No More Learning

The feeble minded (debiles mentaux) [the English translator uses the term "mentally defective"; G. B. ] are then defined by a common "negative" characteristic: "by their physical and intellectual organi- zation these children are rendered incapable of benefiting from the ordinary methods ol instruction in use in the public schools" A. Binet and T. Simon, Les Enjants anormaux. Guide pour Vadmission des enjants anormaux dans les classes de perfectionnement, with a preface by Leon Bourgeois (Paris: A. Colin, 1907) p. 7; English translation, Mentally Defective Children, trans. W. B. Drummond (London: Edward Arnold, 1914) p. 3- See, G. Nechine, "Idiots, debiles et savants au XIX0 siecle" in R. Zazzo, Les Debilites mentales (Paris: A. Colin, 1969) pp. 70 107; and, F. Muel, "L'ecole obligatoire et I'invention de I'enfance anormale" in Actes de la recherche en sciences socials, no. 1, January 1975, pp. 6 0 74.
15- See C. B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961); French translation, La Theorie politique de I'individualismepossessif de Hobbes a Locke, trans. M. Fuchs (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).
16. See, M. Foucault, "Mon corps, ce papier, ce feu"; "My body, this paper, this lire. "
27 November 7973 61
? fqjr&r
28 NOVEMBER 1973
Elementsfor a history of disciplinary apparatuses: religious communities in the Middle Ages; pedagogical colonisation of youth; the Jesuit missions to Paraguay; the army; workshops; workers*
cities. r^ Theformalization of these apparatuses in Jeremy Benthamfs model of the Panopticon. ^ Thefamily institution and
emergence of the Psy function.
I WILL BEGIN WITH some remarks on the history of these disciplinary apparatuses (dispositifs). Last week tried to describe them rather abstractly, without any diachronic dimension and apart from any system of causes that may have led to their establishment and general ization. What I described is a sort of apparatus (appareil) or machinery, the major forms of which are clearly apparent in the seventeenth century, let's say especially in the eighteenth century. Actually, the disci- plinary apparatuses (dispositifs) were not formed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, far from it, and they certainly did not replace overnight those apparatuses of sovereignty with which I tried to compare them. Disciplinary apparatuses come from far back; for a long time they were anchored and functioned in the midst of apparatuses of sovereignty; they were formed like islands where a type of power was exercised which was very different from what could be called the periods general morphology of sovereignty.
Where did these disciplinary apparatuses exist? It is not difficult to find them and follow their history. They are found basically in religious
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communities, either regular communities, by which I mean statutory communities, recognized by the Church, or spontaneous communities. Now what I think is important is that throughout the Middle Ages, up to and including the sixteenth century, the disciplinary apparatuses we see in religious communities basically played a double role.
These disciplinary apparatuses were, of course, integrated within the general schema of feudal and monarchical sovereignty, and it is true that they functioned positively within this more general apparatus that enframed them, supported them, and at any rate absolutely tolerated them. But they also played a critical role of opposition and innovation. Very schematically, I think we can say that not only religious orders m the Church, but also religious practices, hierarchies, and ideology are transformed through the elaboration or reactivation of disciplinary apparatuses. I will take just one example.
The kind of reform, or rather series of reforms, that took place within the Benedictine order in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, basically represents an attempt to extract religious practice, or to extract the entire order, from the system of feudal sovereignty within which it was held and embedded. 1 Broadly speaking, we can say that the Cluniac form of monasticism had at that time been surrounded or even invaded by the feudal system, and the Cluny order, in its existence, economy, and internal hierarchies, was entirely an apparatus of sovereignty. 2 In what did the Citeaux reform consist? 3 The Cistercian reform restored a certain disci- pline to the order by reconstituting a disciplinary apparatus which was seen as referring back to a more original and forgotten rule; a disciplinary system in which we find the rule of poverty, the obligation of manual labor and the full use of time, the disappearance of personal possessions and extravagant expenditure, the regulation of eating and clothing, the rule of internal obedience, and the tightening up of the hierarchy. In short, you see all the characteristics of the disciplinary system appearing here as an effort to disengage the monastic order from the apparatus of sovereignty that had permeated it and eaten into it. Furthermore, it was precisely as a result of this reform, as a result of the rule of poverty, the hierarchical systems, the rules of obedience and work, and also the whole system of assessment and accounting linked to disciplinary practice, that the Citeaux order was able to make a number of economic innovations.
