To extend a little further on that, and perhaps somewhat away from the
point of the conversation... What strikes me in the contemporary
situation, is that the point of application, as you say, is no longer a
directly moral at all, but a medical or biological space. The whippings
of the old power, whose point of application were the body as it evidenced
moral or immoral acts, are replaced by new techniques, practices, and
forms of surveillance, such as examination and medication, which point
"inside." Moral behavior, beginning at the turn of the 20th century with
psychiatrists such as George Still and his "morbid defect of moral
control" has increasingly become subtended by "something else." I believe
that morality, as a point of application, was not sustainable precisely
because where it was made an object of control, it was too overt, too much
like what Foucault might associate with sovereign power, for a humanist
regime. There had to be something "beneath" morality which would serve to
displace the discursive practices relative to control, responsibility, and
accountability in order for such practices to be acceptable/efficient.
Specifically moral discipline and physical punishments might better be
seen as methods and remnants of a previous form of power.
In the case of moral behavior, we now have a long history of treating
otherwise "normal" children who are "unable" to act morally. No longer,
or not as much, is the child seen as from a bad race or class, lacking the
moral refinement of better blood (the overt class-based signs of
immorality), or even, more recenlty, as acting immoral and in need of
discipline because of an impoverished environment. Now, we cannot even
say that the child is choosing to act in such and such a manner; only that
childhood "experiences" are crucial. Thus we have the emergence of
figures such as the ADHD student, which fascinates us: the child who shows
all the signs of intelligence and ability to use the resources of the
school, but which acts, despite him/herself, in ways counter to these
"abilities"--as if "run by a motor." Immorality becomes, in childhood at
least, a kind of motor defect. Here we have an intersection of morality
with control, responsibility, and accountability. The counter discourse
which forms is, of course, that the "medicalizing" of children is itself
an act of ideological, repressive, and moral control (see Conrad,
Rafalovich).
foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 01/06/2006 08:35:21 AM:
>
> Perhaps it would be helpful to strike up a discussion on the
> historical context of the exercise of power and punishment in
> post-reformation England. Lawrence Stone's classic account of the
> history of the family springs to mind as a starting point. He argues
> that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century school children of
> all ages and ranks were regularly subject to corporeal punishment. He
> identifies two standard practices; the first, to bend the child over
> a bench, and beat them with a bundle of birches until the blood
> flowed, the second to strike their mouth with a a ferula "a flat
> piece of wood which expanded at the end into a pear-shape with a hole
> in the middle." "One blow" , he notes "with this instrument was
> enough to raise a most painful blister". Yet there is a change in
> practice and strategy during the eighteenth century. During the early
> 1700s a pamphlet was written "On the Shameful Discipline of the
> Schools Exposed". IT received a hearty backlash by "A Lover of
> Decency and Order in Youth" and his "The Benefit of School
> Discipline". But here the argument is premised on the basis that
> whipping of students was only to be employed in extreme cases. Here
> we are witness to an anxiety to place restraint on the exercise of
> force, to eliminate the perverse sadism which occupied its every
> expression. But it should be noted that such a concern is synonymous
> with the rise of Humanist education, which such luminaries as Erasmus
> rejecting the need for physical punishment. Here, Lawrence notes, an
> important shift in focus takes place, children should be beaten only
> for moral failures, for idleness or obstinacy, not stupidity.What
> does this tell us? Perhaps it is that the point of application of
> domination in the modern school was increasingly moral transgression.
> That it is moral transgression and moral transgression alone which
> now occupies the space of the eruption of physical violence in the
> school room. This, of course, only serves to buttress, concentrate,
> and amplify societies moral imperatives, for by learning to control
> and direct the expression of severe punishment so that it is
> indissoluble with the inculcation of moral interdictions, moral
> conduct becomes invested with a luminous halo of heightened cultural
> significance.
>
> "Of all writings I love only those which the writer writeth with his
> blood. Write in blood, and thou shalt learn that blood is spirit"
> Nietzsche. "Thus Spake Zarathustra".
