Ashley Maggetti

Assignment: 2

September 3, 2006

Ashmaggetti@yahoo.com

Humanities 6

Quotes and Panopticism

We were given some incredible quotes to respond on and here are my responses to the quotes. “People Know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what they do does.” I think what this quote is saying and in affiliation with Discipline and Punishment, is that people consciously know what their action they are doing but what they do not know is the result and consequence of their actions. People that commit crimes know what they are doing but what they don’t think of or know is how it will affect innocent people in the process or how it will effect themselves and their lives. Which in most results the crimes committed result in jail or even worse the death penalty. The second quote we were given was “Truth is undoubtedly the sort of error that cannot be refuted because it was hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history.” I think this quote can have two significant meanings. One being that truth is much like a credit score, it is easy to build but easier to take away. One lie can lead you into prison or take your credibility away. For example, when you are in a court they ask you to raise your right hand and swear to tell the truth, well what if you said ‘No’ how would they react? Even if someone is lying they are undoubtedly going to say that they ‘swear to tell the truth’. Another meaning I think this quote gives is that through time truth has become a joke. Newspapers used to be our source of legitimate information but as times changed we have the Internet, magazines, television and various other sources clouding our
Vision of the truth. We don’t know what to believe. So people become immune to these lies and start lying more and more. Our society doesn’t know the meaning of truth anymore. The third quote we were given was, “I think that it can never be inherent in the structure of things to guarantee the exercise of freedom. The guarantee of freedom is freedom.” I believe that this quote is saying that freedom is being free. But freedom comes at a price with hidden agendas. People come to America with the intention of being free but what they don’t realize is the guarantee of freedom has structure. You cannot just go steal some money, kill someone, rape someone and so on. There are consequences for these actions. Especially if you live in California, you will get a ticket for going over five miles of the stated speed limit and in consequence will have to pay a fine and your insurance will most likely raise. The forth quote is “The relationship between rationalization and excess of power is always evident. Whenever I hear about meaning, value, virtue or goodness, I look for strategies of domination.” I think that this quote has direct significance to Discipline and Punishment; the relationship is that domination is the key to success. You have to be dominant in order to succeed. You have to dominate your profession in order to make money. Some people are just not the dominant type and result to crime in order to fulfill this role. This results in punishment. Dominance is key to survive fitfully in our society today. Money is the key factor in our society. Without people disregard you resulting in punishable actions. The last quote given was “The political significance of the problem of sex is due to the fact that sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population.” The meaning of this quote is that people cannot control population because sex is not disciplined. People cannot discipline the factor of lust especially in today’s world with the influence of drugs and alcohol factoring profoundly in this problem. The population is on the rise and it cannot be controlled due to this. The body cannot be disciplined against feeling of ‘being in the moment’ and such. Therefore there isn’t a political significance to sex.
Panopticism through the eyes of Foucault is meant to itemize and summarizes such things as history in which authority and coercion define the subject in different ways and different times. Before the seventeenth and eighteenth century effective punishment of the criminal was visible punishment: hangings and decapitations were made visible to the people as a spectacle. The spectacle was replaced by prison-panopticon. Which serves as Foucault’s central metaphor for the rise of society in which all institutions are disciplinary in both senses of the term.

Maggetti, Ashley
Foucault Essay
August 27, 2006
Ashmaggetti@yahoo.com
Humanities 6 (Online)

Punishment, Power & Justice

Some of the key points discussed on page 116 were; the development of the first prisons in French history. The development of the first principle of “specific, appropriate, effective penalties.” Also, another key principle stated is the need for “exact relations between the nature of the offence and the nature of punishment.”
The first development of the prisons concluded that of the transformation of “the meticulously sealed walled.” It was an almost instantaneously transformation replacing the continuous bodily harm to the criminal (this does not apply to all criminals, because it was still variously practiced in places). This “ high walled, uncrossable barrier” contained the prisoners in a uniform style environment, meant to work them.
The development of the first principle of “specific appropriate, effective behaviors” was meant as a law of detention for every offence of any importance. Instead, I believe that the criminals were treated with the same punishment for different crimes so their effect of this new transformation and what was meant, was mixed. The role of power, as it usually is, was misused and criminals overlooked for their wrong doings in the face of the King.
The second principle Foucault stated is the need for “exact relations between the nature of the offence and the nature of the punishment.” In sync with that principle is the points related to that in which were: Physical pain on those who commit crimes of violence, hard labor on the idle and shame on those with degraded souls.
I believe that we will never come to a conclusion on the discipline and punishment that should be inflicted on criminals. It is too wide of a variety of minds, thinking and influence of the nature of what is the right way and wrong way to punish the convict.

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