Final Paper Part - Subpart 1

Austin Blanch	14 October 2011
090491	PH 101 sec QQ

Final Paper Part – Subpart 1

Prompted by our growing experience of dissatisfactions/ discontents,…

Seeing things in an objective manner, everyone have undergone his fair share of a disappointing experience, physical sickness, doubt, nervousness, apprehension, or even dreams that are unwell at specific part of our life. This is true for even for the people who are said to be physically wealthy, who have everything that they can ask for – matters that are not in their right places that one specifically desires. Thus it becomes their dissatisfaction in life. People have this kind of suffering that stems from having to disconnect or break away from what he has been doing, his luxurious desires, wants and meeting what the he does not long for; to the natural offensiveness and repulsiveness of sickness, mature age, and later on, death. This is basically the meaning of dissatisfaction that comes from a natural significance from having an imperfect mind and body

In relation to institutions that hitherto we took for granted were loci of reliability (e.g. schools, judicial systems, penitentiary practices, etc.) we have begun to suspect we can no longer…

After reading Plato’s work and other secondary sources about his books, I can conclude that he practiced pragmatism - Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected. It is a tradition that is centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice.[1] The way through is said to be the way down, and this means that the disciplinary apparatuses / apparati are ‘transfer points’ that people subject themselves in skills interests, and disposition. This is different from being the point of entry. People under such institutions such as schools, judicial systems, penitentiary practices are expected to walk in straight lines, write between lines, clean oneself, eat at a specific time, follow the authority, and the like. They are scene to be under such dictation that they are not extraordinary individuals or they should not be unique nor special. The apparatus is a proliferating apparatus – individuals who are subjected into these places are demanded to grow even more of their abilities with the help of the authority.

The way down will be applicable for the sufficient number of kindred spirits that will be able to go through such institutions. Through such institutions, man is now capable to think that they are constantly being watched – the concept of Panopticism[2]. Actually Father David mentions that the penitentiary systems are composed of individuals waiting for something to break through, something that will make them do something, that will inhibit and encourage them to act, move and speak. It is like they have a potential energy to act on to things, waiting for someone to trigger.

Penitentiary systems are institutions for the confinement of people convicted of crimes. Prisons were used mainly for the confinement of debtors who could not meet their obligations, of accused persons waiting to be tried, and of convicts who were waiting for their sentences of death or banishment to be put into effect.[3] In class discussion, prisons are said to initiate the creation of criminals – a breeding ground for convicts. It worsens the state’s social health because it promotes that whenever one can do something outside the norm but still be able to act normal given that he will be punished under this institution. It will only be a matter of time before the individual can go back to his lifestyle. It is actually a privilege to be corrected in such manner. Thus, there is this assumption that prisons have to come first before the prisoners. This is because, as mentioned above, prisons attract more criminals outside its walls.

Educational institutions, like a school or a university, have a stronger and stricter treatment for those who do not understand the things that are being taught outside the social body. Since its primary role is to educate people, it has to deliver certain manners of teaching that will promote the full grasp of the lessons that needed to be integrated to the individual’s mind and actions. It provides a more wholesome approach compared to other social institutions but delivers the same outcome for an individual.

We, therefore, would do well to take our cues from Michel Foucault, operating genealogical investigations into the production of ‘docile and obedient bodies’ in the aforementioned institutions…

“Foucault focused primarily on the last two centuries, and the functioning of sexuality as an analytics of power related to the emergence of a science of sexuality (scientia sexualis) and the emergence of biopower in the West. In this volume he attacks the "repressive hypothesis", the widespread belief that we have "repressed" our natural sexual drives, particularly since the 19th century. He proposes that what is thought of as "repression" of sexuality actually constituted sexuality as a core feature of human identities, and produced a proliferation of discourse on the subject.”[4]

According to him, the failure of the prisons is the success of the marginalized class. The belief that the only protection of the poor class is that, the criminals who take advantage of their misfortune will be put into these correctional institutions. The only thing is that such prisons will only make matters worst, because it encourages people to revenge and get back on the people who put them behind bars. It enables them to differentiate more criminals in high level communities. Genealogical institutions are chances to breakthrough the contemporary scenario of the city. Breaking down the large part of institutions will reveal some parts of their architecture. The city is choking in road insanities. It is full of arbitrary signs and legends that aim to map out the city itself. In the end, Foucault makes you want to go somewhere else. “To get to the body the mind had to be rendered docile, not the body, this error is due to the standard social science model an incorrect view which still persist to this day, that the mind and body, the so called mind–body problem, or in philosophical circles dualism were separate and somehow in conflict with one another which needed to be controlled (within whole populations rendering populations docile) which was what Foucault's original concept of biopower was primarily concerned with.”[5]

Foucault traces, in his genealogical investigations of medicine, madness, prisons, sexuality, etc., the ways that a regime of sovereignty, still prevalent in Europe in the Renaissance, was gradually displaced, or supplemented, by a regime of discipline, which was less concerned with the prohibition of certain behaviors than with the surveillance, manipulation, and management of all aspects of human life. Among other things, this involves a shift from being concerned with particular acts, and with clearly-defined hierarchies and chains of command, to being concerned with the bodies and souls of the entire populace. Foucault’s well-known account traces the links between attempts to contain disease by imposing quarantines, for instance, and attempts to regiment people in schools, factories, military barracks, and prisons.[6] The subject of attention is the physical body. However, the body is not aimed to torture but to forces of discipline and control. Foucault recognized and mastered a lot of techniques to control and affect the body. Docility of the body is best completed through the actions of discipline. Discipline is different from force or violence because it is a way of controlling the operations and positions of the body.

