STUDENTS' RESPONSES TO FOUCUALT, DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH
The structure of this essay is interesting. Foucault conveys his message not only through the words he uses, but also through the way he visually orders the words ideas. Foucault begins the selection with graphic accounts of torture and execution, then gradually works his way through his argument, examining more abstract terms, concepts and ideas. The way he orders his essay directly ties in with the subject matter, then; it reflects his belief that punishment has moved from an emphasis on physical, bodily harm to a more abstract, psychological notion of the "soul." (Reed Haslach)
Foucault points out the contradiction present in modern execution: "When the moment of execution approaches, the patients are injected with tranquilizers. A utopia of judicial reticence . . . " (11). In other words, the modern judicial system seeks to alleviate pain right up to the moment of death. The pharmakon, our most beloved contradiction, is at work here: punishment as both cure and poison. "We punish," Foucault observes, "but this is a way of saying that we wish to obtain a cure" (22). Pharmakon = poison + cure = punishment. (J. P. Mohan)
The relationship between body and soul is a continuing theme in philosophy. Foucault's focus on the body is contrary to that of earlier thinkers, specifically philosophers such as Descartes and Locke, who try to explain how an insubstantial thinking mind, a soul, is related to a body. Foucualt reaches the startling conclusion that the soul is the prison of the body, and that this imprisonment is due to the schemes of a body politic, which embodies the power-knowledge of the punitive discourse. In other words, political institutions intend the soul as the object of punishment, and use the body as an instrument through which to punish the soul. (Chris Schatz)
What next?