Foucault starts the discussion by showing the figure of the soldier and explains how behind the heroic appearance lies a docile body being controlled. Power employs discipline to make the body become more obedient while at the same time more useful. This ‘invention’ is not new since discipline can be found in schools, hospitals, and the armies to make order out of chaotic multiplicity. The key technique to discipline training, as demonstrated through history of religion, architecture, and war, is to pay great attention to details while keeping a big view of everything. Next, Foucault states that hierarchical observation is employed to “make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly.” Normalizing judgment used to set a norm, yet at the same time point out individualism by observance of deviance from the aforementioned norm. Examination is the combination of hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment “to qualify, to classify, and to punish.” In ‘Panopticism,' the key idea is that discipline is used as a method to induce order and organization in society while the system of law and punishment is a part of the machinery that distributes power unequally. Gilles Deleuze elaborates on Foucault’s writing that the capitalist society is compared to a factory, with the sum of the whole worth more than each individual member; the organization of production is the most important goal of this type of society.He states that the major institutions of the society of Discipline(prison, hospital, factory, school, family) are going through a generalized crisis. This crisis is caused by the transition of one society to the other. The disciplinary society controls the individuals through generalized sets of rules, hierarchy, judgment and examination. The "controlled" society creates modular conditions. A good example shown in the text was nineteenth-century capitalism which factories concentrated on production and on property. Corporations of modern capitalism no longer concentrates on the production process, but buys the finished products, sell services and buys stocks. The result is that power no longer uses discipline, but corporate control of lifestyle to make man in debt to this power. There is an organization to the distribution of wages.
It is mentioned above that discipline is not an invention of the modern society. If we look at history and everyday life, examples illustrating the use of discipline to maintain order and harmony are numerous. Yet if think critically in today society, it can be observed that the technique has become more meticulous with the power of high technology. Putting aside obvious and conventional cases like discipline in academic and military environments, there are disciplines that are controlling human beings physically and mentally in a very subconscious level, for e.g. the examples in the last reading ‘the culture industry,' in which we can see how submissive and unassertive we can be in the consumption and imitation of art and culture. What’s interesting is why Foucault uses the term ‘the docile bodies’ and not ‘the docile minds’ because as long as one can control the mind, one has total power over the body. Also, this reading has a strong sense of the implications of organization on society. The main goal of capitalism is to produce a nation, similar to a factory, with strongly rigid rules and separations and levels of rank. A future where the corporate model applies to every social institutions. It may well lead to a vision like Gene Roddenberry's Starfleet Command. A future where everything is controlled by a singular entity.
Apparently examination is a large part of the academic lifestyle we, as students, live. Does it, however, enrich our experience in school, or is it counterproductive towards our education? We concluded that there are differences between schooling and education, and that the school system is susceptible to many outside influences.
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