“the punishment-body relation is not the same as it was during public executions"
Discipline & Punish, Michel Foucault
In the work titled Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault the reader learns how the judicial system changed at the turn of the 18th century. Foucault’s approach is a blend of historical investigation and philosophical inquiry. The French philosopher suggests a shift in the way we punish individuals for crimes they have committed. The punishment is directed toward the individual rather than the crime committed. Foucault explains “the punishment-body relation is not the same as it was during public executions”[1]. The way we punish individuals is through the psyche rather than the body itself viz. the public is now fined or stripped of liberty. According to Foucault’s research the spectacle of punishment has disappeared and has evolved into a greater form of punishment. Thus, torture and the spectacle of punishment has shifted to the psychological and private forms of punishment to discipline society.
Our society has moved away from the spectacle of gruesome punishment to privately discipline society. One does not see public flogging or execution in the Western world anymore, but if we look closely we can see something similar. The way we make people do things through culture and media influence or the way we see the mentally ill seem to be the hidden sculptor chipping away at our soul. Foucault explains why punishment moved away from the spectacle of bodily mutilation by saying “The additional factor of the offender’s soul, which the legal system has laid hold of, is only apparently explanatory and limitative, and is in fact expansionist”[2]. For Foucault, this means that the punishment of the crime has moved to the evaluation of the individual. The penal system has started judging a person’s psyche rather than the crime itself. One could be convicted of a petty crime and be charged with an extreme sentence because they are mentally ill or not normal per the judge’s decision. Foucault expands on the observation later saying the judgement “bears within it an assessment of normality and a technical prescription for a possible normalization”[3]. The power has shifted to a more gruesome form of punishment that attacks the individual’s state of being rather than the body. The hidden discipline we get from bills, laws, and cultural responsibilities like what it is to be normal takes a significant toll on the psyche. The shift made in the 18th century was necessary to evolve the practice of punishment.
One is now punished from a hidden judge if he or she does not feel normal. The system has created an invisible executioner for us to maintain normality and a herd mentality. The souls that disobey are either committed to an institution, suffering in private, or commit suicide from ‘mental illness’. I believe Foucault’s observation is seen today as big pharma and the prison industrial complex because of the shift. The Western world will continue normalizing society and punishing those who go against the grain.
[1] Foucault, Michel. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. S.n.: Vintage, 2009. Print. Pg. 11
[2] Ibid. Pg.19
[3] Ibid. Pg.21