Hey
From looking at the chapter from Discipline and Punish, pgs 195- 228, it strikes me how similar the description of the Quarentine measures for the plague are to the the mid victorian concept of social control. It seems almost like a hysteria that is created through fear, as there is a disturbance in the natural order of things within society, this fear generates interest and concern as does the news we read today. First he descibes division through enclosure, then surveillance by policing, ending with punishment through threat of death. Im comparing these measures to that of a moral panic because its intensions suggest paternal motives, as it states,
' the plague was met by order , its function is to sort out every possible confusion, that of disease and that of evil'
It suggests not just physical but moral cleansing too, as the power source is described as 'omnipresent and omniscient', adding to the idea of a farther authoratative figure which exercises both strict but fair treatment to his subjects. The fact that Foucault states that the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects, allows for this idea of paternal intervention, the cause being to reaffirm social control over the masses through the creation of a disciplined society. But i believe like with the Victorian Moral panic and social control that it all depends on the subordinate having defference to his master. like with the body politic, this is based on the notion that all parts of society are content within thier position because they can see the greater picture, which makes even thier small contribution important to society as a whole. So maybe these measures are through fear of a disturbance within society, whether it be directed at the sick or abnormal, but also paternal in thier intensions, as the power source cares for its subjects.
Ive probably gone way off the subject there but just let me know what you think.
thanks
Sallyann Johnson
N0248795.
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Thanks Sally. Goods points made here. I think there is two things of interest here
ReplyDelete1. You draw attention to the conflation of moral and physical cleansing. I think this is interesting because in moral terms these two things are usually kept separate. So for example, we often use terms like pollution and contamination to describe peoples from other countries but these are scientific terms. I think you have drawn out an important aspect of Foucault, the one where the physical state of the populace is the precisely the moral state of the populace
2. I like your remarks about the relationship between the master and the deference to the master which is precisely what creates control. So again for Foucault, it is not the case that there is a bad state and good masses, but power operating in many untold ways. Indeed, power is much the effect of the slaves deference as it is of the master’s domination. On this note I would recommend anyone read Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, for an account of the proximity between a dominator and the dominated.