Certainly, we see a technical mutation across the
entire archipiligo of disciplinary instiutions
effected in the 18th century, a shift away from
techniques applied to the body towards those that work
their effects upon the soul. An important dimension of
this transformation is the suppression of material
violence, which only appears where power is in
jeopardy...
--- bradley nitins <b.nitins@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> 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
>
Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com