from _DP_, pp. 29-30
If the surplus power possessed by the king gives rise to the duplication
of his body, has not the surplus power exercised on the subjected body of
the condemned man given rise to another type of duplication? That of a
'non-corporal', a 'soul', as Mably called it. The history of this
'micro-physics' of the punitive power would then be a genealogy . . . of
the modern 'soul'. Rather than seeing this soul as the reactivated
remnants of an ideology, one would see it as the present correlative of a
certain technology of power over the body. It would be wrong to say that
the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it
exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within
the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished
-- and, in a more general way, on those one supervises, trains and
corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school, the colonized, over
those who are stuck at a machine and supervised for the rest of their
lives. This is the historical reality of this soul, which, unlike the soul
represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to
punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision
and constraint. This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance; it is the
element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power
and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which
the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and
knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this
reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of
analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness,
etc.; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses, and the
moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not
that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or
technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of
the theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is
already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than
himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is
itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The
soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the
prison of the body.
If the surplus power possessed by the king gives rise to the duplication
of his body, has not the surplus power exercised on the subjected body of
the condemned man given rise to another type of duplication? That of a
'non-corporal', a 'soul', as Mably called it. The history of this
'micro-physics' of the punitive power would then be a genealogy . . . of
the modern 'soul'. Rather than seeing this soul as the reactivated
remnants of an ideology, one would see it as the present correlative of a
certain technology of power over the body. It would be wrong to say that
the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it
exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within
the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished
-- and, in a more general way, on those one supervises, trains and
corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school, the colonized, over
those who are stuck at a machine and supervised for the rest of their
lives. This is the historical reality of this soul, which, unlike the soul
represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to
punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision
and constraint. This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance; it is the
element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power
and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which
the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and
knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this
reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of
analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness,
etc.; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses, and the
moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not
that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or
technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of
the theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is
already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than
himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is
itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The
soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the
prison of the body.