

What would produce a necessity to reconfigure the machine?

162. economic demand, need for maximum efficiency.

How would a specific economic need …. Enter into the machine.

Mutate the machine, vs what makes it run.

What would make it mutate? ---- and what is the relationship btw the spatial disciplining and the temporal?

The organic as a component of the ‘machine’  or mechanization –

Organic/mechanization relationship, is one a limit on the other?…..

What is his sense of ‘Organic’? p. 167

Is ‘organic’ the same as ‘natural body’? – reciprocity of bodies – p. 164

Mechanical/machinic -à the natural bodies

Concepts/ vs. analytical categories à ‘power’ would be an analytical category