Welcome to Section 9 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.
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.
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:
- The treatment of prisoners etc. is mostly directed towards their souls and minds. Reforming their minds is the new goal.
- 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.
Critiquing 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".
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| The Zomia area. This is where, Scott believes, anarchists effectively practice The Art of Not Being Governed |
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.
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| Woman in the hilly country that characterizes Zomia, far from Asia's urban centers. She is presumably one of Scott's anarchists |
Critiquing 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.
Further Research
For more materials on Foucault see my blog "Governmentality: Care & Control".
