Obolensky,
Nouvelle
Histoire de I'Eglise, volume 2: he Moyen Age (600-1500), trans.
Foucault-Psychiatric-Power-1973-74
"Herculean strength," that is to say, a physical force which, in a sense, bears on the body, but which is such that this lorce, which hems in and weighs down on the body, is basically never employed and takes on a sort of immateriality so that the process passes from mind to mind, although in actual fact it really is the body that is at stake in the Panopticon system.
This interplay between "Herculean strength" and the pure ideality of mind is, I think, what Bentham was looking for in the Panopticon.
How did he bring it about?
There is a circular building, the periphery of the Panopticon, within which cells are set, opening both onto the inner side of the ring through an iron grate door and onto the outside through a window. Around the inner circumierence of this ring is a gallery, allowing one to walk around the building, passing each cell. Then there is an empty space and, at its
? center, a tower, a kind of cylindrical construction of several levels at the top o( which is a sort of lantern, that is to say, a large open room, which is such that lrom this central site one can observe everything happening in each cell, just by turning around. This is the schema.
What is the meaning of this schema? Why did it strike minds and why was it seen for so long, wrongly in my view, as a typical example oi eighteenth century Utopias? First, one and only one individual will be placed in each cell. That is to say, in this system, which can be applied to a hospital, a prison, a workshop, a school, and so on, a single person will be placed in each of these boxes; each body will have its place. So there is pinning down in space, and the inspectors gaze will encounter a body in whatever direction taken by his line ol sight. So, the individualizing (unction ol the coordinates are very clear.
This means that in a system like this we are never dealing with a mass, with a group, or even, to tell the truth, with a multiplicity: we are only ever dealing with individuals. Even il a collective order is given through a megaphone, addressed to everyone at the same time and obeyed by everyone at the same time, the (act remains that this collec tive order is only ever addressed to individuals and is only ever received by individuals placed alongside each other. All collective phenomena, all the phenomena of multiplicities, are thus completely abolished. And, as Bentham says with satisfaction, in schools there will no longer be the "cribbing" that is the beginning of immorality;22 in workshops there will be no more collective distraction, songs, or strikes;2* in prisons, no more collusion;2'1 and in asylums for the mentally ill, no more of those phenomena ol collective irritation and imitation, etcetera. 25
You can see how the whole network of group communication, all those collective phenomena, which are perceived in a sort of interdepen- dent schema as being as much medical contagion as the moral diffusion of evil, will be brought to an end by the panoptic system. One will be dealing with a power which is a comprehensive power over everyone, but which will only ever be directed at series of separate individuals. Power is collective at its center, but it is always individual at the point where it arrives. You can see how we have here the phenomenon of individual ization I was talking about last week. Discipline individualizes below; it individualizes those on whom it is brought to bear.
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As for the central cell, this kind of lantern, I told you that it was entirely glazed; in fact Bentham stresses that it should not be glazed or, if it is, one should install a system of blinds, which can be raised and lowered, and the room be fitted with intersecting, mobile partitions. This is so that surveillance can be exercised in such a way that those who are being supervised cannot tell whether or not they are being supervised; that is to say, they must not be able to see if there is anyone in the cen- tral cell. 26 So, on the one hand, the windows of the central cell must be shuttered or darkened, and there must be no backlighting which would enable prisoners to see through this column and see whether or not there is anyone in the central lantern; hence the system of blinds and the internal partitions that can be moved as desired.
So, as you can see, it will be possible for power to be entirely anonymous, as I was saying last week. The director has no body, for the true ellect of the Panopticon is to be such that, even when no one is there, the indi- vidual in his cell must not only think that he is being observed, but know that he is; he must constantly experience himself as visible for a gaze, the real presence or absence of which hardly matters. Power is thereby completely de-individualized. If necessary, the central lantern could be completely empty and power would be exercised just the same.
There is a de-individualization and disembodiment of power, which no longer has a body or individuality, and which can be anyone whom- soever. Furthermore, one of the essential points of the Panopticon is that within the central tower, not only may anyone be there--surveillance may be exercised by the director, but also by his wife, his children, or his servants, etcetera--but an underground passage from outside to the center allows anyone to enter the central tower if they wish and to carry out supervision. This means that any citizen whomsoever must be able to supervise what is going on in the hospital, school, workshop, or prison: supervising what is going on, supervising to check that every thing is in order, and supervising to check that the director is carrying out his functions properly, supervising the supervisor who supervises.
There is a sort of ribbon of power, a continuous, mobile, and anonymous ribbon, which perpetually unwinds within the central tower. Whether it has or does not have a figure, whether or not it has a name, whether or not it is individualized, this anonymous ribbon of power perpetually
? unwinds anyway and is exercised through this game of invisibility. What's more, this is what Bentham calls "democracy," since anyone can occupy the place of power and power is not the property of anyone since everyone can enter the tower and supervise the way in which power is exercised, so that power is constantly subject to control. Finally, power is as visible in its invisible center as those who occupy the cells; and, due to this, power supervised by anyone really is the democratization of the exercise of power.
Another feature of the Panopticon is that, to make the interior of the cells visible, on the side facing inwards there is, of course, a door with a window, but there is also a window on the outer side, indispensable for producing an effect of transparency and so that the gaze of the person in the central tower can pass through all the cells from one side to the other, seeing against the light everything the person--student, patient, worker, prisoner, or whomsoever--is doing in the cell. So the condition of permanent visibility is absolutely constitutive of the individual's sit uation in the Panopticon. You can see that the relationship of power really does have that immateriality I was just talking about, for power is exercised simply by this play of light; it is exercised by the glance from center to periphery, which can, at every moment, observe, judge, record, and punish at the first gesture, the first attitude, the first distraction. This power needs no instrument; its sole support is sight and light.
Panopticon means two things. It means that everything is seen all the time, but it also means that the power exercised is only ever an optical effect. The power is without materiality; it has no need of all that sym bolic and real armature of sovereign power; it does not need to hold the scepter in its hand or wield the sword to punish; it does not need to intervene like a bolt of lightning in the manner of the sovereign. This power belongs rather to the realm of the sun, of never ending light; it is the non material illumination that falls equally on all those on whom it is exercised.
Finally, the last feature of this Panopticon is that this immaterial power exercised in constant light is linked to an endless extraction of knowledge. That is to say, the center of power is, at the same time, the center of uninterrupted assessment, of the transcription of individual behavior. The codification and assessment of everything individuals are
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doing in their cells; the accumulation ol knowledge and the constitution oi sequences and series that will characterize these individuals; and a written, centralized individuality constituted in terms of a general network, forms the documentary double, the written ectoplasm, of the body's placement in its cell.
The first effect of this relationship ol power is therefore the constitu tion of this permanent knowledge of the individual--pinned in a given space and followed by a potentially continuous gaze--which dehnes the temporal curve of his development, his cure, his acquisition of knowl edge, or the acknowledgement of his error, and so forth. As you can see, the Panopticon is therefore an apparatus of both individualization and knowledge; it is an apparatus of both knowledge and power that indi vidualizes on one side, and which, by individualizing, knows. Hence Bentham's idea of using it as an instrument for what he called "discov ery in metaphysics. " He thought that the panoptic apparatus could be used to conduct metaphysical experiments on children. Imagine taking foundlings, he said, right Irom birth, and putting them in a panoptic system, even before they have begun to talk or be aware of anything. In this way, Bentham says, we could follow "the genealogy of each observ able idea"27 and, as a result, repeat experimentally what CondiUac deduced without any equipment for metaphysical experimentation. 28 As well as verifying Condillac's genetic conception, we could also verify the technological ideal of Helvetius when he said, "anyone can be taught anything. "29 Is this fundamental proposition for the possible translor- mation of humanity true or false? An experiment with a panoptic system would suffice to find out; different things could be taught to different children in different cells; we could teach no matter what to no matter which child, and we would see the result. In this way we could raise children in completely different systems, or even systems incom patible with each other; some would be taught the Newtonian system, and then others would be got to believe that the moon is made of cheese. When they were eighteen or twenty, they would be put together to discuss the question. We could also teach two different sorts of mathe- matics to children, one in which two plus two make four and another in which they don't make four; and then we would wait again until their twentieth year when they would be put together for discussions. And,
? Bentham says, clearly having a bit of fun, this would be more worth while than paying people to give sermons, lectures, or arguments; we could have a direct experiment. Finally, of course, he says it would be necessary to conduct an experiment on boys and girls in which they are put together until they reach adolescence to see what happens. You see that this is the same story as La Dispute by Marivaux: a kind of panoptic drama that we find again, basically, in the piece by Marivaux. 50
At any rate, you can see that the Panopticon is the formal schema for the constitution of an individualizing power and for knowledge about individuals. I think that the principal mechanisms of the panoptic schema, which we find at work in Bentham's Panopticon, are found again in most ol the institutions which, as schools, barracks, hospitals, prisons, reformatories, etcetera, are sites both for the exercise of power and for the formation of a certain knowledge about man. It seems to me that the panoptic mechanism provides the common thread to what could be called the power exercised on man as a lorce of work and knowledge of man as an individual. So that panopticism could, I think, appear and function withm our society as a general form; we could speak equally of a disciplinary society or of a panoptic society. We live within generalized panopticism by virtue of the lact that we live within a disciplinary system.
