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