Power/Knowledge and Discipline
Foucault's genealogy of the modern soul: how power and knowledge produce each other, and how disciplinary techniques make bodies docile and selves self-monitoring.
Definition
Power/knowledge names Foucault's thesis that the exercise of power produces fields of knowledge and that knowledge in turn enables power; disciplinary power is the modern, productive form of power that, through surveillance, training, and normalisation, fashions docile and useful bodies.
Scope
This topic covers Foucault's genealogy of power, focusing on the inseparability of power and knowledge, the rise of disciplinary power, and the figure of the panopticon as a model of surveillance. It does not cover biopolitics and governmentality, which are treated separately.
Core questions
- Why are power and knowledge inseparable?
- How does disciplinary power differ from sovereign, punitive power?
- What does the panopticon reveal about modern surveillance?
Key theories
- Disciplinary power and panopticism
- Foucault traced a shift from spectacular punishment to disciplinary techniques of surveillance and normalisation, with Bentham's panopticon as the model of a self-policing subject.
- Power/knowledge
- Foucault argued that power and knowledge directly imply one another, so that regimes of truth are bound up with the operations of power.
History
In the 1970s Foucault turned from archaeology to genealogy, tracing how modern institutions such as the prison, clinic, and school developed disciplinary techniques that produce knowable, manageable subjects. Discipline and Punish (1975) and the interviews collected as Power/Knowledge set out a productive conception of power that has been highly influential across cultural theory.
Debates
- Surveillance society versus overstated determinism
- Foucault's panoptic model illuminates modern surveillance but is criticised for sometimes implying a near-total disciplinary grip that underestimates resistance and agency.
Key figures
- Michel Foucault
Related topics
Seminal works
- foucault1977
- foucault1980
- foucault1973
Frequently asked questions
- What is the panopticon?
- Bentham's design for a prison in which inmates could always be watched from a central tower; Foucault used it as a model for how modern surveillance makes people internalise discipline.