? It could be said that in the Middle Ages disciplinary systems played a critical and innovative role not only in the economic, but also in the political realm. For example, the new political powers trying to emerge through feudalism and on the basis of apparatuses of sovereignty, the new centralized powers of the monarchy on the one hand and the papacy on the other, try to provide themselves with instruments that are new with regard to the mechanisms of sovereignty, instruments of a disciplinary kind. In this way, the Dominican order, for example, with its discipline that is completely new with regard to the other reg ular monastic orders,"1 and the Benedictine order, were instruments in the hands of the papacy, and of the French monarchy, for breaking up certain elements of the feudal system, certain apparatuses of sovereignty, which existed, for example, in the Midi, in Occitanie, and elsewhere. 5 Later, in the sixteenth century, the Jesuits were used in the same way, as an instrument for breaking up certain residues of feudal society. 6 So, there was both economic and political innovation.
We can also say that these disciplinary investigations, these kinds of disciplinary islands we see emerging in medieval society, also made social innovations possible; at any rate, they made possible certain forms of social opposition to the hierarchies, to the system of differentiation of the apparatuses of sovereignty. In the Middle Ages, and much more on the eve of the Reformation, we see the constitution of relatively egalitarian communal groups which are not governed by the apparatus of sover- eignty but by the apparatus of discipline: a single rule imposed on everyone in the same way, there being no differences between those on whom it is applied other than those indicated by the internal hierarchy of the apparatus. Thus, very early on you see the appearance of phe- nomena like the mendicant monks, who already represent a kind of social opposition through a new disciplinary schema. 7 You also see reli- gious communities constituted by the laity, like the Brethren of the Common Life, who appear in Holland in the fourteenth century;8 and then, finally, all the working class or bourgeois communities that imme- diately preceded the Reformation and which, in new forms, continue up to the seventeenth century, in England for example, with their well- known political and social role; and equally in the eighteenth century.
We could also say that freemasonry was able to function in eighteenth
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century French and European society as a sort of disciplinary innovation intended to work on the networks of systems of sovereignty from within, short circuit them, and, to a certain extent, break them up.
Very schematically, all of this amounts to saying that for a long time disciplinary apparatuses existed like islands in the general plasma of relations of sovereignty. Throughout the Middle Ages, in the sixteenth century, and still in the eighteenth century, these disciplinary systems remained marginal, whatever the uses to which they may have been put or the general effects they may have entailed. They remained on the side, but nevertheless it was through them that a series of innovations were sketched out which will gradually spread over the whole of society. And it is precisely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through a sort of progressive extension, a sort of general parasitic interference with society, that we see the constitution of what we could call, but very roughly and schematically, a "disciplinary society" replacing a society of sovereignty.
How did this extension of disciplinary apparatuses take place? In what stages? And, finally, what mechanism served as their support? I think we can say, again very schematically, that from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the historical extension, the overall parasitic invasion carried out by disciplinary apparatuses had a number of points of support.
First, there was a parasitic invasion of young students who, until the end ol the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, had main- tained their autonomy, their rules of movement and vagabondage, their unruliness, and also their links with popular unrest. Whether this was in the form of the Italian or the French system, whether in the form of a community of students and teachers together, or of an autonomous com- munity of students distinct from that of the teachers, is not important; there was anyway, within the general system of social functioning, a sort of group in movement, coming and going in a kind of emulsive state, a state of unrest. The disciplinanzation of this student youth, this colo- nization of youth, was one of the first points of application and exten- sion of the disciplinary system.
What is interesting is that the point of departure for the colonization of this unruly and mobile youth by the disciplinary system was the
? community of the Brethren of the Common Life, that is to say, a reli- gious community whose objective, whose ascetic ideal, was very clear, since its founder, someone called Groote, was closely linked to Ruysbroek the Admirable, and therefore well informed about the four- teenth century movement of German and Rhenish mysticism. 9 We lind the mould, the first model of the pedagogical colonization of youth, in this practice of the individuals exercise on himself, this attempt to transform the individual, this search for a progressive development of the individual up to the point of salvation, in this ascetic work of the individual on himself for his own salvation. On the basis of this, and in the collective form of this asceticism in the Brethren of the Common Life, we see the great schemas of pedagogy taking shape, that is to say, the idea that one can only learn things by passing through a number of obligatory and necessary stages, that these stages follow each other in time, and, in the same movement that distributes them in time, each stage represents progress. The twinning of time and progress is typical of ascetic exercise, and it will be equally typical of pedagogical practice.
