Michel took a look at discipline in society and how it controls the everyday lives of people. He wrote that discipline is a type of power that is new in the society and it is different than what society had before. Power to him was part of a three step process. To gain power in society, you need to have knowledge, but before you have knowledge you need to have discourse. Power is something that is productive and relations. Knowledge is what we know and how we know what we know. Discourse is who does the speaking and how the speaking is said. Whoever has the power has control of the knowledge that is known in the society, so to have power is to have control of knowledge. There are five main points to power that Michel Foucault made. The first point was that power is permanent and self-reproducing. Power is not an institution or a structure, but it is situation and contextual. He also stated that power is present in multiple relations or situations and that power is not just for destructions, there could be positive outcomes that come from power. Power is held through relationships that are all interconnected to each other, but that the power within these relationships all vary. Going back to disciplinary power, discipline is having the people in society self-police themselves to do what is expected of them. The other form of power that is also present in society is regulatory power. Regulatory power is using direct force to control. The ones in control show their power by having a visible force and by showing what will happen to the people that do not listen to their every command. That makes the people afraid of the outcomes that can occur form their actions. The difference with regulatory power and disciplinary power is that with disciplinary power there is no need to use force or violence to have people follow commands. What is expected of the people in society is so engrained in their mind that they self-internalize them and that is how they follow the commands. The end goal to this power is to create docile bodies that are easily managed and manipulated. There are three key techniques that help establish disciplinary power. The first technique is to scale control, which means to treat the body as individual parts. The second technique is to have object control, which means having efficiency of movement. The third technique is modality. Modality involves the idea of space and supervision. In the space people will do what their expected repetitious movements.
The first thing that came to mind when talking about disciplinary power was the military. There is a constant influx of people that go into boot camp to be able to become soldiers in the military. Coming into the boot camps, speaking generally, these people probably have never had any sort of structure that can compare to what the military expects of them. These civilians come into this wanting to serve and protect the country and are willing to submit themselves to the militaries will. These civilians are what Foucault would describe as the bodies. This is where the scale of control comes into plan. The commanders will treat each body as individual parts and control them. They exercise the bodies into doing whatever they want to do. They change their image to all look similar. They set up strict guidelines that the soldiers follow. The soldiers do whatever is expected of them. Boot camp may show more of a regulatory power, but after all that is done, the expectations stick with the soldiers even after they leave boot camp. Boot camp provided the space to learn what is expected of them. After that, the soldiers internalize what they learned in their time at camp and move as they are expected to move. These soldiers are the docile bodies that Michel Foucault mentioned that disciplinary power produces. These soldiers are tamed and trained to do whatever the military structure makes them do. The commanders and checkups that they have to do are a way to supervise the soldiers. In boot camp there are repeated actions that occur every day that these soldiers internalize.
The first thing that came to mind when talking about disciplinary power was the military. There is a constant influx of people that go into boot camp to be able to become soldiers in the military. Coming into the boot camps, speaking generally, these people probably have never had any sort of structure that can compare to what the military expects of them. These civilians come into this wanting to serve and protect the country and are willing to submit themselves to the militaries will. These civilians are what Foucault would describe as the bodies. This is where the scale of control comes into plan. The commanders will treat each body as individual parts and control them. They exercise the bodies into doing whatever they want to do. They change their image to all look similar. They set up strict guidelines that the soldiers follow. The soldiers do whatever is expected of them. Boot camp may show more of a regulatory power, but after all that is done, the expectations stick with the soldiers even after they leave boot camp. Boot camp provided the space to learn what is expected of them. After that, the soldiers internalize what they learned in their time at camp and move as they are expected to move. These soldiers are the docile bodies that Michel Foucault mentioned that disciplinary power produces. These soldiers are tamed and trained to do whatever the military structure makes them do. The commanders and checkups that they have to do are a way to supervise the soldiers. In boot camp there are repeated actions that occur every day that these soldiers internalize.