You will say that this is all very well, but can we really say that disciplinary apparatuses have extended over the whole of society, and that the mechanisms, apparatuses and powers of sovereignty have been eliminated by disciplinary mechanisms?
Just as the disciplinary type of power existed in medieval societies, in which schemas of sovereignty were nevertheless prevalent, so too, I think, forms of the power of sovereignty can still be found in contem- porary society. Where do we find them? Well, I would find them in the only institution in the traditional dynasty of schools, barracks, prisons and so forth, that I have not yet spoken about, and the absence of which may have surprised you; I mean the family. I was going to say that the iamily is a remnant, but this is not entirely the case. At any rate, it seems to me that the family is a sort of cell within which the power exercised is not, as one usually says, disciplinary, but rather of the same type as the power of sovereignty.
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I do not think it is true that the family served as the model for the asylum, school, barracks, or workshop. Actually, it seems to me that nothing in the way the family functions enables us to see any continuity between the family and the institutions, the disciplinary apparatuses, I am talking about. Instead, what do we see in the family if not a function of maximum individualization on the side of the person who exercises power, that is to say, on the father's side? The anonymity of power, the ribbon of undifferentiated power which unwinds indefinitely in a panoptic system, is utterly foreign to the constitution of the family in which the father, as bearer of the name, and insofar as he exercises power in his name, is the most intense pole of individualization, much more intense than the wife or children. So, in the family you have individualization at the top, which recalls and is of the very same type as the power of sovereignty, the complete opposite of disciplinary power.
Second, in the family there is constant reference to a type of bond, of commitment, and of dependence established once and for all in the form of marriage or birth. And it is this reference to the earlier act, to the status conferred once and for all, which gives the family its solidity; mechanisms of supervision are only grafted on to it, and membership of the family continues to hold even when these mechanisms do not function. Supervision is not constitutive of but supplementary to the family, whereas permanent supervision is absolutely constitutive of disciplinary systems.
Finally, in the family there is all that entanglement of what could be called heterotopic relationships: an entanglement of local, contractual bonds, bonds of property, and of personal and collective commitments, which recalls the power of sovereignty rather than the monotony and isotopy of disciplinary systems. So that, for my part, I would put the functioning and microphysics of the family completely on the side of the power of sovereignty, and not at all on that of disciplinary power. To my mind this does not mean that the family is the residue, the anachronis- tic or, at any rate, historical residue of a system in which society was completely penetrated by the apparatuses of sovereignty. It seems to me that the family is not a residue, a vestige of sovereignty, but rather an essential component, and an increasingly essential component, of the disciplinary system.
? Inasmuch as the family conforms to the non disciplinary schema of an apparatus (dispositif) of sovereignty, I think we could say that it is the hinge, the interlocking point, which is absolutely indispensable to the very functioning of all the disciplinary systems. I mean that the family is the instance of constraint that will permanently fix individuals to their disciplinary apparatuses (appartils), which will inject them, so to speak, into the disciplinary apparatuses (appareils). It is because there is the family, it is because you have this system of sovereignty operating in society in the form of the family, that the obligation to attend school works and children, individuals, these somatic singularities, are fixed and finally individualized within the school system. Does obligatory school attendance require the continued functioning of this sovereignty, the sovereignty of the family? Look at how, historically, the obligation of military service was imposed on people who clearly had no reason to want to do their military service: it is solely because the State put pressure on the family as a small community of father, mother, brothers and sisters, etcetera, that the obligation of military service had real constraining force and individuals could be plugged into this discipli- nary system and taken into its possession. What meaning would the obligation to work have if individuals were not first of all held withm the family's system of sovereignty, within this system of commitments and obligations, which means that things like help to other members of the family and the obligation to provide them with food are taken for granted? Fixation on the disciplinary system of work is only achieved insofar as the sovereignty of the family plays a full role. The first role of the family with regard to disciplinary apparatuses (appareils), therefore, is this kind of pinning of individuals to the disciplinary apparatus (appareil).
I think it also has another function, which is that it is the zero point, as it were, where the different disciplinary systems hitch up with each other. It is the switch point, the junction ensuring passage from one dis ciplinary system to another, from one apparatus (dispositif) to another. The best proof of this is that when an individual is rejected as abnormal Irom a disciplinary system, where is he sent? To his family. When a number of disciplinary systems successively reject him as inassimilable, incapable of being disciplined, or uneducable, he is sent back to the
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family, and the family's role at this point is to reject him in turn as incapable of being fixed to any disciplinary system, and to get rid of him either by consigning him to pathology, or by abandoning him to delin- quency, etcetera. It is the sensitive element that makes it possible to determine those individuals inassimilable to any system of discipline, those who cannot pass from one system to the other and must finally be rejected from society to enter new disciplinary systems intended for this purpose.
The family, therefore, has this double role of pinning individuals to disciplinary systems, and of linking up disciplinary systems and circu- lating individuals from one to the other. To that extent I think we can say that the family is indispensable to the functioning of disciplinary systems because it is a cell of sovereignty, just as the king's body, the multiplicity of the king's bodies, was necessary for the mutual adjustment of heterotopic sovereignties in the game of societies of sovereignty. 51 What the king's body was in societies of mechanisms of sovereignty, the family is in societies of disciplinary systems.
To what does this correspond, historically? I think we can say that in systems in which the type of power was essentially that of sovereignty, in which power was exercised through apparatuses of sovereignty, the family was one of these apparatuses and was therefore very strong. The medieval family, as well as the family of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, were actually strong families owing their strength to their homogeneity with the other systems of sovereignty. However, to the extent that the family was thus homogeneous with all the other apparatuses of sovereignty, you can see that basically it had no sped ficity, no precise limits. That is why the family's roots spread far and wide, but it was quickly silted up and its borders were never well deter- mined. It merged into a whole series of other relationships with which it was very close because they were of the same type: relationships of suzerain to vassal, of membership of corporations, etcetera, so that the family was strong because it resembled other types of power, but for the same reason it was at the same time imprecise and fuzzy.
On the other hand, in our kind of society, that is to say, in a society in which there is a disciplinary type of microphysics of power, the fam- ily has not been dissolved by discipline; it is concentrated, limited, and
? intensified. Consider the role played by the civil code with regard to the lamily. There are historians who will tell you that the civil code has given the maximum to the lamily; others say that it has reduced the power of the lamily. In fact, the role of the civil code has been to limit the family while, at the same time, delining, concentrating, and intensi- fying it. Thanks to the civil code the family preserved the schemas of sovereignty: domination, membership, bonds ol suzerainty, etcetera, but it limited them to the relationships between men and women and par ents and children. The civil code redefined the family around this micro - cell of married couple and parents and children, thus giving it maximum intensity. It constituted an alveolus ol sovereignty through the game by which individual singularities are lixed to disciplinary apparatuses.
This intense alveolus, this strong cell, was necessary lor bringing into play the major disciplinary systems that had invalidated the systems ol sovereignty and made them disappear. I think this explains two phenomena.
The first is the very strong refamilialization we see in the nineteenth century, and particularly in the classes in society in which the lamily was in the process of breaking up and discipline was indispensable-- basically, in the working class. At the time when, in the nineteenth century, the European proletariat was being formed, conditions of work and housing, movements of the labor force, and the use of child labor, all made family relationships increasingly fragile and disabled the family structure. In lact, at the beginning ol the nineteenth century, entire bands of children, young people, and transhumant workers were living in dormitories and forming communities, which then immediately disintegrated. There was an increasing number ol natural children, loundlings, and infanticides, etcetera. Faced with this immediate conse- quence of the constitution of the proletariat, very early on, around 1820-1825, there was a major effort to reconstitute the family; employers, philanthropists, and public authorities used every possible means to reconstitute the family, to force workers to live in couples, to marry, have children and to recognize their children. The employers even made financial sacrifices in order to achieve this refamilialization of working class life. Around 1830-1835, the first workers' cities were constructed
at Mulhouse. 52 People were given houses in which to reconstitute a
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family, and crusades were organized against those who lived as man and wife without really being married. In short, there were a series of arrangements that were disciplinary.