As a result, in the schools founded by the Brethren ol the Common Life, first at Deventer, then at Liege and Strasbourg, for the first time there are divisions according to age and level, with programs of progres sive exercises. Second, something very new appears in this new pedagogy with regard to the rule of life for young people in the Middle Ages, that is to say, the rule of seclusion. Pedagogical exercise, just like ascetic exer- cise, will have to take place within a closed space, in an environment closed in on itself and with minimal relations with the outside world. Ascetic exercise required a special place; in the same way, pedagogical exercise will now demand its own place. Here again, what is new and essential is that the mixing and intrication of the university and the surrounding milieu, and in particular the link between university youth and the popular classes, which was so fundamental throughout the Middle Ages, will be severed by the transfer of this ascetic principle of cloistered life to pedagogy.
Third, one of the principles of ascetic exercise is that although it is an exercise of the individual on himself, it always takes place under the constant direction of someone who is the guide or the protector, at any rate, someone who takes responsibility for the steps of the person
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setting out on his own ascetic path. Ascetic progress requires a constant guide who keeps his eye on the progress, or setbacks and faults, of the person beginning the exercise. In the same way, and once again this is a complete innovation with regard to the university pedagogy of the Middle Ages, there is the idea that the teacher must follow the individ ual throughout his career, or, at least, that he must lead him from one stage to the other before passing him on to another, more learned guide, someone more advanced, who will be able to take the student further. The ascetic guide becomes the class teacher to whom the student is attached either for a course of studies, or lor a year, or possibly for the whole of his school life.
Finally, and I am not at all sure if the model for this is an ascetic one, but in any case, in the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life we find a very strange paramilitary type of organization. It is quite possible that this schema has a monastic origin. In fact, in monasteries, especially those of the ancient period, we find divisions into "decunes," each com- prising ten individuals under the direction of someone who is responsi- ble for them, and which are, at the same time, groupings for work, for meditation, and also for intellectual and spiritual training. 10 This schema, clearly inspired by the Roman army, may have been transposed into the monastic life of the first Christian centuries; in any case, we find it again in the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life that fol- low a rhythm based on this military schema of the decury. Maybe the organization of bourgeois militias in Flanders could have relayed this model in some way. Anyway, there is this very interesting schema, both monastic and military, which will be an instrument of the colonization of youth within pedagogical forms.
I think we can see all this as one of the first moments of the colonization of an entire society by means of disciplinary apparatuses.
We find another application of these disciplinary apparatuses in a different type of colonization; no longer that of youth, but quite simply of colonized peoples. And there is quite a strange history here. How disciplinary schemas were both applied and refined in the colonial
? populations should be examined in some detail. It seems that discipli- nanzation took place fairly unobtrusively and marginally to start with, and, interestingly, as a counterpoint to slavery.
In fact, it was the Jesuits in South America who opposed slavery for theological and religious reasons, as well as for economic reasons, and who countered the use of this probably immediate, brutal and, in terms of the consumption of human lives, extremely costly and poorly organized prac- tice of slavery, with a different type of distribution, control and [. . . *] exploitation by a disciplinary system. The famous, so-called "communist" Guarani republics in Paraguay were really disciplinary microcosms in which there was a hierarchical system to which the Jesuits held the keys; Guarani individuals and communities received an absolutely statutory schema ol behavior indicating their working hours, mealtimes, time allowed for rest, and the fixed time when they were woken up to make love and produce children. 11 It therefore involved the full employment of time.
Permanent supervision: everyone had their own dwelling in the vil- lages of these Guarani republics, however, there was a sort of walkway alongside these dwellings from which it was possible to look through the windows, which naturally had no shutters, so that what anyone was doing during the night could be supervised at any time. Above all, there was also a kind of mdividualization, at least at the level of the family micro-cell, since each one received a dwelling, which broke up the old Guarani community moreover, and it was precisely on this dwelling that the supervising eye was focused.
In short, it was a kind of permanent penal system, which was very lenient in comparison with the European penal system at the same time--that is to say, there was no death penalty, public execution or torture--but which was an absolutely permanent system of punishment that followed the individual throughout his life and which, at every moment, in each of his actions or his attitudes, was liable to pick out something indicating a bad tendency or inclination, and that conse- quently entailed a punishment which, on the one hand, could be lighter because it was constant, and, on the other, was only ever brought to bear on potential actions or the beginnings of action.
