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”