Analytic Paper
Revised Guidelines
This paper is worth 30% of your final grade.
This short paper will focus on and analyze major concept/distinction introduced by Foucault from the following list:
1. Positive and Negative Power
2. Genealogy
3. Sexuality
4. Biopolitics/biopower
5. Discipline
6. Homosexual/heterosexual
7. Techniques of the self
8. Governmentality
9. Critique
10. Panopticism
11. Power/knowledge relations
12. Problematization
13. Power apparatus
If you have a concept not on this list that you would prefer to write on, let me know. I am happy to discuss this with you and approve reasonable alternatives. You must have my approval to write on your own preferred concept.
The analytic paper (5-6 pages, double spaced, 12 point font, 1 inch margins) will explain and critique the selected concept, outlining its context of appearance, meaning, uses, merits, and limitations. The paper should be in part evaluative.EXCLUDE THE TITLE PAGE AS ONE PAGE.I WILL MAKE MY OWN TITLE PAGE
Your paper must draw on relevant original writings of Foucault and Foucauldians found in the course outline. It will also be based on two of the sources found in the “additional readings” for each session. For your paper you may use the additional readings from any class session, e.g. you may write on “governmentality” but draw on the additional readings for the classes on “discipline”. You may also select additional readings that are not listed in the course outline, but you must be in touch with me and obtain my approval before using the readings.
You should refer to the following as a guide to structuring your paper:
➢ Number the pages of your essay
➢ Include a title page with your name, student number and the title of the paper, which
should be interesting and informative
➢ Use clear, structured sentences and paragraphs throughout
➢ Use quotations effectively but sparingly
➢ Use in-text citations as in the following examples: (Oksala, 45), (Foucault in Rabinow, 198), (Dean, in course kit, 118)
➢ Include sub-headings within the paper where appropriate
➢ Use transition sentences between paragraphs and sections
➢ Maintain focus on the main point of the essay throughout
➢ Use examples as appropriate
➢ Include a bibliography that cites the publication details of the course texts and the course
kit in APA or other generally recognized format.
➢ Proofread and use an electronic checker on your paper to detect spelling and grammar
errors – your essay should be error-free in this respect
➢ Don’t deviate too far from the suggested essay length (5-6 pages).
class notes as extra to use-
Foucault concept of discipline
overview:Productivity,Training ,Bodies
Operating System
a)Hiearchial Observation b) Normalizing Judgment c) Examination
Panopticism as Model of Disciplinary Power
Discipline NOW
power is constant with truth
-more than one apparatus- ex discipline,security,pastoral power and sexuality
-multiple forms of apparatus power
-discipline must be con secularized
discipline- minimize in political cost and maximizing growth
main goal- maximize productivity;which is a norm- it also appoints productivity and costs
creates useful individuals through certain disciplines ex, soldiers
acts directly on the body of individuals to train them in factories,schools, hospitals and prisons
transforming the people from the inside-transforming the subjects to being productive
acts on each individual body and movement
Discipline: Aim and field of Operations(second slide)
Goal:Discipline has an overarching goal:to minimize political and economic costs and to maximize growth
Operation: Discipline tries to create to complain and useful people through rigorous systems of training,
Object:Discipline acts on the bodies of individuals
-making the individual visible,constantly finding ways to supervise and correct the abnormal
3 Components of Discipline:
a) Hierarchal observation
Each body placed under observation.This renders the individual visible and observable
Space is organized in a cellular way,with each individual put in a supervised space visible to authorities
Discipline operates through surveillance.The surveilled and the surveilled are in a hierarchical relation.
b)normalizing judgment
Discipline is normalizing (pervasive- society monitored by standardization)- unlike earlier form of criminal law which was all about punishment
How to normalize(think normal distribution):
-Take a category to be measured
-Determine the station and temporal field in which members of the category might be found
-Define the abnormal to the characteristics of the field
-Establish the range and distributions of the field
-Establishes immanent principles of comparison
-Locate individual performance in field
-Normalization blends the is and ought:individualize and differentiate and compare and optimize and include and exclude.
-About producing societies characterized by standardization
think of a norm distribution,it measures the norm in individuals
c) Examination
it links the first two components-hiearchical observation
Documents are produced about each individual
Links hierarchical observation and normalisation
puts individuals under observation by authorities
produces documents about each individual
makes each individual into a case with a biography and a history
Panoptican- model of discipline and power- hierarchal observation-technique of normalization
inversion of sight(e, Veri Hall)-examination= documentation,documenting all the prisoners(infractons,compliance)
– discipline optimizing individual performance
system of visibility,prison guard sees the prisoners all the time,but the prisoners cannot see them(organizational vision)
-prison- the enclosed, segmented space,observed at every point,in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed space,in which the slightest movements are supervised,in which all events are recorded,in which an uninterrupted work of writing links the centre and the periphery, in which power is exercised without division,according to a continuous hiearchical figure,in which each individual individual is constantly located,examined and distributed among living beings,the sick and the dead-all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism”discipline and push,197
Discipline- punishment and the transformation of punishment
– Foucault this is a model of discipline and power
The body is the prison of the soul- how and what the body is thought of=what counts,inner spiritual development
Discipline Now
is power a discipline?
controlled through consumption,desire and seduction(pleasures of shopping)
critique of Foucault
-Discipline has succeeded -we surveil ourselves
no longer a matter of training the body- what happens now is that the individual is made subject that continues output- positive monitoring
digital monitoring-monitoring undermines training-wanting to keep someone
-About performing
risk technolgist- reduce risks,prevent certain events from happening,deconstruct patterns now to affect later
Power apparatus/Dispositif-discipline- has to have all 4 forms
power does not have just one unique form
1)seeing:a system of visibility that forms objects,rendering some visible and others visible
2)saying:a regime of statements
3)power/knowledge relations that connect and disconnect seeing and saying
processes of subjectification in which subjects are formed and form themselves
References to use/refer to
1.Foucault, Michel (1984) “Discipline and Sciences of the Individual”: In Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader. New York: Vintage: 170-214. KIT.
2.Oksala, Ch. 6, “The Prison”: 55-63.
3.Bigo, D. (2008) “Globalized (In)security: The Field and the Ban-Opticon.” In D. Bigo and A. Tsoukala eds., Terror, Insecurity, Liberty. London: Routledge. Available at http://www.ces.fas.harvard.edu/conferences/muslims/Bigo.pdf
4.O’Malley, Pat, (2010) “Governmental Criminology,” in E. McLaughlin and T. Newburn (eds), The Sage Handbook of Criminological Theory, Sage: London (2010) 319-336. Available at:
http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/lib/oculyork/reader.action?docID=10501941
additional readings(I need to refer to 3 additional sources in the paper)
1.Armstrong, David (1995) “The Rise of Surveillance Medicine.” Sociology of Health and Illness 17 (3): 393-404.
2.Armstrong, N. (2005) “Resistance through Risk: Women and Cervical Cancer Screening.” Health, Risk & Society, 7(2), 161-176.
3.Wheatley, E. E. (2005) “Discipline and Resistance: Order and Disorder in a Cardiac Rehabilitation Clinic.” Qualitative Health Research, 15, 438-459
Elden, S. (2003) “Plague, Panopticon, Police”, Surveillance and Society 13: 240-253.
4.Ewald, François (1990) “Norms, Discipline and the Law”, Representations 30: 138-161.
5.Rouse, Joseph (2005) “Power/Knowledge” In Gary Gutting ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, 2nd edition. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|