To supervise and punish

Subtitle Naissance of the prison , Surveiller and to punish is a major work of Michel Foucault published with the editions Gallimard in 1975.

The disappearance of the public executions

The test studies the historical appearance of the Prison in its modern form while starting by noting the disappearance of the application as a public of the Capital punishment to the profit of executions hidden by the secrecy of the walls. According to the author, this evolution is revealing of a revolution in the way according to which the To be able appears with the Peuple.

Indeed the torment was the central element in the manifestation of the truth of the culpability of condemned. The test opens thus in introduction on the torment of Damien. The public character of the torment, the symbolic system of the judgments (fist cut of the Parricidal S, bored language of the blasphemers) allowed the demonstration of the royal capacity vis-a-vis the crime, which in addition to its immediate victim, attacked the sovereign in his capacity to make the laws ( crimen majestatis ).

But, whereas the absolute monarch only conceived his Autorité visible and terribly alarming for the thirds attending its assertion, the modern capacity prefers to maintain a worrying mystery as for the sorrows which it carries out. He discovers that the people do not need to attend the punishment as of his to stick so that it wishes that it leave it. Moreover these people can prove to be dangerous when it supports punished and in the aspect Carnaval of the public executions.

Those which do not respect the law do not see any more condemned to a physical sanction which will remain on their body like a testimony offered to considering and to known of all. They are not either any more condemned to a direct repair their faults in full day. The sorrows have a correct aiming henceforth. The publicity of the sorrow does not aim so much any more showing the suffering but rather at reaffirming the topicality of the Law. There were a reforming model and a prison model (of which the objective was more to draw up the bodies to reintegrate the individual). It is the second who carried it.

“ the punishment passed from an art of the unbearable feelings to an economy of the suspended duties ”

The sudden appearance of a glance culpabilisator

From now on, the outlaws are simply private of their freedom. That does not mean therefore a containment of the culprits in Oubliette S or at the bottom of some bagne. It is rather the capacity which disappears behind a Architecture prison news able to force the prisoners without the geôlier and the authority which it incarnates do not have to appear directly by some whiplash or others.

Dream of Jeremy Bentham, the Panoptique imposes itself. The prisons from now on are built according to circular plans allowing the supervisor located in a central tower to observe without never being considering, the silhouettes of the prisoners being detached with back-light on external Fenêtre S via other windows giving on an interior court.

This architecture possibly makes it possible to completely do without supervisor, the only feeling to be observed being likely to obtain prisoners a form of Obéissance. Thus, in addition to not being not expensive from an economic point of view, the modern prison is initially a company of Culpabilisation working the Conscience S Individu they through a Regard the Almighty.

The remote control of the traffics and the delinquency

The modern prison is also a countable world . It produces figures and builds tables in which the cells are as much squared boxes traced on paper that parts in which the prisoners are visible. The walls separating them from/to each other are sufficiently solid so that cease all these small Trafic S which yesterday made impossible the strict control of the culprits sanctioned.

The installation of this prison system has several consequences. The first, it is the appearance of the Délinquance, preferable form of Criminalité modern to old in the sense that it is the fact of individuals already known, driven and worked by the Autorité and thus not very likely of a Récidive much more serious.

But also, this device makes perceptible an essential inversion: whereas through the torment it acted for the capacity to be visible greater number, with the panoptism the problems are reversed. How to make so that the greatest number is visible more small number. Foucault introduces thus with problems around the police force and of a squaring of the population on the model of the monitoring at the time of the cholera. The social evil is conceived on the model of the epidemic.

Panoptism and recovery of morals

The success of this helping system, the second consequence of its installation is its adoption by others institutions that the only prison, to start with the Atelier, where some Contremaître S is enough from now on to control hundreds of workers: they saunter now in rectilinear alleys from where they dominate the employees sitting with an individual table and all visible by far. One also finds prison methods in the schools, the Pensionnat S or the Caserne S, where the beds are aligned little by little, more strict timetables, the developed exercise and the repetition.

Rectification of the Human body S to which these institutions proceed each one to its way led according to Michel Foucault to the rectification of the Morale S, each one becoming its own critic once it was corrected there by a contest of organizations, throughout his life.

By a strong social grid, with in the center the prison, it is not any more the sovereign who is isolated, but well the individual.

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