8. Controlling bodies & minds (i): Bodies, minds, & discipline

Welcome to Section 8 of "Culture, Body & Mind". A course in the Anthropology of Body & Mind at La Trobe University.

Revision: Embodiment & Habitus

In Sections 5-7, we studied the idea that bodies are socially and culturally formed. In Sections 5 & 6 we considered the anthropological take on phenomenology. The argument holds that culture shapes your body. You experience the world through your body. Anthropologists must thus focus on the body and lived experience in order to understand society and culture. Section 7 was concerned with another theory of body. Bourdieu's idea of 'habitus' is particularly useful in explaining different bodies within stratified society. 

From punishing the body to disciplining the mind 

Now we change tack entirely. Foucault assumes that the body-mind distinction is useful (the question simply doesn't arise in the Foucault I've read). Foucault sees modernity as a transition from punishing bodies to disciplining minds. In Western history, the demise of spectacle and torture coincided with the rise of control. Arbitrarily, a Medieval king could command “Off with his head!”, but he could not control the population. With the onset of the Modern period, the ruler could not openly and arbitrarily execute a ‘citizen’, but, paradoxically, had higher levels of control over the population. How do we explain this paradox? What is the ‘underbelly’ of democracy, constitution, and laws which protect citizens?

Required reading

Are you ready to begin what might be the most difficult and rewarding reading of your life so far? Read “Panopticism” pp. 195- in  Foucault, M 1991, Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison, Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Here is an HTML version.

Or you can read this abridged version instead.

Summary of "Panopticism"

Here I've summarized Foucault's Governmentality.

Governmentality

Another way to explain governmentality is that it developed in the modern era. During the modern era idea is that people are now rendered as citizens. Citizens should be allowed to live happy, productive lives to a ripe old age. Governments institute policies to allow this. And this policy helps citizens live happy, healthy lives. But to enact that policy, statistics and a new way of knowing the population through statistics is required. At the same time, docile minds and productive bodies are created. So we have a new kind of person and a new kind of subjectivity.

To explain this a little more, I've made a presentation on Governmentality:

 

I have also attempted the impossible: Foucault in 500 words (or less)

Comprehension Questions

Why, according to Foucault, do we keep tabs on ourselves in a disciplinary society? Why does Foucault refer to his book Discipline and Punish as “ ‘political economy’ of the body”, “a history of the modern soul on trial”? According to Foucault, rather than just recording and observing, the new techniques of actually constitute a new kind of political subject: the individual citizen. How does this happen?  What is the difference between Foucault’s vision of society and Orwell’s vision of Big Brother? OK if you've comprehended the ideas, it's time to see if you can apply and evaluate them.

Applying Foucault's ideas: Declaration of Independence

First, let's try to apply Foucault's ideas. The US Declaration of Independence (1776) is apparently the most famous testament to freedom and democracy. But if Foucault read it, he might say it's about a new kind of docile subject. So here is a relevant section of that Enlightenment masterpiece written by the forefathers of the USA:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

What is the new vision of “Man” outlined in this document? What is the role of government?
The heroes of the American Revolution talk about the role of government to effect "Safety and Happiness". Now remembering Foucault's ideas about the Art of Government ("Governmentality"), what would Foucault make of all this? I'll do my best to channel Foucault:

The Declaration of Independence is famous for treating people as citizens of a nation, with a right to self-government. But actually, it also creates them as subjects of the panoptic gaze. Through its idea that governments are responsible for ensuring the health and safety of people we can see governmentality operating in the Declaration of Independence. This significant because while the document is considered a watershed for political freedom, it also demonstrates a new way of thinking about 'subjects', which would transform people into docile and productive bodies. Apparently, the Declaration of Independence is about improving people's lives, but it also promotes a new kind of person; a self-disciplined subject. In sum, the Declaration of Independence is apparently the most famous testament to freedom and democracy, but it's about a new kind of docile subject.

That, or something like it, is what we could get by applying Foucault's theory to the Declaration of Independence.

Evaluating Foucault's theory

Having discussed how we might apply Foucault's theory, we should now turn to evaluating the idea. Obviously, we don't yet live in an era of complete governmentality. For example, according to Foucault, in the past, punishment and discipline were directed towards the body. In the modern era (c. 1600), it is directed towards the soul/mind. But in Australia, we still have police and courts. In America, incarceration rates seem to be on the rise. other words, in a modern society, there is still a threat of bodily punishment. But, in defense of Foucault's theory:

1. The treatment of prisoners etc. is mostly directed towards their souls and minds. Reforming their minds is the new goal.
2. Even with the rise in modern rates of incarceration, we can see that governmentality is not complete. It is still failing to operate completely. 

With complete governmentality, we won’t need police, courts, prisons, or outside surveillance. It would not be like 1984/Brave New World/Big Brother. We will all control ourselves, if Foucault is correct.

The Zomia area where, Scott believes, anarchists effectively
practice The Art of Not Being Governed

Criticism of Foucault: Chomsky

The debate between Chomsky and Foucault gives a sense of how Foucault differs from Chomsky's more 'common sense' idea of power:

Criticism of Foucault: The Art of Not Being Governed

Famous anthropologist James Scott (2009) highlights the opposite effect. Instead of Foucault's Art of Government Scott has developed a concept which he calls the ‘art-of-not-being-governed’. He says you can find this 'art' being practiced in "Zomia". Zomia is a recently made-up term to cover an area around the southern area of China.  As my co-author, Winarnita, and I explain in our article "Seeking the State", the art of not being governed refers to:

how people work to avoid state rule. ...In Scott’s (2009) ethnographic example, different ethnicities have sought refuge in the hills and mountains of mainland Southeast Asia, eastern India and Southern China—an area called ‘Zomia’. Zomia consists in:
      virtually all the lands at altitudes above roughly three hundred meters all the way
      from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to northeastern India and traversing five
      Southeast Asian nations (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma) and
     four provinces of China (Yunan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and parts of Sichuan
      (2009: ix).
To avoid the state taxes and control associated with sedentary agriculture in the lowland areas of Southeast Asia, these upland people have turned to swidden cultivating and
hunter-gathering. These ‘anarchists’, as Scott styles them, number in the millions.

So Scott presents us with an account that is quite at odds with Foucault's Art of Government.

Woman in the hilly country that characterizes Zomia, far from Asia's urban centers. She is presumably one of Scott's anarchists

Criticism of Foucault: Seeking the State

My own opinion is that people, in fact, try to emulate the state. They do this by their own will, not because of a panoptic scheme or a govern-mentality. In the article, "Seeking the State", my co-author Winarnita and I argued that in marginal areas of Southeast Asia, neither extreme of the Art of Government nor the Art-of-Not-Being-Governed seems to apply. Rather people seek out the state and adopt its practices and wealth in their everyday life. OK, that's enough of a digression.

Summary

Returning to the main theme of this course: body and mind. Foucault says, in really simple terms, that in the modern period we have moved from punishing the body to disciplining the mind. This is a self-imposed discipline; we all have an internal prison guard in our mind. We soon won't need prisons or even police as we all become disciplined, docile subjects. This is the new, modern subjectivity. We will now move on to Section 9 and another theory of how control is exerted; by depriving people of citizenship.