…especially since the behavior stemming from this have not only begun to seep into the most capillary of our social spaces…

The behavior that is explained here talks about the actions and performance of an individual inside the cell. The disciplinarian environment surrounds the individual and the evolutionary development is not part of it. The thoughts of the evolution are actually non-thoughts. The evolutionary mythology is an avoidance topic to divert the attention to this belief that is said to be full of lies and misconceptions. “Capillary action, or capillarity, is the ability of a liquid to flow against gravity where liquid spontaneously rises in a narrow space such as a thin tube. This effect can cause liquids to flow against the force of gravity”[7]

The penitentiary technique is a parable of what went wrong as discussed in the earlier part of this paper. The prison ride can encourage everyone for better understanding through being enlightened. Since the energies of the human are potential, it is assumed that they will be brought to better places. It is rooted in the humanity that the behavior will be carried out in every child that will be educated. The students will learn that they are constantly being watched by an omniscient entity. Thus, they will be behaving in such a way that it will be carried out all through their lives.

The two main promises of these institutions to the individual are to reduce or eliminate offenders and to rehabilitate them. While the population in prisons rose, no one was cured or rehabilitated. Foucault is saying, not that “discourse” is the sole reality, but rather that both discourses and concrete, physical practices, varying historically, constitute so many ways in which we manage and control a “real” that always exceeds them. Contrary to some foolish interpretations, Foucault always remains a materialist and a realist (in the ontological sense). “Life” refers to a particular way that we have conceived the multiplicity of lives, living beings, and life processes that surround and include us — but these always exist beyond our conceptualizations and manipulations of them.

…but also have been taken over by statist apparatuses ostensibly to bring about common (but we think dubious) benefit.

“Statism describes a political philosophy that emphasizes the role of the state in politics or supports the use of the state to achieve economic, military or social goals.”[8] It analyses the use of a dichotomy between state and society, viewing the state as a homogeneous institution capable of using political power to force policy on a passive or resisting society. Such an analysis depends on an elitist theory of power rather than a pluralist theory of power; that power is exercised by individuals and competing organizations within society

It is in fact doubtful that there are people who get their benefit from the policy that this institution is rendering. Though it aims for a better life for the prisoners, it just ends there; it remains as in a static disposition. It does not do anything about it, and in time, will make matters even worse. The only social group that benefits from this policy is the elitist. Through this institution they are able to point out the threats to their material wealth and put them behind bars. On the other hand, for those belonging to the lower class of the society, they refrain from associating themselves to this policy for they know that they are not important in the society. They might as well not dwell with it. If they have gained enough courage and knowledge to question the institution, this will not be sufficient since the higher class will easily use their material wealth to blind the government from the lower class’s needs.

What might ensue from this is the development in ourselves of sensitivity to unconscionable amounts of suffering produced by the above in entire sub constituencies of human beings…

“Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behavior deemed unacceptable.” [9] This term usually refers to systematically yet carefully striking the offender with an execution, whether in judicial, domestic, or educational settings. Judicial corporal punishment: as part of a criminal sentence ordered by a court of law. Closely related is prison corporal punishment, ordered either directly by the prison authorities or by a visiting court. This talks about the principle of the corporal and non-corporal punishment present, ever since the Middle Ages. Humanity has learned that through physical punishment people will be fearful and terrified that what they have seen can actually happen to them. There’s a great possibility or chance that corporal penalty will be practiced against them.

It is said to be most successful when it is chunked up (bite size as Father David puts it). Through this manner there will be more pieces to testify and it will be hard for someone to bring it down since there are many sub parts that make up one entire entity. Our national hero, Jose Rizal said that the slaves of today are the tyrants of tomorrow. The general consensus among Rizal scholars is that his execution by the Spanish helped to bring about the Philippine Revolution. By this he means that if there will be something that will promote the slaves’ retribution, they can gather enough force to counter the oppression against them. Institutions do not cure the problem, in fact causes more problematic areas that branches to more predicaments.

…who happen to be standing in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and the motive to do something to them.”

“Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. [10] It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided. In theoretical terms, the idea of "sovereignty" has always necessitated a moral imperative on the entity exercising it. The concept is that a state could be sovereign will always be connected to its ability to guarantee the best interests of its own citizens. Now, if a state could not act in the best interests of its own citizens, it could not be thought of as a “sovereign” state.

