A bit of cultural theory
Back in the day, when I was going regularly to academic conferences such as the MLA (Modern Language Association) or ASECS (American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies), it was customary for presenters of academic papers not only to state, at the outset of their presentations, the thesis of the argument they were about to articulate, but its theoretical orientation as well. That is, were they using in their study some manner of feminist theory or Marxist theory or post-colonial theory and so on.
We academics have a bad habit of wanting to know, up front, not only what your point is but how you’re formulating it as well. It’s a context thing.
I remember going to one paper session where the presenter arranged her materials on the podium, looked up at us sitting in the audience, and said a single word:
“Foucault.”
We all nodded happily, understanding now where she was coming from, and listened attentively as she unfolded her line of argument.
That’s how influential French philosopher, historian, and social critic (yeah, we’re back to more of these off-the-wall French guys) Michel Foucault (1926-1984, see here) was and is still. Foucault’s contemporary impact and continuing influence on cultural studies cannot be overstated. Nor can I adequately characterize his many theories in a single post.
So I won’t try.
Instead, I’ll provide an introduction to his thinking in the form of a brief historical orientation. In the section below, I’ll describe a fundamental difference, in Foucault’s view, between medieval European social structure and the social structure that evolved away from it—namely, our modern Western culture. In this way, I hope simply to set the Foucauldian stage.
Simply setting the Foucauldian stage
What’s the difference between a dungeon and a prison? What’s the difference between a leper colony and a plague town?
As an historian of early modern Europe (roughly, 15th–18th century), Foucault studied such social institutions—especially how they shifted in nature and function during this crucial period of cultural transition in the West from what we call the medieval to what we term the modern.
A dungeon and a leper colony, Foucault argues, are ancient and medieval constructs. Their purpose is to isolate and forget. The offender and the afflicted are set to one side—or, more accurately, flung into a dark hole—and left to rot. Who cares? Society must rid itself of such nuisances.
The prison and the plague town, on the other hand, are early modern innovations. Their purpose is to reform and cure. The criminal and the plague victim, insofar as possible, are brought back to rectitude and health so that they can be restored to the social mainstream. And what could be better? Via regulatory methods and efficient behavioral mechanisms, citizens are returned to their productive roles in society.
For Foucault, these very different approaches and solutions to the same problems—criminality and illness—signal very different goals and, vitally, apparatuses of Power.
In his book, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975, see here and here), and in an interview, “Truth and Power” (1976, see here and here), Foucault sets out many of his key ideas about social order. Perhaps foremost among them is that Foucault regards the history that determines us as a chronology of war and battle based on relations of Power. That is: those with Power pursue a warlike domination over those without Power; those without Power struggle to obtain Power. Social power, then, is “a sort of generalized war” that at times “assumes the forms of peace and the state.” Far from such lulls in open conflict bringing tranquility and happiness, though, Foucault asserts that, “Peace would then be a form of war, and the state a means of waging it” (“Truth”).
Let me repeat that. The state is a means of waging war.
Therefore, to Foucault, the transition from a medieval to an early modern state is not the story of a bad old way of doing things being replaced by a better new way of doing things—as maybe you construed my description above of the prison and the plague town. Far from it. Instead, the social shift Foucault theorizes from the medieval to the modern is solely an obsolete mode of warlike Power gradually giving way to an emerging mode of warlike Power.
Make no mistake. For Foucault, the objective of the medieval state and the objective of the modern state are one and the same: to establish and maintain dominance. What Foucault is particularly interested in examining, though, are the differing techniques of this dominance. That is, how exactly does each state impose its controlling ideologies? What legal devices and modes of civic persuasion are employed to create the desired social order?
Here let me gently recommend that the reader return to my post of 7 June 2023 titled, “Reproducing the Regime: Ideology and the machinery of Power.” In that post, I review the social theories of Louis Althusser—a great influencer of Foucault—as he sets out his ideas about Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs, basically strong-arm tactics to keep citizens in line), Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs, basically hidden coaxing devices to charm citizens into keeping in line), and Interpellation (innumerable ways in which citizens are invited-summoned to come join the status quo). These three instruments of Power certainly pertain to Foucault’s conceptions of how and for what purpose the medieval state operated compared to the operation of the early modern state. To state plainly the most important distinction Foucault makes between these two social formations:
Medieval rule is founded on spectacle. Modern authority is rooted in surveillance.
We’ll consider first medieval spectacle.
A medieval feudal monarchy centered around the body of the King. Chosen by God to rule, the King was, paradoxically, both physically material and divinely spiritual at once. Thus, the King alone could deploy or transmit to some few others this all-powerful force in the operation of the kingdom. Fueled by this ideology of divine-right rule, medieval society functioned basically by means of signs and levies. That is, signs of loyalty to the King, especially from the feudal lords, manifest in rituals and ceremonies; levies in the form of taxes, plunder, hunting, and much more. Not only did subjects owe God’s representative on earth all of their spiritual devotion; equally, they owed the King all of their material possessions as well. And it was entirely up to the King what he wanted and collected...or might permit his subjects to keep.
