Discipline And Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote On the Genealogy of Morals, a book that examined the historical evolution of morality. In this work, Nietzsche delegitimized the present by separating it from a cause-and-effect relationship with the past. His argument in On the Genealogy of Morals foreshadowed later schools of thought on moral relativity. This idea theorizes that there is no such concept as good or bad; all understandings of morality are based upon the social norms of a culture. When Michel Foucault first read Nietzsche’s work, he felt liberated from the prevailing French philosophy. Rather than viewing history through a collection of major events, each dependent on the one before it, both Nietzsche and Foucault were interested in smaller stories—those whose lives operated outside a grand narrative. Foucault was inspired to use an approach to studying history that would emphasize discontinuities and genealogies rather than connections.

When the Enlightenment brought the Age of Reason, it excluded certain groups of people from the conversation. Foucault was interested in those who lived outside of social norms; he was fascinated with the experiences of “the other.” In his first book, Madness and Civilization, Foucault argued that people with mental illness and disabilities lived decidedly better lives prior to the 18th century, when they were put into institutions and tucked away from public life. A societal shift toward humanitarianism and a capitalistic disdain for unemployment led to a new era of confinement. The goal of these institutions was to develop a social existence of moral and behavioral uniformity by imprisoning individuals and calling it a kindness. Foucault considered this a great loss to society; he believed that outliers had important and unique wisdom to offer their communities.

Foucault’s thoughts about psychiatric institutions led him to consider other systems of control. His masterpiece, Discipline and Punish, explored the evolution of punishment as a form of public spectacle to the hidden confinement of prisoners in the modern penal system. Just like society was compelled to conceal people with mental illness, prisoners and the realities of punishment were hidden from public view. Prison had its roots in reform, but society soon realized that this was not happening. The purpose of prison then became to maintain the need for control; police maintained order through surveillance and the fear of punishment. Prisons became inevitable, self-feeding metaphors for power. Foucault was interested in the role of power in Western society. He rejected the view of power outlined by Karl Marx that suggested that the wealthy utilized power to control the masses; instead, Foucault saw power as everywhere, an innate part of being human that permeated all aspects of society.

His interest in power led him to write The History of Sexuality. In this work, Foucault suggested that sexuality is a positive outcome of power. He saw sex and sexuality as contemporary conditions of humanity, suggesting that sexuality did not really form until the 18th century. Freud’s work with psychoanalysis explored this newfound sexual nature. Foucault compared Freud’s emphasis on the ego, repression, and desire to a widespread societal shift focused on the soul rather than the body. Priests became as concerned with intention as action. Police searched for motives in crimes rather than addressing the crime alone. Punishment became psychological instead of torturous. As society became more cerebral, systems of power did too.

Foucault saw power as strategic. Its work was to produce rather than to oppress. In prison systems and other institutions, power was wielded to maintain a social order that centered on wealth and capital. Foucault also saw power and knowledge as intrinsically linked. Truth changes over time; it is relative. He noted in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences that different societies at different points in history have unique versions of the truth and ways of thinking about knowledge. Foucault’s theories across his career were marked by this idea, that there is no such thing as overarching truth or concrete social norms. Power pervades and manifests in ways that are based upon a society’s sensibilities during a specific frame of time. By abandoning notions of right and wrong, Foucault was able to examine systems of power and their potential products with a more transparent and unbiased lens.