Freedom and the self

Extract

[...] This “exchange of power” is seen at multiple points in this section, and is even observed in another context from a description of power Foucault borrows from the historian Kantorowitz. This paper aims to reveal the extent of Foucault's ambiguity and attempt to find a resolution within the reading. The theme of power is central to the entire book, almost certainly because Foucault sees power as the means by which discipline and punishment arise in the first place. The concept of power relations allows one to examine and study its roles in the penal system; by analysis of penal leniency as a technique of power, one might understand both how man, the soul, the normal or abnormal individual have come to duplicate crime as objects of penal intervention; and in what way a specific mode of subjection was able to give birth to man as an object of knowledge for a discourse with a ‘scientific' status.” This line also brings up another important concept relevant to his discussion on power, and that is its relationship to knowledge. [...]

[...] Therefore the concept of this king's body would merely be stating that the relationship of king to his subjects is where power truly lies, and not with the king's body or his soul. Similarly applying this to the others who “inherited” the power to judge criminals, it simply means that the relationship between a psychiatrist or a psychologist and a criminal inherently possesses power, but the people themselves do not. If Foucault truly does see power as primarily a form of relations between people and objects of knowledge, then we cannot chastise him for seeing the potential of power to be transferred or possessed, for he does not mean it in a literal sense. [...]

[...] To clarify, if Foucault had stated that the web that encompasses power was what truly shifted and changed, then this would justify how psychiatrist and psychologists have “obtained” power over the last few centuries, but only in the sense that they have become a part of the network of power relations and therefore are able to exercise power over their objects of knowledge, the criminal soul. Overall, the field of power is in constant flux, throwing relations between people and their respective objects of knowledge into an unstable state which varies based upon the object and purpose of the individual holding such knowledge. [...]

[...] As he follows the evolution of the penal system, and inherently the changes in power with it, he concludes that the modern system focuses on punishment that acts in depth on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations.” He goes on the quote Mably who defines this set of characteristics as the soul. Now, this shift in punishments focus bears no significant affect on the way power is used; although the actual punishments may be different, they still rely on power acting as a strategy to carry them out. [...]