Medieval Power, then, was fundamentally a repressive force—an RSA. It was a Power that commanded: NO. Moreover, the point of this repressive Power was to form a single great cultural body wherein everyone believed in and pledged allegiance to one thing: the idea of the King as God’s absolute and infallible regent on earth.
Given this mind frame, practices such as the dungeon and the leper colony make perfect sense. If one commits a crime against, in essence, the body of the King, be gone with him. If one is stricken with a terrible disease at the will of God, be gone with him. Banish such renegades from the single great cultural body. Place them forever outside the sanctity perpetually being formed by the state.
Along with the monarchy, the other great medieval Power institution was the Catholic Church. While King and Church, in theory, ruled in tandem over the medieval state, in fact, the two institutions frequently were at odds. For that matter, the nobility was frequently involved in strife and intrigue over succession rights, vying for royal favor, expanding landholdings, winning monopolies, and the like. (These were civilized people, after all, so of course they behaved badly.) No matter such a fracas at the top, King and Church both employed the same basic device as a means to express, impose, and inculcate their absolute rule: spectacle.
For the King, spectacle entailed palaces, coronations, processions, courts, banquets, balls, chapels, crown-scepter-and-orb, robes of state, royal carriages and barges and ships and steeds, jewels and adornments, armor, swords, insignia, army, navy, guards, ministers, counselors, and much more.
For the Church, spectacle entailed cathedrals, Latin mass, stained-glass windows, sermons, hymns, prayer beads, communion wine and wafers, incense thuribles, literacy, graveyards and holy ground, vestments and liturgical garments of many sorts, holy water, celibate priesthood, brides-of-Christ nuns, confession booths, and much more.
All of these things were meant to be seen, marveled at, participated in, overawed by, and thus obeyed. They functioned as ISAs and forms of interpellation in support of the groundwork RSA of divine-right rule. Thus, medieval Power demanded to be viewed, gazed at, always in the subject’s field of vision (real or mental), ever present to remind everyone just who was boss.
King and Church were boss. God (as interpreted by King and Church) was boss. End of political discourse. Medieval power-brokering was a game played by the very few. Everyone else needed to be “lowly wise”—that is, shut up, keep your head down, know your place and stay there, pray for a happier afterlife.
Or else.
Oh, yeah. There’s one notable and widespread medieval spectacle I failed to mention and that Foucault emphasizes: the spectacularly grotesque public torture and execution of wrongdoers (see here).
Very persuasive.
Let’s consider now modern surveillance.
As the 16th became the 17th became the 18th century, European society—to understate the matter considerably—underwent some major changes. New sciences and technologies, new ways of thinking about the universe and our place in it, new concepts of political and economic configuration came into being. All of these were big, big doings that I haven’t the space to go into here. Suffice it to say, though, that the medieval world gradually morphed into the beginnings of our world—the modern world. Prominent among these many changes were absolute monarchy starting to give way to constitutional republic, divine-right rule starting to give way to the rule of law, feudalism starting to give way to capitalism.
Big, big changes, none of which were immediate or without conflict.
Inside this massive cultural transfiguration, Foucault perceives the development of a totally different technology for social control, what he calls a new “mechanics of Power” (“Truth”). Gradually coming into being were novel principles and innovative tools for the powerful to establish and maintain their dominance over society, that is, to implement their authority.
Specifically, Foucault traces how the spectacle, signs, and levies of medieval Power started to give way to the surveillance and discipline of modern Power.
For many centuries, feudal agrarian European society ground along just fine. With dropped jaws, the great majority of the population watched the Power Show of the tiny minority taking place at the top of society, and everybody more or less stayed where they were put by God. As the radical cultural shifts mentioned above started to come into play, however, new social structures and relations started to need a new kind of population to inhabit it. The repressed, overawed, lowly wise medieval subject—while decidedly useful—was no longer quite adequate for the needs of the emerging early modern state. What was wanted by modern Power was the shaping of particular kinds of individuals who can contribute proficiently to the new kinds of productivity starting to take place in the modern state.
Put bluntly: feudal farmers needed to be remade into wage laborers. That is to say, workers able to fit usefully into the new economic formations of mercantilism and early industrial capitalism.
To long-story-short-it once more, materializing from the melee of early modern change, according to Foucault, was an instrument ideally suited for this task of wholesale social remodeling.
The Panopticon.
The name means “all-seeing.” That is precisely what this architectural design is meant to provide: the ability to watch everyone placed within its mechanism (see here, here, and here). Drawing on numerous precedents, the utilitarianist philosopher and social reformer, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832, see here), conceived of this new structure for a prison. The building itself had something of an impact on how prisons were subsequently constructed in England and America. However, the wider social impact of the Panopticon—and Foucault’s keen interest in it—exists in its core feature: ever-present undetectable observation.
As a prison, the design of the Panopticon places each inmate alone in a cell (one among a ring of individual cells) that is constantly visible to a central guard tower. The prisoner, however, cannot see into that guard tower, its windows being fashioned in such a way as to obscure from view anyone inside. As a result, the prisoner never knows if she’s being watched or not. As Foucault states it, within the Panopticon the inmate is “perfectly individualized and constantly visible.” The desired outcome and major effect of this arrangement, therefore, is obvious: “to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of Power” (Discipline).