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
point of the conversation... What strikes me in the contemporary
situation, is that the point of application, as you say, is no longer a
directly moral at all, but a medical or biological space. The whippings
of the old power, whose point of application were the body as it evidenced
moral or immoral acts, are replaced by new techniques, practices, and
forms of surveillance, such as examination and medication, which point
"inside." Moral behavior, beginning at the turn of the 20th century with
psychiatrists such as George Still and his "morbid defect of moral
control" has increasingly become subtended by "something else." I believe
that morality, as a point of application, was not sustainable precisely
because where it was made an object of control, it was too overt, too much
like what Foucault might associate with sovereign power, for a humanist
regime. There had to be something "beneath" morality which would serve to
displace the discursive practices relative to control, responsibility, and
accountability in order for such practices to be acceptable/efficient.
Specifically moral discipline and physical punishments might better be
seen as methods and remnants of a previous form of power.
In the case of moral behavior, we now have a long history of treating
otherwise "normal" children who are "unable" to act morally. No longer,
or not as much, is the child seen as from a bad race or class, lacking the
moral refinement of better blood (the overt class-based signs of
immorality), or even, more recenlty, as acting immoral and in need of
discipline because of an impoverished environment. Now, we cannot even
say that the child is choosing to act in such and such a manner; only that
childhood "experiences" are crucial. Thus we have the emergence of
figures such as the ADHD student, which fascinates us: the child who shows
all the signs of intelligence and ability to use the resources of the
school, but which acts, despite him/herself, in ways counter to these
"abilities"--as if "run by a motor." Immorality becomes, in childhood at
least, a kind of motor defect. Here we have an intersection of morality
with control, responsibility, and accountability. The counter discourse
which forms is, of course, that the "medicalizing" of children is itself
an act of ideological, repressive, and moral control (see Conrad,
Rafalovich).
foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 01/06/2006 08:35:21 AM:
>
> Perhaps it would be helpful to strike up a discussion on the
> historical context of the exercise of power and punishment in
> post-reformation England. Lawrence Stone's classic account of the
> history of the family springs to mind as a starting point. He argues
> that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century school children of
> all ages and ranks were regularly subject to corporeal punishment. He
> identifies two standard practices; the first, to bend the child over
> a bench, and beat them with a bundle of birches until the blood
> flowed, the second to strike their mouth with a a ferula "a flat
> piece of wood which expanded at the end into a pear-shape with a hole
> in the middle." "One blow" , he notes "with this instrument was
> enough to raise a most painful blister". Yet there is a change in
> practice and strategy during the eighteenth century. During the early
> 1700s a pamphlet was written "On the Shameful Discipline of the
> Schools Exposed". IT received a hearty backlash by "A Lover of
> Decency and Order in Youth" and his "The Benefit of School
> Discipline". But here the argument is premised on the basis that
> whipping of students was only to be employed in extreme cases. Here
> we are witness to an anxiety to place restraint on the exercise of
> force, to eliminate the perverse sadism which occupied its every
> expression. But it should be noted that such a concern is synonymous
> with the rise of Humanist education, which such luminaries as Erasmus
> rejecting the need for physical punishment. Here, Lawrence notes, an
> important shift in focus takes place, children should be beaten only
> for moral failures, for idleness or obstinacy, not stupidity.What
> does this tell us? Perhaps it is that the point of application of
> domination in the modern school was increasingly moral transgression.
> That it is moral transgression and moral transgression alone which
> now occupies the space of the eruption of physical violence in the
> school room. This, of course, only serves to buttress, concentrate,
> and amplify societies moral imperatives, for by learning to control
> and direct the expression of severe punishment so that it is
> indissoluble with the inculcation of moral interdictions, moral
> conduct becomes invested with a luminous halo of heightened cultural
> significance.
>
> "Of all writings I love only those which the writer writeth with his
> blood. Write in blood, and thou shalt learn that blood is spirit"
> Nietzsche. "Thus Spake Zarathustra".
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list