Equally, in some towns, those living together without being properly married were rejected by workshops. There was a series of disciplinary apparatuses, which functioned as disciplinary apparatuses, within the workshop, in the factory, or in their margins anyway. But the function of these disciplinary apparatuses was to reconstitute the family cell. Or rather, their function was to constitute a family cell conforming to a mechanism that is not itself disciplinary but belongs, precisely, to the order of sovereignty, as if--and this is no doubt the reason--the only way disciplinary mechanisms could effectively function and get a grip with maximum intensity and effectiveness was if, alongside them, and to fix individuals, there was this cell of sovereignty constituted by the family. So, between familial sovereignty and disciplinary panopticism, the form of which is, I think, completely different from that of the family cell, there is a permanent game of cross-reference and transfer. In the course of the nineteenth century, in this project of refamilialization, the family, this cell of sovereignty is constantly being secreted by the disciplinary tissue, because however external it may be to the disciplinary system, however heterogeneous it may be because it is heterogeneous to the disciplinary system, it is in fact an element of that system's solidity
The other consequence is that when the family breaks down and no longer performs its function--and this also appears very clearly in the nineteenth century--a whole series of disciplinary apparatuses are established to make up for the family's failure: homes for foundlings, orphanages, the opening, around 1840-1845, of a series of homes for young delinquents, for what will be called children at risk, and so on. 33 In short, the function of everything we call social assistance, all the social work which appears at the start of the nineteenth century,3^ and which will acquire the importance we know it to have, is to constitute a kind of disciplinary tissue which will be able to stand in for the family, to both reconstitute the family and enable one to do without it.
This was how young delinquents, most without a family, were placed at Mettray for example. They were regimented in an absolutely military, that is to say, disciplinary, non-familial way. Then, at the same time,
? within this substitute for the family, within this disciplinary system which rushes in where there is no longer a family, there is a constant reference to the family, since the supervisors, the chiefs, etcetera, are called father, or grandfather, and the completely militarized groups of children, who operate in the manner of decunes, are supposed to constitute a family. 35
You have here then a [sort]* of disciplinary network which rushes in where the family is failing and which, as a result, constitutes the advance of a State controlled power where there is no longer a family. However, this advance of disciplinary systems never takes place without reference to the family, without a quasi or pseudo familial mode of functioning. I think this is a typical phenomenon of the necessary function of famil ial sovereignty with regard to disciplinary mechanisms.
What I will call the Psy function, that is to say, the psychiatric, psychopathological, psycho sociological, psycho-criminological, and psychoanalytic function, makes its appearance in this organization of disciplinary substitutes for the family with a familial reference. And when I say "function," I mean not only the discourse, but the institu- tion, and the psychological individual himself. And I think this really is the function of these psychologists, psychotherapists, criminologists, psychoanalysts, and the rest. What is their function if not to be agents of the organization of a disciplinary apparatus that will plug in, rush in, where an opening gapes in familial sovereignty?
Consider what has taken place historically. The Psy-function was clearly born by way of psychiatry. That is to say, it was born at the beginning of the nineteenth century, on the other side of the family, in a kind of vis-a-vis with the family. When an individual escaped from the sovereignty of the family, he was put in a psychiatric hospital where it was a matter of training him in the apprenticeship of pure and simple discipline, some examples of which I gave you in the previous lectures, and where, gradually, throughout the nineteenth century, you see the birth of reler- ence to the family. Psychiatry gradually puts itself forward as the insti tutional enterprise of discipline that will make possible the individual's refamilialization.
* (Recording:) kind, a constitution
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The Psy-lunction is therefore born in this kind of vis a vis with the family. The family requested confinement and the individual was placed under psychiatric discipline and supposed to be refamiliahzed. Then, gradually, the Psy-function was extended to all the disciplinary systems: school, army, workshop, and so forth. That is to say, the Psy function performed the role ol discipline for all those who could not be disci- plined. Whenever an individual could not follow school discipline or the discipline of the workshop, the army, and, if it comes to it, of prison, then the Psy function stepped in. And it came in with a discourse attributing the individual's inability to be disciplined to the deficiency and failure of the family. This is how, in the second hall ol the nineteenth century, you see full responsibility for the individual's lack of discipline being laid at the door of familial deficiency. Then, finally, at the start of the twentieth century, the Psy function became both the discourse and the control of all the disciplinary systems. The Psy-function was the discourse and the establishment of all the schemas for the mdividual- ization, normalization, and subjection of individuals within disciplinary systems.
This is how psycho-pedagogy appears within school discipline, the psychology of work within workshop discipline, criminology withm prison discipline, and psychopathology within psychiatric and asylum discipline. The Psy-function is, then, the agency of control of all the disciplinary institutions and apparatuses, and, at the same time and without any contradiction, it holds forth with the discourse of the family. At every moment, as psycho-pedagogy, as psychology of work, as crimi- nology, as psychopathology, and so forth, what it refers to, the truth it constitutes and forms, and which marks out its system of reference, is always the family. Its constant system of reference is the family, familial sov- ereignty, and it is so to the same extent as it is the theoretical authority for every disciplinary apparatus.
The Psy function is precisely what reveals that familial sovereignty belongs profoundly to the disciplinary apparatuses. The kind ol hetero geneity that seems to me to exist between familial sovereignty and dis ciplinary apparatuses is functional. And psychological discourse, the psychological institution, and psychological man are connected up to this function. Psychology as institution, as body of the individual, and as
? discourse, will endlessly control the
one hand, and, on the other, refer
the authority of truth on the basis
describe and define all the positive or negative processes which take place in the disciplinary apparatuses.
It is not surprising that, from the middle of the twentieth century, the discourse of the family, the most "family discourse" of all psycho- logical discourses, that is to say, psychoanalysis, can function as the dis- course of truth on the basis of which all disciplinary institutions can be analyzed. And if what I am telling you is true, this is why you can see that a truth formed on the basis of the discourse of the family cannot be deployed as a critique of the institution, or of school, psychiatric, or other forms of discipline. To refamilialize the psychiatric institution, to refamihalize psychiatric intervention, to criticize the practice, institu- tion, and discipline of psychiatry or the school in the name of a dis course of truth which has the family as its reference, is not to undertake the critique of discipline at all, but to return endlessly to discipline. *
By appealing to the sovereignty of the family relationship, rather than escape the mechanism of discipline, we reinforce this interplay between familial sovereignty and disciplinary functioning, which seems to me typical ot contemporary society and of that residual appearance of sover eignty in the family, which may seem surprising when we compare it to the disciplinary system, but which seems to me in fact to function quite directly in harmony with it.
* The manuscript refers to the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattan, UAnti-GLdipe, volume 1 of, Capitalisms et Schizophrenic (Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1972), English translation by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen Lane (New York: Viking, 1977), and R. Castef, Le Psychanalysme (Paris: Maspero, 1973).
28 November 1973 87
disciplinary apparatuses on the back to familial sovereignty as of which it will be possible to
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1. Foucault is alluding here to the various reforms which, judging the Benedictine communi
ties too open to society and reproaching them lor having lost the spirit of penitential monasticism, sought to satisly the requirements ol Saint Benedict's rule. See, U. Berliere, L'Ordre monastique des origines au XII' siecle (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1921); L'Ascese benedictine des origines a laJin du XII1 siecle (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1927); and, "L'etude des reformes monastiques des Xc et XI1' siecles" Bulletin de la classe des Letlres ct des Sciences morales et politiques (Brussels: Academie royalc de Belgique, 1932) vol. 18; E. Werner, Die Gesellschaftlichen grundlagender Klosterreform im XL Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1953); J. Lecler, S. J. , "La crise du monachisme aux X P XII1 siecles" in Aux sources de la spiritualite chretienne (Paris: Ed du Cerl, 1964). On the monastic orders in general, see P. Helyot and others, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux, ou Histoire des ordres monastiques, religieux et mililaires, in 4 volumes (Pans: Ed. du Petit Montrouge, 1847); P- Cousin, Precis d'hisloire monastique (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1956); D. Knowles, "Les siecles monastiques" in D. Knowles and D.
