Disciplinary Institution

The “ disciplinary institution ” is a syntagm/concept suggested by the French philosopher Michel Foucault to think a whole of similar places (prison, asylum…) and particularly worked in its book To supervise and punish (1975). The “canonical” model is the Panoptique of Jeremy Bentham.

One of the strongest theses of Foucault is that the increase and the generalization of freedoms in the Modernité were based on a disciplinary mode and a standardization (the “principle of a homogeneity of the social reaction”) which remained during “invisible” centuries almost for the theory.

Foucault/Goffman

One can put it in relation to the concept of Institution total (or totalitarian) proposed by the American sociologist Erving Goffman in his work Asiles (1961).

The analysis of a disciplinary institution shows to see concretely a “ device of being able ”, that is to say a whole of social interactions organized around a utility service essential in the process of energization industrial of the population.

A microphysics of the capacity

For Foucault, reality is produced: grammar, the speeches, the conversation, the language, the roleplay are practices of being able (or of desire, within the meaning of Deleuze and Guattari) and not of the communication universals of the human report/ratio (as at Habermas). And these practices return to “devices of being able” (teaching - the relation Master-raises - at the school, the private clinic - the Relation doctor-patient - at the hospital, the punishment - the relation judge-condemned - with the prison, etc) which are not only local, in situation, private individuals: these “devices of being able”, on the contrary, are ontologiquement constitutive .

Executives of the experiment

It should well be stressed that the microsociology of Goffman approaches a definition of the “device”. According to the concept of “frame off refers” ( executives of the experiment , 1974), the direction of the social structure emerges from the capacity of the actors to work out, observe or violate social the “executives” given. The direction is thus structured, constitutivement, by one to act social. But the action “is dédramatisée”. It is not included/understood as meets/confrontation of various strategies sometimes of domination, constraint, resistance which constitute complex interactive processes of subjectivation through systems symbolic systems, communicative and normative, like Foucault shows it to us.

To know/to be able

Each time thus, being of the hospital, the school, the prison, the family, the goal of Foucault is all in all the same one: to leave an analysis centered on the Institution, that it is defined in its materiality or its function, to re-register it in a “general economy of the capacity” which crosses the company right through, and configures places there where certain phenomena, like the madness or the crime, acquire some Objectivité, become at the same time taken for a to be able and field of to know .

Thus Foucault could say: for me, the Folie does not exist, and yet it is nothing. Quite to the contrary, to restore the thing which it is, as a thing , supposes that one does not apprehend it like one not given, as something whose existence seems acquired inside supposed space institutonnel to accommodate it.

In this direction still, the passage by the disciplines, and thus by this “device of being able” which does not reabsorb in the authority of the Loi, produces a new effect of opening and generalization.

The diachronic approach of the capacity which proposes Surveiller and to punish (sovereignty with the disciplines) complexes in the course that Foucault holds with the Collège de France in 1977 on Sécurité, territory, population with the introduction of the synchronic concept of “ gouvernementality ” (many other rehandlings will intervene in addition still in the thought of Foucault, which will be able to authorize some with speaking about “second” Foucault, that of the “ Souci of oneself ”, émancipé of the disciplinary mode):

“By gouvernementality, I hear the unit consisted the institutions, the procedures, analyzes and reflections, calculations and the tactics which make it possible to exert this quite specific form, though very complex of being able which has as a main target the population, for major form of knowing the political economy, for essential instrument the safety devices. Secondly, by " gouvernementalité" , I hear the tendency, the tension field which, in all the Occident, did not cease leading, and strong a long time, towards the preeminence of this type of " gouvernement" on all the others: sovereignty, discipline, and which brought, on the one hand, the development of a whole series of specific appliances of government, and, on the other hand, the development of a a whole series of knowledge. ”

It was to introduce the topic of the “pastoralism”.

Bibliographical references and complements

Michel Foucault, To supervise and punish. Birth of the prison , Gallimard, 1975
Michel Foucault, Safety, Territory, Population. Course at the Collège de France. 1977-1978 , Gallimard/Threshold, 2004
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the holding companies”, in '' Pourparlers '', Midnight, 1990
Bruno Karsenti, “the criminal, the patriot, the citizen. A genealogy of the idea of discipline”, Out-of-date the , n°2, 1999
Jean-François Laé, “the wounded ewe, the herd and observation of the man”, Quoted , n°1, 2000

See too

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