* (Recording:) human
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The third type ol colonization you see taking shape, alter that ol student youth and colonized peoples, was the internal colonization and confinement of vagrants, beggars, nomads, delinquents, prostitutes, etcetera, in the classical age. I will not return to this, because it has been studied a thousand times. Disciplinary apparatuses are installed in more or less all ol these cases, and we can see quite clearly that they derive directly from religious institutions. In a way, it was religious institutions, like the "Brethren of the Christian Doctrine," then fol lowed by the big teaching orders, like the Jesuits, which extended, by pseudopodia as it were, their own discipline over young people able to attend school. 12
It was also the religious orders, in this case the Jesuits again, who transposed and translormed their own discipline in colonial countries. As for the system ol confinement and the methods lor colonizing vagrants and nomads, etcetera, the forms were again very close to those ol religion, since in most cases it was the religious orders who had, if not the initiative for creating, at least the responsibility lor managing these establishments. It is therefore the external version ol religious disci plmes that we see being progressively applied in ever less marginal and ever more central sectors of the social system.
Then, at the end of the seventeenth century, and during the eighteenth century, disciplinary apparatuses appear and are established which no longer have a religious basis, which are the transformation ol this, but out in the open as it were, without any regular support Irom the religious side. You see the appearance of disciplinary systems. There is, ol course, the army, with quartering to start with, which dates from the second hall of the eighteenth century, the struggle against deserters, that is to say, the use ol files and all the techniques ol individ- ual identification to prevent people from leaving the army as they entered it, and, finally, in the second half of the eighteenth century, physical exercises and the full use of time. u
After the army, it was quite simply the working class that began to receive disciplinary apparatuses. With the appearance of the big work shops in the eighteenth century, of the mining towns or big centers of metallurgy, to which a rural population had to be transported and was employed for the first time using completely new techniques, with the
? metallurgy of the Loire basin and the coalmines of the Massif Central and northern France, you see the appearance of disciplinary forms imposed on workers, with the first workers' cities, like that of Creusot. Then, in the same period, the great instrument of worker discipline, the employment document, the livret, is imposed on every worker. No worker can or has the right to move without a livret recording the name of his previous employer and the conditions under which and reasons why he left him; when he wants a new job or wants to live in a new town, he has to present his livret to his new boss and the municipality, the local authorities; it is the token, as it were, of all the disciplinary systems that bear down on him. 14
So, once again very schematically, these isolated, local, marginal disciplinary systems, which took shape in the Middle Ages, begin to cover all society through a sort of process that we could call external and internal colonization, in which you find again all the elements of the dis ciplinary systems I have been talking about. That is to say: fixing in space, optimum extraction of time, application and exploitation of the body's forces through the regulation of actions, postures and attention, constitution of constant supervision and an immediate punitive power, and, finally, organization of a regulatory power which is anonymous and non-individual in its operations, but which always ends up with an identification of subjected individualities. Broadly speaking, the singu- lar body is taken charge of by a power that trains it and constitutes it as an individual, that is to say, as a subjected body. Very schematically, this is what we can say regarding the history of disciplinary apparatuses. To what does this history correspond? What is there behind this kind of extension that is easily identified on the surface of events and institutions?
My impression is that the question behind this general deployment of disciplinary apparatuses involved what could be called the accumula- tion of men. That is to say, alongside and, what's more, necessary for the accumulation ol capital, there was an accumulation of men, or, if you like, a distribution of the labor force with all its somatic singularities. In what do the accumulation of men and the rational distribution of somatic singularities with the forces they carry consist?
First, they consist in bringing about the maximum possible use of individuals. They make all of them usable, not so that they can all be
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used in fact, but, precisely, so that they do not all have to be used; extending the labor market to the maximum in order to make certain of an unemployed reserve enabling wages to be lowered. As a result, making everyone usable.
Second, making individuals usable in their very multiplicity; ensuring that the force produced by the multiplicity of these individual forces of labor is at least equal to and, as far as possible, greater than the addition of these individual forces. How to distribute individuals so that as a group they are more than the pure and simple addition of these individuals set alongside each other?