Obolensky, Nouvelle Histoire de I'Eglise, volume 2: he Moyen Age (600-1500), trans. L Jezequel (Paris: Le Seuil, 1968) pp. 223 240; and M. Pacaut, Les Ordres monastiques et religieux au Moyen Age (Paris: Nathan, 1970).
2. Founded in 910 in the Maconnais, the Cluny order, living under Saint Benedict's rule, developed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in symbiosis with the seigniorial class, Irom which most of the abbots and prioresses came. See R. P. Helyot and others, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 1002 1036; U. Berliere, L'Ordre monastique, ch. 4, "Cluny et la reforme monastique" pp. 168 197; G. de Valous, Le Monachisme clunisien des origines au XV'. Vie inlerieure des monasteres el organisation de I'ordre, Vol. II, L'Ordre de Cluny (Pans: A. Picard, 1970); and "Cluny" in Cardinal A. Baudrillart, ed. Dictionnaire d'hisloire
et de geographic ecclesiastiques (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1956) vol. 2, col. 35 174; P. Cousin, Precis d'hisloire monastique, p. 5; and A. H. Bredero, "Cluny et Citeaux au XIP siecle. Les origines de la controverse" Studi Medievali, 1971, pp. 135-176.
3. Citeaux, founded on 21 March 1098 by Robert de Molesmes (1028 1111), separated from
the Cluny order in order to return to strict observance of Saint Benedict's rule, emphasiz
ing poverty, silence, work, and renunciation ol the world. See, R. P. Helyot and others, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 920 959; U. Berliere, "Les origines de I'ordre de Citeaux de I'ordre benedictin au XIP siecle" Revue d'hisloire ecclesiastiquc, I900, pp. 448 471 and 1901, pp. 253 290; J. Besse, "Cisterciens" in A. Vacant, ed. Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1905) vol. 2, col. 2532 2550; R. Trilhe, "Citeaux" in
F. Cabrol, ed. Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne el de liturgie (Pans: Letouzey et Ane, 1913) vol. 3, col. 1779 1811; U. Berliere, L'Ordre monastique, pp. 168 197; J. -B. Mahn, L'Ordre cis- tercien et son gouvernement des origines au milieu du XIII1 siecle (1098-1266) (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1945); J . M . Canivez, "Citeaux (Ordre de)" in Cardinal A. Baudrillart, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de geographie ecclesiastiques (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1953) vol. 12, col. 874 997; and L. J. Lekai, Les Moines blancs. Histoire de I'ordre cistercien (Pans: Le Seuil, 1957).
4. In 1215, around the Castillian canon Dominique de Guzman, a community of evangelical preachers, living under the rule of Saint Augustine, was established, which in January 1217 received the name of "Preaching Friars" from Pope Honorius III. See, R. P. Helyot and others, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 86-113; G. R. Galbraith, The Constitution of the Domenican Order, 1216-1360 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925); M. H. Vicaire, Histoire de saint Dominique (Paris: Ed. du Cerf, 1957) in 2 volumes; and Saint Dominique et ses Jreres (Pans: Ed. du Cerf, 1967). See also, P. Mandonnet, "Freres Precheurs" in A. Vacant and E. Mangenot, Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (Pans: Letouzey et Ane, 1905) vol. 6, col. 863 924; R. L. CEchslin, "Freres Precheurs" in A. Rayez, ed. Dictionnaire de spiritualite ascelique et mystique. Doctrine el histoire (Paris: Beauchesne, 1964) vol. 5, col. 1422-1524; and, A. Duval and M. H. Vicaire, "Freres Precheurs (Ordre des)" in Dictionnaire d'hisloire et geographie ecclesiastiques, vol. 18, col. 1369-1426.
5. The order founded at Monte Cassino in 529 by Benedict of Nursie (480-547), who drafted its rule in 534. See, R. P. Helyot, "Benedictins (Ordre des)" in Dictionnaire des ordres religieux vol. 1, col. 416 430; C. Butler, Benedictine Monachism: Studies in Benedictine Life (London: Longmans Green and Co. , 1924), French translation by C. Grolleau, Le Monachisme benedictin (Paris:J. de Gigord, 1924); C. Jean Nesmy, Saint Benoit et la vie monastique (Paris: Le Seuil, 1959); and R. Tschudy, Les Benedictins (Paris: Ed. Saint Paul, 1963).
? 6. Founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola (1491 1556) to pursue the struggle against heresy, the order of Jesuits received the name "Company ot Jesus" from Pope Paul III in his bull Regimini Militantes Ecclesie. See, R. P. Ilelyot and others, Diclionnuire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 628-671; A. Demersay, Histoire physique, economique et politique du Paraguay et des establissemenls des jesuites (Paris: L. Hachette, 1 8 6 0 ) ; J . Brucker, La Compagnie de Jesus. Esquisse de son institut et de son histoire 1521-177} (Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1919); H. Beefier, Die Jesuiten. Geslall und Geschichte des Ordens (Munich: Kosel Verlag, 1951); A. Guillermou, Les Jesuites (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1963).
7. The "mendicant orders" were organized in the thirteenth century with a view to regener ating religious life; professing to live only by public chanty and practicing poverty, they devoted themselves to preaching and teaching. The four first mendicant orders are the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustinians.
For the Dominicans, see above note 4.
Constituted in 1209 by Francis of Assisi, the "Brotherhood of Penitents," devoted to the preaching ol penitence, was transformed into a religious order in 1210 with the name "Friars Minor" (minores: humble) and intending to lead an itinerant life of poverty. See, R. P. Helyot and others, Diclionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 2, col. 326-354; H. C. Lea,
A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1887) vol.
1, ch. 6, "The Mendicant orders," pp. 243-304 (French translation by S. Reinach, Histoire de I'lnquisition au Moyen Age [Pans: Societe nouvelle de hbraine et d'editions, 1 9 0 0 | vol.
1, ch. 6, "Les ordres mendiants"); E. d'Alenc,on, "Freres Mineurs" in Diclionnaire de theolo- giecatholique,vol. 6,col. 809 863;P. Gratien,HistoiredelafondationetderevolutiondeVordre des Freres Mineurs au XVIII1 siecle, (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1928); F. de Sessevalle, Histoire generale de I'ordre de Saint-Francois (Le-Puy en Velay, Ed. de la Revue d'histoire franciscaine, 1935-1937) 2 volumes; and J. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Orderfrom its origins to the Year 7577 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968).
In 1247 Pope Innocent IV entered the order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel into the lamily of "mendicants. " On the Carmelites, founded in 1185 by Berthold de Calabre, see, R. P. Helyot and others, Diclionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 667 705; and, B. Zimmerman, "Carmes (Ordre des)" in Diclionnaire de theologie catholique, op. cil, vol. 2, col. 1776-1792.
Pope Innocent IV decided to unite the hermits of Tuscany into a single community within the framework of the Augustinian order. SeeJ. Besse, "Augustin" in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, vol. 1, col. 2472-2483. On the mendicant orders in general, see--in addition to the chapter devoted to them in H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition, vol. 1, pp. 275 346; Histoire de I'lnquisition, vol. 1, pp. 458-479; F. Vernet, Les Ordres mendiants (Pans: Bloud et Gay, 1933); J. Le Gofl, "Ordres mendiants et urbanisation dans la France medievale" in Annales ESC, no. 5, 1979, Histoire et Urbanisation, pp. 924 965- Foucault returns to the mendicant orders ol the Middle Ages, in the context of an analysis of "cynicism," in the College de France course of 1983 1984, "Le Gouvemement de soi et des autres. Le courage de la vente," lecture ol 29 February 1984.
8. See above, lecture of 21 November 1973, note 4.
9. In 1343 Jan Van Ruysbroek (1294-1381) founded a community at Groenendaal, near
Brussels, which he transformed in March 1350 into a religious order living under the Augustinian rule devoted to the struggle against heresy and lax morality within the Church. See, F. Hermans, Ruysbroek /'Admirable et son ecole (Pans: Fayard, 1958); J. Orcibal,
Jean de la Croix et les mystiques rheno-flamands, and A. Koyre, Mystiques, spirituels, alchimisles du XVIr siecle allemand (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).
10. One of the distinctive features of the schools of the "Brethren ol the Common Lile" was the distribution of students into decurics at the head ol which a decurion was responsible for the supervision ol conduct. See, M. J. Gaulres, "Histoire du plan d'etudes protestant. "
11. "Nowhere does the impression of order and religious emphasis appear better than in the use of time. Early in the morning the inhabitants go to mass, then the children go to school and the adults to the workshop or fields . . . When work has ended, religious exercises begin: the catechism, the rosary, prayers; the end ol the day is free and left for strolling around and sport. A curfew marks the beginning of the night. . . This regime partakes of both the barracks and the monastery. " L. Baudin, Une theocratie socialiste: VEtat jesuite du Paraguay (Paris: M. T.
