In "Docile Bodies", Michel Foucault shows how the details explored by disciplines subjugate the human body and thus,provides easier power for whoever wants to take it. In Foucault's words, disciplines create a relation of docility-utility, thus facilitating the maintainance of order by whomever holds the power. He also explains how the disciplinary institutions enables the convergence of information or knowledge of details of the masses up to the highest entity of a hierarchy: the use of a network of "supervisors, perpetually supervised". Discipline is also about normalizing judgment and imposing homogeneity: establishing a system of punishment, a standardized education system. The system is not yet completed without Examination, which is a much more subtle exercise of power because it is invisible. It could be understood as systems of statistics analyzed by the one(s) in power, in which individuals are objectified and documented, case by case. Notice the word statistics wasn't used by Foucault as it is more appropriate if we relate his ideas to our historical and technological situation. Gilles Deleuze, in "Postscript on the Societies of Control", does so fitting our modern society and capitalism in the model of Michel Foucault.
It is interesting to read the cycle between Foucault's description of the "school" and the "disciplinary" apparatuses. Through schooling, the disciplinary power is able to educate its subjects, and in turn educate itself. Does this mean that Foucault's beliefs are that knowledge is power, and is it also safe to say that Deleuze disagrees, stating that money is in fact power? After speculation of both texts, it seems that what Foucault describes is a modern society trying to govern the masses, while Deleuze speaks of a postmodern one; however it is one that has replaced the search for knowledge as power with attaining money as power: power of the corporation. Instead of searching for the "absolute truth" through education, we now search for money through training. Reformity is out. But is it really? Is it so different now than it was before World War II, or is Deleuze saying that it is perhaps only different because we are more aware of being watched? It could be argued that we are just as aware as we were before World War II, only now we have more liberty to discuss it. However, the texts do fall into Marx's theory of the fetishism of commodity even though the commodities may have changed slightly (or have they?).
Has our view of money really changed postmodern sociey, or has it been this way all along? Has the drive for obtaining money really liberated us into making our lifestyle and career choices, or has it actually limited us even further?
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