Under these conditions, the prisoner will self-regulate. Impose order on herself. Follow the rules of authority because, in fact, she never dares not to.
Such self-regulation brought on by such constant and unverifiable surveillance is what Foucault means by his term “discipline.” Modern discipline, for Foucault, means regimentation, behavioral training, a topiary procedure where the individual is trimmed and shaped and habituated into being the kind of citizen and performing the kinds of work necessary to the operation of the modern state.
In this way, as Foucault puts it, “Visibility is a trap” (Discipline).
But here’s Foucault’s key point. It’s not so much the building itself that has had a game-changing effect on Western society; it’s the conceptual function of the Panopticon that has pulled us out of the medieval world and created our modern world.
In his writings, Foucault demonstrates how the surveillance-discipline formula at the heart of this new panoptic method for reforming prisoners slowly becomes applied and practiced throughout early modern society. Taking place is “a historical transformation,” one Foucault describes as:
...the gradual extension of the mechanisms of discipline throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their spread throughout the whole social body, the formation of what might be called in general the disciplinary society (Discipline).
The organization of the police apparatus in the 18th century, asserts Foucault, both sanctioned and spread “a generalization of the disciplines” that has become the very modus operandi of the state—of, in fact, most public and private institutions alike. Asks Foucault:
Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? (Discipline)
News Flash: we are prisoners. We live within what Foucault terms a carceral state—that is, a society modeled on Bentham’s prison. Power no longer demands to be SEEN—doesn’t even necessarily have to say NO—but now lurks everywhere, in the background, in order to SEE. And by our knowing that we’re visible, that at any moment we’re potentially being seen, we are turned into the behavioral instruments of the Panopticon. We become the initial and chief enforcers of its discipline. We are part of its machinery.
The great innovation of the early modern period was to haul the offender out of the dungeon, expelled and forgotten, and place her in the prison to be, potentially, remade. The leper was brought back from the exile of a distant and desperate colony to be placed in the regimentation of the plague town, where townspeople are systematically categorized and subdivided as well or maybe infected or goners in order preserve as much of the community as possible. And these methodologies seemed so useful, so productive and orderly, that they became the methods of modern society in general.
I know, as a kid, I sure felt incarcerated in school. I know, in any number of social and job-related situations throughout my life, that if I didn’t conform to norms, I’d be treated as some manner of unclean.
So what?
So here we are. According to Foucault, in the panoptic machine.
But the modern story is not so simple as Evil Panopticon devised by some Evil Genius to be run and exploited by some Evil Cabal of powerful people (no matter how much it feels like that). No. Our carceral state is far more nuanced and contradictory than that.
In Discipline and Punish, Foucault says that “the Panopticon presents a cruel, ingenious cage” when used as a piece of political technology. As a mechanism, it is particularly good at creating a space for analysis and classification that leads to a determination of who is “good” and who is “bad”—not only among prisoners, but for soldiers, factory workers, schoolchildren, and others as well. During the 18th and 19th centuries, such sorting resulted in the creation of one of our favorite modern binary oppositions: normal/abnormal.
On the other hand, Foucault also speaks of the Panopticon as a kind of morally neutral device, “a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power” (Discipline). Anyone can put it to use for any purpose, it seems. In particular, if you want a group of people trained and dedicated to carrying out the same task, the Panopticon is your device of choice. Therefore, whereas feudal Power was a repressive force that said NO, modern Power is a productive force that produces goods, induces pleasure, forms knowledge, constructs discourse, and many other wonderful things (“Truth”). Modern Power can develop the economy, spread education, increase ethical behavior, strengthen the society as a whole.
Yet at the same time, modern Power hides its controlling influences within its productivity. Instead of a rigid imposition from the outside, panoptic Power “is a way of making power relations function in a function, and of making a function function through these power relations” (Discipline). Basically, this is a way of saying, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” Instead of being commanded not to do something that we want to do, we’re being steered toward doing something that seems to have—and even might genuinely have—real benefit for us (e.g. getting an education or earning a salary). Because of the ostensibly positive effects of modern Power, we don’t perceive the larger manipulation being enacted on us. In other words, the (power) forest is obscured by all the (function) trees.
This arrangement begs crucial questions that must be asked about modern Power: for whose benefit does it operate? Under whose control? And is everyone included in its productive prosperity?
Two other important features of panoptic Power need mentioning. One is Foucault’s theory of “Truth and Power.” That is the idea that, within a given society, those holding Power (political, economic, military, educational, and so on) are the ones who devise and enforce what is counted as “truth” in that society. Of course, such “truth,” consciously or unconsciously, will be a self-serving worldview that serves those in authority. For Foucault, this power-knowledge connection is a circular process.
Two, Foucault sees modern Power extending well beyond the functioning of the modern state. Panoptic mechanisms infiltrate innumerable other, smaller power networks, what he terms “micropowers.” At this disseminated level, the same surveillance-discipline function is enacted, for example: family, workplace, school, sexuality, gender, and many more (“Truth”).
All of these ideas—players upon the Foucauldian stage, as it were—will serve as grist for the mill of future Rants.