There is a circular building, the periphery of the Panopticon, within which cells are set, opening both onto the inner side of the ring through an iron grate door and onto the outside through a window. Around the inner circumierence of this ring is a gallery, allowing one to walk around the building, passing each cell. Then there is an empty space and, at its
? center, a tower, a kind of cylindrical construction of several levels at the top o( which is a sort of lantern, that is to say, a large open room, which is such that lrom this central site one can observe everything happening in each cell, just by turning around. This is the schema.
What is the meaning of this schema? Why did it strike minds and why was it seen for so long, wrongly in my view, as a typical example oi eighteenth century Utopias? First, one and only one individual will be placed in each cell. That is to say, in this system, which can be applied to a hospital, a prison, a workshop, a school, and so on, a single person will be placed in each of these boxes; each body will have its place. So there is pinning down in space, and the inspectors gaze will encounter a body in whatever direction taken by his line ol sight. So, the individualizing (unction ol the coordinates are very clear.
This means that in a system like this we are never dealing with a mass, with a group, or even, to tell the truth, with a multiplicity: we are only ever dealing with individuals. Even il a collective order is given through a megaphone, addressed to everyone at the same time and obeyed by everyone at the same time, the (act remains that this collec tive order is only ever addressed to individuals and is only ever received by individuals placed alongside each other. All collective phenomena, all the phenomena of multiplicities, are thus completely abolished. And, as Bentham says with satisfaction, in schools there will no longer be the "cribbing" that is the beginning of immorality;22 in workshops there will be no more collective distraction, songs, or strikes;2* in prisons, no more collusion;2'1 and in asylums for the mentally ill, no more of those phenomena ol collective irritation and imitation, etcetera. 25
You can see how the whole network of group communication, all those collective phenomena, which are perceived in a sort of interdepen- dent schema as being as much medical contagion as the moral diffusion of evil, will be brought to an end by the panoptic system. One will be dealing with a power which is a comprehensive power over everyone, but which will only ever be directed at series of separate individuals. Power is collective at its center, but it is always individual at the point where it arrives. You can see how we have here the phenomenon of individual ization I was talking about last week. Discipline individualizes below; it individualizes those on whom it is brought to bear.
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As for the central cell, this kind of lantern, I told you that it was entirely glazed; in fact Bentham stresses that it should not be glazed or, if it is, one should install a system of blinds, which can be raised and lowered, and the room be fitted with intersecting, mobile partitions. This is so that surveillance can be exercised in such a way that those who are being supervised cannot tell whether or not they are being supervised; that is to say, they must not be able to see if there is anyone in the cen- tral cell. 26 So, on the one hand, the windows of the central cell must be shuttered or darkened, and there must be no backlighting which would enable prisoners to see through this column and see whether or not there is anyone in the central lantern; hence the system of blinds and the internal partitions that can be moved as desired.
So, as you can see, it will be possible for power to be entirely anonymous, as I was saying last week. The director has no body, for the true ellect of the Panopticon is to be such that, even when no one is there, the indi- vidual in his cell must not only think that he is being observed, but know that he is; he must constantly experience himself as visible for a gaze, the real presence or absence of which hardly matters. Power is thereby completely de-individualized. If necessary, the central lantern could be completely empty and power would be exercised just the same.
There is a de-individualization and disembodiment of power, which no longer has a body or individuality, and which can be anyone whom- soever. Furthermore, one of the essential points of the Panopticon is that within the central tower, not only may anyone be there--surveillance may be exercised by the director, but also by his wife, his children, or his servants, etcetera--but an underground passage from outside to the center allows anyone to enter the central tower if they wish and to carry out supervision. This means that any citizen whomsoever must be able to supervise what is going on in the hospital, school, workshop, or prison: supervising what is going on, supervising to check that every thing is in order, and supervising to check that the director is carrying out his functions properly, supervising the supervisor who supervises.
There is a sort of ribbon of power, a continuous, mobile, and anonymous ribbon, which perpetually unwinds within the central tower. Whether it has or does not have a figure, whether or not it has a name, whether or not it is individualized, this anonymous ribbon of power perpetually
? unwinds anyway and is exercised through this game of invisibility. What's more, this is what Bentham calls "democracy," since anyone can occupy the place of power and power is not the property of anyone since everyone can enter the tower and supervise the way in which power is exercised, so that power is constantly subject to control. Finally, power is as visible in its invisible center as those who occupy the cells; and, due to this, power supervised by anyone really is the democratization of the exercise of power.
Another feature of the Panopticon is that, to make the interior of the cells visible, on the side facing inwards there is, of course, a door with a window, but there is also a window on the outer side, indispensable for producing an effect of transparency and so that the gaze of the person in the central tower can pass through all the cells from one side to the other, seeing against the light everything the person--student, patient, worker, prisoner, or whomsoever--is doing in the cell. So the condition of permanent visibility is absolutely constitutive of the individual's sit uation in the Panopticon. You can see that the relationship of power really does have that immateriality I was just talking about, for power is exercised simply by this play of light; it is exercised by the glance from center to periphery, which can, at every moment, observe, judge, record, and punish at the first gesture, the first attitude, the first distraction. This power needs no instrument; its sole support is sight and light.
Panopticon means two things. It means that everything is seen all the time, but it also means that the power exercised is only ever an optical effect. The power is without materiality; it has no need of all that sym bolic and real armature of sovereign power; it does not need to hold the scepter in its hand or wield the sword to punish; it does not need to intervene like a bolt of lightning in the manner of the sovereign. This power belongs rather to the realm of the sun, of never ending light; it is the non material illumination that falls equally on all those on whom it is exercised.
Finally, the last feature of this Panopticon is that this immaterial power exercised in constant light is linked to an endless extraction of knowledge. That is to say, the center of power is, at the same time, the center of uninterrupted assessment, of the transcription of individual behavior. The codification and assessment of everything individuals are
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doing in their cells; the accumulation ol knowledge and the constitution oi sequences and series that will characterize these individuals; and a written, centralized individuality constituted in terms of a general network, forms the documentary double, the written ectoplasm, of the body's placement in its cell.
The first effect of this relationship ol power is therefore the constitu tion of this permanent knowledge of the individual--pinned in a given space and followed by a potentially continuous gaze--which dehnes the temporal curve of his development, his cure, his acquisition of knowl edge, or the acknowledgement of his error, and so forth. As you can see, the Panopticon is therefore an apparatus of both individualization and knowledge; it is an apparatus of both knowledge and power that indi vidualizes on one side, and which, by individualizing, knows. Hence Bentham's idea of using it as an instrument for what he called "discov ery in metaphysics. " He thought that the panoptic apparatus could be used to conduct metaphysical experiments on children. Imagine taking foundlings, he said, right Irom birth, and putting them in a panoptic system, even before they have begun to talk or be aware of anything. In this way, Bentham says, we could follow "the genealogy of each observ able idea"27 and, as a result, repeat experimentally what CondiUac deduced without any equipment for metaphysical experimentation. 28 As well as verifying Condillac's genetic conception, we could also verify the technological ideal of Helvetius when he said, "anyone can be taught anything. "29 Is this fundamental proposition for the possible translor- mation of humanity true or false? An experiment with a panoptic system would suffice to find out; different things could be taught to different children in different cells; we could teach no matter what to no matter which child, and we would see the result. In this way we could raise children in completely different systems, or even systems incom patible with each other; some would be taught the Newtonian system, and then others would be got to believe that the moon is made of cheese. When they were eighteen or twenty, they would be put together to discuss the question. We could also teach two different sorts of mathe- matics to children, one in which two plus two make four and another in which they don't make four; and then we would wait again until their twentieth year when they would be put together for discussions. And,
? Bentham says, clearly having a bit of fun, this would be more worth while than paying people to give sermons, lectures, or arguments; we could have a direct experiment. Finally, of course, he says it would be necessary to conduct an experiment on boys and girls in which they are put together until they reach adolescence to see what happens. You see that this is the same story as La Dispute by Marivaux: a kind of panoptic drama that we find again, basically, in the piece by Marivaux. 50
At any rate, you can see that the Panopticon is the formal schema for the constitution of an individualizing power and for knowledge about individuals. I think that the principal mechanisms of the panoptic schema, which we find at work in Bentham's Panopticon, are found again in most ol the institutions which, as schools, barracks, hospitals, prisons, reformatories, etcetera, are sites both for the exercise of power and for the formation of a certain knowledge about man. It seems to me that the panoptic mechanism provides the common thread to what could be called the power exercised on man as a lorce of work and knowledge of man as an individual. So that panopticism could, I think, appear and function withm our society as a general form; we could speak equally of a disciplinary society or of a panoptic society. We live within generalized panopticism by virtue of the lact that we live within a disciplinary system.