Foucault shows us an existence that is important to all aspects of the society. Sovereignty shows how essential this is to the court and the magistrates. The presence of an individual pertains to his authentic rights, and in this example it is suffrage. To prevent contagion from spreading one has to avoid human contact. This is why we tell that Foucault brings to us to a place that humanity has never been to. He wants us to go where there is justice for all.

Foucault says that that story is very dramatically reification of the ‘real’ truth. Reification is also known as concretism, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. It is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction - abstract belief or hypothetical construct, is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity.[11] Power moves from prohibiting certain actions to actively shaping and manipulating peoples’ actions overall, and from drawing lines of exclusion, lines that it is forbidden to transgress, to finding ways to include everybody and everything within a grid of carefully managed alternatives and possibilities. Foucault also describes this as a shift from the power of death (the power of the sovereign to impose death as a punishment) to a right over life (the power of the state to manage, for the sake of health, growth, productivity, etc., all aspects of peoples’ bodily habits and tendencies). It is through this shift that “life” becomes a coherent concept, and a matter or focus of concern. “Life” gets defined conceptually, by doctors and judges as well as by philosophers, insofar as it emerges pragmatically as a target and focus of power. The regime of discipline and the management of life have replaced the earlier regime of sovereignty; and on the other hand, that such a disciplinary form of power is overlaid upon a sovereign power that continues to exist. Foucault proposes, precisely, that different modern regimes have been characterized by different mixtures between sovereign command over, and disciplinary positive investment of - the lives of individuals and populations. An individual then moves backwards from Foucault to Nietzsche, in whom, he argues, “life” really emerges in its modern sense as an object and focus of both power and inquiry for the first time.

A medical history of Hysteria, or Hysteria Anorexia as it was better known, shows that it was usually women afflicted with the condition. Hysteria Anorexia is characterized as the body being nervous, being prone to nervous disorders and mental perversions. There is the construction of a hysterical female patient. It was a known medical discourse in the nineteenth century that women’s nerves were more delicate than those of men’s. This meant that women were more prone to having hysterical tendencies driven by the cultural knowledge presenting women as more emotional. All this constitutes the justification of the bourgeoisie to assume “medical authority” over the family which really was just a tool to control the individual and therefore, the society.

For the next part of the paper, it aims to focus on a deployment of sexuality by Michel Foucault. Simply to catch a glimpse on the topic, the feminist theory and their activity have recognized that it is possible to celebrate being a woman without at the same time conceiving of a woman in terms of sexist imagery. From that time, women were seen as an object, an entity that men should own in order for them to gain social acceptance and pride over themselves. Women back then were objectified by men. Women being facets of medical findings, becoming the slaves of medicine that men actually invented. Through time it led us to think of the female body first as highly sexual and second as an object of medical knowledge. They are also attributed to be the centre for reproduction. It has also come to be considered a matter of public interest and public control. Men and women have entirely different gender roles for our society. But he later that it should be carefully assigned: apply the proper divisions and distinctions to the subject under considerations. Needless to say, even though they have different roles, they should treat each other-especially the hosts- with respect to a particular pursuit.

---

[1]"Pragmatism [Encyclopedia of Philosophy]." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/pragmati/ (accessed October 3, 2011).

[2] Foucault, Michel. The history of sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books, 19781986.

^[3] "Penitentiary System." Òþðüìà è Âîëÿ: Ñàéò Öåíòðà Ñîäåéñòâèÿ Ðåôîðìå Óãîëîâíîãî Ïðàâîñóäèÿ. Http://www.prison.org/english/rpsys.htm (accessed October 3, 2011).

[4] Affairs of the hearth: Victorian poetry and domestic narrative. New York: Routledge, 1988.

[5] "Docile Bodies" – Essays & writing guides for students ." Essays, Research Papers, Term Papers & College Essays. http://www.writework.com/tag/docile-bodies (accessed October 3, 2011).

[6] Mohapatra, Tusar. "rainbOwther: Foucault's genealogical investigations of medicine, madness, prisons, sexuality, etc.." tusar n. mohapatra. http://rainbowther.blogspot.com/2008/12/foucaults-genealogical-investigations.html (accessed October 13, 2011).

[7] "Definition Capillary Action | Knowledge Base | www.edurite.com." Edurite.com : Online Shopping: Buy Cds Online: CBSE , ICSE , State board. http://www.edurite.com/kbase/definition-capillary-action (accessed October 3, 2011).

[8] Studies and reports on civics and political science. Menasha, Wis.: Banta Pub. Co., 1930.

[9] Newell, Peter. A last resort?: corporal punishment in schools;. New York: Penguin, 1972.

[10] Heywood, Andrew. "Political Theory". pg. 93. Palgrave Macmillian. Retrieved 21 June 2011.

[11] The Autonomist - Logic Fallacies." The Autonomist. http://theautonomist.com/aaphp/permanent/fallacies.php (accessed October 3, 2011).