Finally, to make possible the accumulation not only of these forces, but equally of time: the time of work, of apprenticeship, of improvement, of the acquisition of knowledge and aptitudes. This is the third aspect of the problem posed by the accumulation of men.
This triple function, this triple aspect of the techniques of the accu - mulation of men and of the forces of work, is, I think, the reason why the different disciplinary apparatuses were deployed, tried out, developed, and refined. The extension, movement, and migration of the disciplines from their lateral function to the central and general iunction they exercise from the eighteenth century are linked to this accumulation of men and to the role of the accumulation of men in capitalist society.
Considering things from a different angle, looking at it from the side of the history of the sciences, we could say that seventeenth and eighteenth century classical science responded to the empirical multi plicities of plants, animals, objects, values, and languages, with an operation of classification, with a taxonomic activity, which was, I think, the gen eral form of these empirical forms of knowledge throughout the classical age. 15 On the other hand, with the development of the capitalist econ omy, and so when the problem of the accumulation of men arose along- side and linked with the accumulation of capital, it became clear that a purely taxonomic and simple classificatory activity was no longer valid. To respond to these economic necessities men had to be distributed according to completely different techniques than those of classification. Rather than use taxonomic schemas to fit individuals into species and genus, something other than a taxonomy had to be used that I will call a tactic, although this also involved questions of distribution. Discipline
? is a tactic, that is to say, a certain way of distributing singularities according to a non-classificatory schema, a way of distributing them spatially, of making possible the most effective temporal accumulations at the level of productive activity
Okay, again very schematically, I think we could say that what gave birth to the sciences of man was precisely the irruption, the presence, or the insistence of these tactical problems posed by the need to distribute the forces of work in terms of the needs of the economy that was then developing. Distributing men in terms of these needs no longer entailed taxonomy, but a tactic, and the name of this tactic is "discipline. " The disciplines are techniques for the distribution of bodies, individuals, time, and forces of work. It was these disciplines, with precisely these tactics with the temporal vector they entail, which burst into Western knowledge in the course of the eighteenth century, and which relegated the old taxonomies, the old models for the empirical sciences, to the field of an outmoded and perhaps even entirely or partially abandoned knowledge. Tactics, and with it man, the problem of the body, the problem of time, etcetera, replaced taxonomy.
We come here to the point at which I would like to go back to our question, that is to say, to the problem of asylum discipline as constitutive of the general form of psychiatric power. I have tried to show [that--and to show] how--what appeared openly, as it were, in the naked state, in psychiatric practice at the start of the nineteenth century, was a power with the general form of what I have called discipline.
In actual fact, there was an extremely clear and quite remarkable formalization of this microphysics of disciplinary power. It is found quite simply in Bentham's Panopticon. What is the Panopticon? 16
It is usually said that in 1787 Bentham invented the model of a prison, and that this was reproduced, with a number of modifications, in some European prisons: Pentonville in England,17 and, in a modified form, Petite Roquette in France,18 and elsewhere. In fact, Bentham's Panopticon is not a model of a prison, or it is not only a model of a prison; it is a model, and Bentham is quite clear about this, for a prison,
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but also for a hospital, for a school, workshop, orphanage, and so on. I was going to say it is a form for any institution; let's just say that it is a form for a series of institutions. And again, when I say it is a schema for a series of possible institutions, I think I am still not exactly right.
In fact, Bentham does not even say that it is a schema for institutions, he says that it is a mechanism, a schema which gives strength to any institution, a sort of mechanism by which the power which functions, or which should function in an institution will be able to gain maximum force. The Panopticon is a multiplier; it is an intensifier of power within a series of institutions. It involves giving the greatest intensity, the best distribution, and the most accurate focus to the force of power. Basically these are the three objectives ol the Panopticon, and Bentham says so: "Its great excellence consists, in the great strength it is capable ol giving to any institution it may be thought proper to apply it to. "19 In another passage he says that what is marvelous about the Panopticon is that it "gives a herculean strength to those who direct the institution. "20 It "gives a herculean strength" to the power circulating in the institution, and to the individual who holds or directs this power. Bentham also says that what is marvelous about the Panopticon is that it constitutes a "new mode of obtaining power, of mind over mind. "21 It seems to me that these two propositions--constituting a Herculean strength and giv- ing the mind power over the mind--are exactly typical of the Panopticon mechanism and, if you like, of the general disciplinary form. "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.