You will say that this is all very well, but can we really say that disciplinary apparatuses have extended over the whole of society, and that the mechanisms, apparatuses and powers of sovereignty have been eliminated by disciplinary mechanisms?
Just as the disciplinary type of power existed in medieval societies, in which schemas of sovereignty were nevertheless prevalent, so too, I think, forms of the power of sovereignty can still be found in contem- porary society. Where do we find them? Well, I would find them in the only institution in the traditional dynasty of schools, barracks, prisons and so forth, that I have not yet spoken about, and the absence of which may have surprised you; I mean the family. I was going to say that the iamily is a remnant, but this is not entirely the case. At any rate, it seems to me that the family is a sort of cell within which the power exercised is not, as one usually says, disciplinary, but rather of the same type as the power of sovereignty.
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I do not think it is true that the family served as the model for the asylum, school, barracks, or workshop. Actually, it seems to me that nothing in the way the family functions enables us to see any continuity between the family and the institutions, the disciplinary apparatuses, I am talking about. Instead, what do we see in the family if not a function of maximum individualization on the side of the person who exercises power, that is to say, on the father's side? The anonymity of power, the ribbon of undifferentiated power which unwinds indefinitely in a panoptic system, is utterly foreign to the constitution of the family in which the father, as bearer of the name, and insofar as he exercises power in his name, is the most intense pole of individualization, much more intense than the wife or children. So, in the family you have individualization at the top, which recalls and is of the very same type as the power of sovereignty, the complete opposite of disciplinary power.
Second, in the family there is constant reference to a type of bond, of commitment, and of dependence established once and for all in the form of marriage or birth. And it is this reference to the earlier act, to the status conferred once and for all, which gives the family its solidity; mechanisms of supervision are only grafted on to it, and membership of the family continues to hold even when these mechanisms do not function. Supervision is not constitutive of but supplementary to the family, whereas permanent supervision is absolutely constitutive of disciplinary systems.
Finally, in the family there is all that entanglement of what could be called heterotopic relationships: an entanglement of local, contractual bonds, bonds of property, and of personal and collective commitments, which recalls the power of sovereignty rather than the monotony and isotopy of disciplinary systems. So that, for my part, I would put the functioning and microphysics of the family completely on the side of the power of sovereignty, and not at all on that of disciplinary power. To my mind this does not mean that the family is the residue, the anachronis- tic or, at any rate, historical residue of a system in which society was completely penetrated by the apparatuses of sovereignty. It seems to me that the family is not a residue, a vestige of sovereignty, but rather an essential component, and an increasingly essential component, of the disciplinary system.
? Inasmuch as the family conforms to the non disciplinary schema of an apparatus (dispositif) of sovereignty, I think we could say that it is the hinge, the interlocking point, which is absolutely indispensable to the very functioning of all the disciplinary systems. I mean that the family is the instance of constraint that will permanently fix individuals to their disciplinary apparatuses (appartils), which will inject them, so to speak, into the disciplinary apparatuses (appareils). It is because there is the family, it is because you have this system of sovereignty operating in society in the form of the family, that the obligation to attend school works and children, individuals, these somatic singularities, are fixed and finally individualized within the school system. Does obligatory school attendance require the continued functioning of this sovereignty, the sovereignty of the family? Look at how, historically, the obligation of military service was imposed on people who clearly had no reason to want to do their military service: it is solely because the State put pressure on the family as a small community of father, mother, brothers and sisters, etcetera, that the obligation of military service had real constraining force and individuals could be plugged into this discipli- nary system and taken into its possession. What meaning would the obligation to work have if individuals were not first of all held withm the family's system of sovereignty, within this system of commitments and obligations, which means that things like help to other members of the family and the obligation to provide them with food are taken for granted? Fixation on the disciplinary system of work is only achieved insofar as the sovereignty of the family plays a full role. The first role of the family with regard to disciplinary apparatuses (appareils), therefore, is this kind of pinning of individuals to the disciplinary apparatus (appareil).
I think it also has another function, which is that it is the zero point, as it were, where the different disciplinary systems hitch up with each other. It is the switch point, the junction ensuring passage from one dis ciplinary system to another, from one apparatus (dispositif) to another. The best proof of this is that when an individual is rejected as abnormal Irom a disciplinary system, where is he sent? To his family. When a number of disciplinary systems successively reject him as inassimilable, incapable of being disciplined, or uneducable, he is sent back to the
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family, and the family's role at this point is to reject him in turn as incapable of being fixed to any disciplinary system, and to get rid of him either by consigning him to pathology, or by abandoning him to delin- quency, etcetera. It is the sensitive element that makes it possible to determine those individuals inassimilable to any system of discipline, those who cannot pass from one system to the other and must finally be rejected from society to enter new disciplinary systems intended for this purpose.
The family, therefore, has this double role of pinning individuals to disciplinary systems, and of linking up disciplinary systems and circu- lating individuals from one to the other. To that extent I think we can say that the family is indispensable to the functioning of disciplinary systems because it is a cell of sovereignty, just as the king's body, the multiplicity of the king's bodies, was necessary for the mutual adjustment of heterotopic sovereignties in the game of societies of sovereignty. 51 What the king's body was in societies of mechanisms of sovereignty, the family is in societies of disciplinary systems.
To what does this correspond, historically? I think we can say that in systems in which the type of power was essentially that of sovereignty, in which power was exercised through apparatuses of sovereignty, the family was one of these apparatuses and was therefore very strong. The medieval family, as well as the family of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, were actually strong families owing their strength to their homogeneity with the other systems of sovereignty. However, to the extent that the family was thus homogeneous with all the other apparatuses of sovereignty, you can see that basically it had no sped ficity, no precise limits. That is why the family's roots spread far and wide, but it was quickly silted up and its borders were never well deter- mined. It merged into a whole series of other relationships with which it was very close because they were of the same type: relationships of suzerain to vassal, of membership of corporations, etcetera, so that the family was strong because it resembled other types of power, but for the same reason it was at the same time imprecise and fuzzy.
On the other hand, in our kind of society, that is to say, in a society in which there is a disciplinary type of microphysics of power, the fam- ily has not been dissolved by discipline; it is concentrated, limited, and
? intensified. Consider the role played by the civil code with regard to the lamily. There are historians who will tell you that the civil code has given the maximum to the lamily; others say that it has reduced the power of the lamily. In fact, the role of the civil code has been to limit the family while, at the same time, delining, concentrating, and intensi- fying it. Thanks to the civil code the family preserved the schemas of sovereignty: domination, membership, bonds ol suzerainty, etcetera, but it limited them to the relationships between men and women and par ents and children. The civil code redefined the family around this micro - cell of married couple and parents and children, thus giving it maximum intensity. It constituted an alveolus ol sovereignty through the game by which individual singularities are lixed to disciplinary apparatuses.
This intense alveolus, this strong cell, was necessary lor bringing into play the major disciplinary systems that had invalidated the systems ol sovereignty and made them disappear. I think this explains two phenomena.
The first is the very strong refamilialization we see in the nineteenth century, and particularly in the classes in society in which the lamily was in the process of breaking up and discipline was indispensable-- basically, in the working class. At the time when, in the nineteenth century, the European proletariat was being formed, conditions of work and housing, movements of the labor force, and the use of child labor, all made family relationships increasingly fragile and disabled the family structure. In lact, at the beginning ol the nineteenth century, entire bands of children, young people, and transhumant workers were living in dormitories and forming communities, which then immediately disintegrated. There was an increasing number ol natural children, loundlings, and infanticides, etcetera. Faced with this immediate conse- quence of the constitution of the proletariat, very early on, around 1820-1825, there was a major effort to reconstitute the family; employers, philanthropists, and public authorities used every possible means to reconstitute the family, to force workers to live in couples, to marry, have children and to recognize their children. The employers even made financial sacrifices in order to achieve this refamilialization of working class life. Around 1830-1835, the first workers' cities were constructed
at Mulhouse. 52 People were given houses in which to reconstitute a
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family, and crusades were organized against those who lived as man and wife without really being married. In short, there were a series of arrangements that were disciplinary.
Equally, in some towns, those living together without being properly married were rejected by workshops. There was a series of disciplinary apparatuses, which functioned as disciplinary apparatuses, within the workshop, in the factory, or in their margins anyway. But the function of these disciplinary apparatuses was to reconstitute the family cell. Or rather, their function was to constitute a family cell conforming to a mechanism that is not itself disciplinary but belongs, precisely, to the order of sovereignty, as if--and this is no doubt the reason--the only way disciplinary mechanisms could effectively function and get a grip with maximum intensity and effectiveness was if, alongside them, and to fix individuals, there was this cell of sovereignty constituted by the family. So, between familial sovereignty and disciplinary panopticism, the form of which is, I think, completely different from that of the family cell, there is a permanent game of cross-reference and transfer. In the course of the nineteenth century, in this project of refamilialization, the family, this cell of sovereignty is constantly being secreted by the disciplinary tissue, because however external it may be to the disciplinary system, however heterogeneous it may be because it is heterogeneous to the disciplinary system, it is in fact an element of that system's solidity
The other consequence is that when the family breaks down and no longer performs its function--and this also appears very clearly in the nineteenth century--a whole series of disciplinary apparatuses are established to make up for the family's failure: homes for foundlings, orphanages, the opening, around 1840-1845, of a series of homes for young delinquents, for what will be called children at risk, and so on. 33 In short, the function of everything we call social assistance, all the social work which appears at the start of the nineteenth century,3^ and which will acquire the importance we know it to have, is to constitute a kind of disciplinary tissue which will be able to stand in for the family, to both reconstitute the family and enable one to do without it.
This was how young delinquents, most without a family, were placed at Mettray for example. They were regimented in an absolutely military, that is to say, disciplinary, non-familial way. Then, at the same time,
? within this substitute for the family, within this disciplinary system which rushes in where there is no longer a family, there is a constant reference to the family, since the supervisors, the chiefs, etcetera, are called father, or grandfather, and the completely militarized groups of children, who operate in the manner of decunes, are supposed to constitute a family. 35
You have here then a [sort]* of disciplinary network which rushes in where the family is failing and which, as a result, constitutes the advance of a State controlled power where there is no longer a family. However, this advance of disciplinary systems never takes place without reference to the family, without a quasi or pseudo familial mode of functioning. I think this is a typical phenomenon of the necessary function of famil ial sovereignty with regard to disciplinary mechanisms.
What I will call the Psy function, that is to say, the psychiatric, psychopathological, psycho sociological, psycho-criminological, and psychoanalytic function, makes its appearance in this organization of disciplinary substitutes for the family with a familial reference. And when I say "function," I mean not only the discourse, but the institu- tion, and the psychological individual himself. And I think this really is the function of these psychologists, psychotherapists, criminologists, psychoanalysts, and the rest. What is their function if not to be agents of the organization of a disciplinary apparatus that will plug in, rush in, where an opening gapes in familial sovereignty?
Consider what has taken place historically. The Psy-function was clearly born by way of psychiatry. That is to say, it was born at the beginning of the nineteenth century, on the other side of the family, in a kind of vis-a-vis with the family. When an individual escaped from the sovereignty of the family, he was put in a psychiatric hospital where it was a matter of training him in the apprenticeship of pure and simple discipline, some examples of which I gave you in the previous lectures, and where, gradually, throughout the nineteenth century, you see the birth of reler- ence to the family. Psychiatry gradually puts itself forward as the insti tutional enterprise of discipline that will make possible the individual's refamilialization.
* (Recording:) kind, a constitution
28 November 1973 85
? 86 PSYCHIATRIC POWER
The Psy-lunction is therefore born in this kind of vis a vis with the family. The family requested confinement and the individual was placed under psychiatric discipline and supposed to be refamiliahzed. Then, gradually, the Psy-function was extended to all the disciplinary systems: school, army, workshop, and so forth. That is to say, the Psy function performed the role ol discipline for all those who could not be disci- plined. Whenever an individual could not follow school discipline or the discipline of the workshop, the army, and, if it comes to it, of prison, then the Psy function stepped in. And it came in with a discourse attributing the individual's inability to be disciplined to the deficiency and failure of the family. This is how, in the second hall ol the nineteenth century, you see full responsibility for the individual's lack of discipline being laid at the door of familial deficiency. Then, finally, at the start of the twentieth century, the Psy function became both the discourse and the control of all the disciplinary systems. The Psy-function was the discourse and the establishment of all the schemas for the mdividual- ization, normalization, and subjection of individuals within disciplinary systems.
This is how psycho-pedagogy appears within school discipline, the psychology of work within workshop discipline, criminology withm prison discipline, and psychopathology within psychiatric and asylum discipline. The Psy-function is, then, the agency of control of all the disciplinary institutions and apparatuses, and, at the same time and without any contradiction, it holds forth with the discourse of the family. At every moment, as psycho-pedagogy, as psychology of work, as crimi- nology, as psychopathology, and so forth, what it refers to, the truth it constitutes and forms, and which marks out its system of reference, is always the family. Its constant system of reference is the family, familial sov- ereignty, and it is so to the same extent as it is the theoretical authority for every disciplinary apparatus.
The Psy function is precisely what reveals that familial sovereignty belongs profoundly to the disciplinary apparatuses. The kind ol hetero geneity that seems to me to exist between familial sovereignty and dis ciplinary apparatuses is functional. And psychological discourse, the psychological institution, and psychological man are connected up to this function. Psychology as institution, as body of the individual, and as
? discourse, will endlessly control the
one hand, and, on the other, refer
the authority of truth on the basis
describe and define all the positive or negative processes which take place in the disciplinary apparatuses.
It is not surprising that, from the middle of the twentieth century, the discourse of the family, the most "family discourse" of all psycho- logical discourses, that is to say, psychoanalysis, can function as the dis- course of truth on the basis of which all disciplinary institutions can be analyzed. And if what I am telling you is true, this is why you can see that a truth formed on the basis of the discourse of the family cannot be deployed as a critique of the institution, or of school, psychiatric, or other forms of discipline. To refamilialize the psychiatric institution, to refamihalize psychiatric intervention, to criticize the practice, institu- tion, and discipline of psychiatry or the school in the name of a dis course of truth which has the family as its reference, is not to undertake the critique of discipline at all, but to return endlessly to discipline. *
By appealing to the sovereignty of the family relationship, rather than escape the mechanism of discipline, we reinforce this interplay between familial sovereignty and disciplinary functioning, which seems to me typical ot contemporary society and of that residual appearance of sover eignty in the family, which may seem surprising when we compare it to the disciplinary system, but which seems to me in fact to function quite directly in harmony with it.
* The manuscript refers to the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattan, UAnti-GLdipe, volume 1 of, Capitalisms et Schizophrenic (Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1972), English translation by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen Lane (New York: Viking, 1977), and R. Castef, Le Psychanalysme (Paris: Maspero, 1973).
28 November 1973 87
disciplinary apparatuses on the back to familial sovereignty as of which it will be possible to
? 88 PSYCHIATRIC POWER
1. Foucault is alluding here to the various reforms which, judging the Benedictine communi
ties too open to society and reproaching them lor having lost the spirit of penitential monasticism, sought to satisly the requirements ol Saint Benedict's rule. See, U. Berliere, L'Ordre monastique des origines au XII' siecle (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1921); L'Ascese benedictine des origines a laJin du XII1 siecle (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1927); and, "L'etude des reformes monastiques des Xc et XI1' siecles" Bulletin de la classe des Letlres ct des Sciences morales et politiques (Brussels: Academie royalc de Belgique, 1932) vol. 18; E. Werner, Die Gesellschaftlichen grundlagender Klosterreform im XL Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1953); J. Lecler, S. J. , "La crise du monachisme aux X P XII1 siecles" in Aux sources de la spiritualite chretienne (Paris: Ed du Cerl, 1964). On the monastic orders in general, see P. Helyot and others, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux, ou Histoire des ordres monastiques, religieux et mililaires, in 4 volumes (Pans: Ed. du Petit Montrouge, 1847); P- Cousin, Precis d'hisloire monastique (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1956); D. Knowles, "Les siecles monastiques" in D. Knowles and D.
Obolensky, Nouvelle Histoire de I'Eglise, volume 2: he Moyen Age (600-1500), trans. L Jezequel (Paris: Le Seuil, 1968) pp. 223 240; and M. Pacaut, Les Ordres monastiques et religieux au Moyen Age (Paris: Nathan, 1970).
2. Founded in 910 in the Maconnais, the Cluny order, living under Saint Benedict's rule, developed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in symbiosis with the seigniorial class, Irom which most of the abbots and prioresses came. See R. P. Helyot and others, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 1002 1036; U. Berliere, L'Ordre monastique, ch. 4, "Cluny et la reforme monastique" pp. 168 197; G. de Valous, Le Monachisme clunisien des origines au XV'. Vie inlerieure des monasteres el organisation de I'ordre, Vol. II, L'Ordre de Cluny (Pans: A. Picard, 1970); and "Cluny" in Cardinal A. Baudrillart, ed. Dictionnaire d'hisloire
et de geographic ecclesiastiques (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1956) vol. 2, col. 35 174; P. Cousin, Precis d'hisloire monastique, p. 5; and A. H. Bredero, "Cluny et Citeaux au XIP siecle. Les origines de la controverse" Studi Medievali, 1971, pp. 135-176.
3. Citeaux, founded on 21 March 1098 by Robert de Molesmes (1028 1111), separated from
the Cluny order in order to return to strict observance of Saint Benedict's rule, emphasiz
ing poverty, silence, work, and renunciation ol the world. See, R. P. Helyot and others, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 920 959; U. Berliere, "Les origines de I'ordre de Citeaux de I'ordre benedictin au XIP siecle" Revue d'hisloire ecclesiastiquc, I900, pp. 448 471 and 1901, pp. 253 290; J. Besse, "Cisterciens" in A. Vacant, ed. Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1905) vol. 2, col. 2532 2550; R. Trilhe, "Citeaux" in
F. Cabrol, ed. Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne el de liturgie (Pans: Letouzey et Ane, 1913) vol. 3, col. 1779 1811; U. Berliere, L'Ordre monastique, pp. 168 197; J. -B. Mahn, L'Ordre cis- tercien et son gouvernement des origines au milieu du XIII1 siecle (1098-1266) (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1945); J . M . Canivez, "Citeaux (Ordre de)" in Cardinal A. Baudrillart, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de geographie ecclesiastiques (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1953) vol. 12, col. 874 997; and L. J. Lekai, Les Moines blancs. Histoire de I'ordre cistercien (Pans: Le Seuil, 1957).
4. In 1215, around the Castillian canon Dominique de Guzman, a community of evangelical preachers, living under the rule of Saint Augustine, was established, which in January 1217 received the name of "Preaching Friars" from Pope Honorius III. See, R. P. Helyot and others, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 86-113; G. R. Galbraith, The Constitution of the Domenican Order, 1216-1360 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925); M. H. Vicaire, Histoire de saint Dominique (Paris: Ed. du Cerf, 1957) in 2 volumes; and Saint Dominique et ses Jreres (Pans: Ed. du Cerf, 1967). See also, P. Mandonnet, "Freres Precheurs" in A. Vacant and E. Mangenot, Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (Pans: Letouzey et Ane, 1905) vol. 6, col. 863 924; R. L. CEchslin, "Freres Precheurs" in A. Rayez, ed. Dictionnaire de spiritualite ascelique et mystique. Doctrine el histoire (Paris: Beauchesne, 1964) vol. 5, col. 1422-1524; and, A. Duval and M. H. Vicaire, "Freres Precheurs (Ordre des)" in Dictionnaire d'hisloire et geographie ecclesiastiques, vol. 18, col. 1369-1426.
5. The order founded at Monte Cassino in 529 by Benedict of Nursie (480-547), who drafted its rule in 534. See, R. P. Helyot, "Benedictins (Ordre des)" in Dictionnaire des ordres religieux vol. 1, col. 416 430; C. Butler, Benedictine Monachism: Studies in Benedictine Life (London: Longmans Green and Co. , 1924), French translation by C. Grolleau, Le Monachisme benedictin (Paris:J. de Gigord, 1924); C. Jean Nesmy, Saint Benoit et la vie monastique (Paris: Le Seuil, 1959); and R. Tschudy, Les Benedictins (Paris: Ed. Saint Paul, 1963).
? 6. Founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola (1491 1556) to pursue the struggle against heresy, the order of Jesuits received the name "Company ot Jesus" from Pope Paul III in his bull Regimini Militantes Ecclesie. See, R. P. Ilelyot and others, Diclionnuire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 628-671; A. Demersay, Histoire physique, economique et politique du Paraguay et des establissemenls des jesuites (Paris: L. Hachette, 1 8 6 0 ) ; J . Brucker, La Compagnie de Jesus. Esquisse de son institut et de son histoire 1521-177} (Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1919); H. Beefier, Die Jesuiten. Geslall und Geschichte des Ordens (Munich: Kosel Verlag, 1951); A. Guillermou, Les Jesuites (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1963).
7. The "mendicant orders" were organized in the thirteenth century with a view to regener ating religious life; professing to live only by public chanty and practicing poverty, they devoted themselves to preaching and teaching. The four first mendicant orders are the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustinians.
For the Dominicans, see above note 4.
Constituted in 1209 by Francis of Assisi, the "Brotherhood of Penitents," devoted to the preaching ol penitence, was transformed into a religious order in 1210 with the name "Friars Minor" (minores: humble) and intending to lead an itinerant life of poverty. See, R. P. Helyot and others, Diclionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 2, col. 326-354; H. C. Lea,
A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1887) vol.
1, ch. 6, "The Mendicant orders," pp. 243-304 (French translation by S. Reinach, Histoire de I'lnquisition au Moyen Age [Pans: Societe nouvelle de hbraine et d'editions, 1 9 0 0 | vol.
1, ch. 6, "Les ordres mendiants"); E. d'Alenc,on, "Freres Mineurs" in Diclionnaire de theolo- giecatholique,vol. 6,col. 809 863;P. Gratien,HistoiredelafondationetderevolutiondeVordre des Freres Mineurs au XVIII1 siecle, (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1928); F. de Sessevalle, Histoire generale de I'ordre de Saint-Francois (Le-Puy en Velay, Ed. de la Revue d'histoire franciscaine, 1935-1937) 2 volumes; and J. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Orderfrom its origins to the Year 7577 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968).
In 1247 Pope Innocent IV entered the order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel into the lamily of "mendicants. " On the Carmelites, founded in 1185 by Berthold de Calabre, see, R. P. Helyot and others, Diclionnaire des ordres religieux, vol. 1, col. 667 705; and, B. Zimmerman, "Carmes (Ordre des)" in Diclionnaire de theologie catholique, op. cil, vol. 2, col. 1776-1792.
Pope Innocent IV decided to unite the hermits of Tuscany into a single community within the framework of the Augustinian order. SeeJ. Besse, "Augustin" in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, vol. 1, col. 2472-2483. On the mendicant orders in general, see--in addition to the chapter devoted to them in H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition, vol. 1, pp. 275 346; Histoire de I'lnquisition, vol. 1, pp. 458-479; F. Vernet, Les Ordres mendiants (Pans: Bloud et Gay, 1933); J. Le Gofl, "Ordres mendiants et urbanisation dans la France medievale" in Annales ESC, no. 5, 1979, Histoire et Urbanisation, pp. 924 965- Foucault returns to the mendicant orders ol the Middle Ages, in the context of an analysis of "cynicism," in the College de France course of 1983 1984, "Le Gouvemement de soi et des autres. Le courage de la vente," lecture ol 29 February 1984.
8. See above, lecture of 21 November 1973, note 4.
9. In 1343 Jan Van Ruysbroek (1294-1381) founded a community at Groenendaal, near
Brussels, which he transformed in March 1350 into a religious order living under the Augustinian rule devoted to the struggle against heresy and lax morality within the Church. See, F. Hermans, Ruysbroek /'Admirable et son ecole (Pans: Fayard, 1958); J. Orcibal,
Jean de la Croix et les mystiques rheno-flamands, and A. Koyre, Mystiques, spirituels, alchimisles du XVIr siecle allemand (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).
10. One of the distinctive features of the schools of the "Brethren ol the Common Lile" was the distribution of students into decurics at the head ol which a decurion was responsible for the supervision ol conduct. See, M. J. Gaulres, "Histoire du plan d'etudes protestant. "
11. "Nowhere does the impression of order and religious emphasis appear better than in the use of time. Early in the morning the inhabitants go to mass, then the children go to school and the adults to the workshop or fields . . . When work has ended, religious exercises begin: the catechism, the rosary, prayers; the end ol the day is free and left for strolling around and sport. A curfew marks the beginning of the night. . . This regime partakes of both the barracks and the monastery. " L. Baudin, Une theocratie socialiste: VEtat jesuite du Paraguay (Paris: M. T.
