Michael: Most of us think prisons became more 'humane' over the last few centuries because, well, we as a society got kinder. It seems like a simple story of progress. Kevin: Yeah, that’s what I’ve always assumed. We stopped doing the whole medieval torture thing and became more civilized. We moved from public hangings to rehabilitation, right? Michael: What if that's completely wrong? What if the shift away from public torture wasn't about kindness at all, but about finding a cheaper, more efficient, and far more pervasive way to control everyone? Kevin: Okay, now that’s a twist. You’re saying it wasn’t progress, but a change in strategy? Michael: That's the explosive question at the heart of Michel Foucault's classic, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Kevin: Foucault... right, the French philosopher. I've heard his work is notoriously dense, the kind of thing that makes your brain hurt, but that idea is instantly gripping. Michael: It is! And what's fascinating is that Foucault wasn't just an armchair philosopher. He had degrees in psychology and psychopathology and spent years digging through obscure 18th-century French penal archives. He was obsessed with the mechanics of power, the nitty-gritty of how control actually works. He was a historian of systems. Kevin: So he wasn't just theorizing, he was looking at the actual records, the blueprints of punishment. Michael: Exactly. And the book opens with one of the most brutal accounts he found, a story that sets the stage for this entire transformation.

Michael: The year is 1757. A man named Robert-François Damiens has just attempted to assassinate King Louis XV of France. His punishment is designed to be a masterpiece of horror. Kevin: I’m already bracing myself. Michael: He's taken to a public square in Paris. First, the hand that held the knife is burned off with sulfur. Then, executioners use red-hot pincers to tear flesh from his arms, chest, and legs. Into these open wounds, they pour a boiling concoction of molten lead, oil, and resin. Kevin: Oh my god. And this is in front of a crowd? Michael: A massive crowd. It’s public entertainment. But the worst part is yet to come. They attach four strong horses to his limbs to pull him apart. But Damiens is incredibly tough. The horses pull and pull, but his joints won't give. The crowd gets restless. The executioners, flustered, have to get permission to take out swords and hack at his limbs to help the horses finish the job. It’s a gruesome, messy, and shockingly inefficient display. Kevin: That's just… beyond comprehension. Why on earth would a government do this in public? It's monstrous. What was the point? Michael: That’s the first big idea from Foucault. This wasn't just punishment; it was what he called the "spectacle of the scaffold." An attack on the king was seen as a physical attack on the sovereign's body, on power itself. So, the punishment had to be a symmetrical, terrifying response on the criminal's body. The king’s power was re-inscribed on the flesh of the condemned for all to see. It was a political ritual. Kevin: A ritual of terror, basically. To show everyone, "This is what happens when you mess with the king." Michael: Precisely. It was a demonstration of absolute, almost god-like power. But here’s the thing that fascinated Foucault. Kevin: What’s that? Michael: This entire system of public torture, which had been in place for centuries, almost completely vanished in less than 80 years. It just disappeared. Kevin: But why? You'd think a system built on pure terror would be effective. Michael: It was, but it was also risky and inefficient. As you can imagine, these events could easily get out of hand. Sometimes the crowd would side with the condemned and a riot would break out. It was a messy, unpredictable, and expensive way to exercise power. The reformers of the time started to argue that there had to be a better way. Kevin: A more 'humane' way, I assume. Michael: That was the language they used. They talked about humanizing punishment. But Foucault saw something else. He saw a shift towards a system that was less about a spectacular, violent display and more about a quiet, calculated, and constant form of control. The goal was no longer to make an example of one body, but to manage all bodies. Kevin: So what replaced the public horror show? Clean, modern prisons? Michael: Not just prisons. The real revolution was something Foucault called 'Discipline.' And it's everywhere.

Kevin: Discipline? That sounds so… ordinary. Like what my parents tried to instill in me. How is that a replacement for being torn apart by horses? Michael: Because it’s a much more subtle and effective form of power. Foucault traces its origins to places like armies, monasteries, and workshops. Think about how you turn a random group of peasants into a disciplined, effective army in the 18th century. Kevin: Drills, I guess? Marching in unison, following orders instantly. Michael: Exactly. Foucault calls it a "micro-physics of power." It operates on the smallest details of the body and its movements. First, there's the "art of distribution." You take a chaotic crowd and you partition them into an ordered grid. Each soldier has a specific place in the formation. Kevin: Like assigning seats in a classroom. Michael: Precisely. Then comes the "control of activity." You create a timetable. You break down every action—loading a rifle, marching—into a sequence of precise, repeatable gestures. You drill these gestures over and over until they become second nature. The body is trained to respond automatically, without thinking. Kevin: You’re creating a human machine. Michael: You're creating what Foucault famously calls a "docile body." And that's a key term. A docile body is not just a submissive body; it's a body that has been rendered both more productive and more subjected. It's useful and obedient. Kevin: Whoa. That sounds exactly like my high school. The bell rings, you move to a specific classroom, sit in a specific seat, follow a schedule down to the minute. You're saying that's not just for 'learning,' it's a form of control? Michael: Foucault would say it absolutely is. He argues that these "technologies of behavior," perfected in the army, swarmed out and colonized other institutions. The factory, the school, the hospital—they all started to look like the military barracks. They all adopted this logic of the timetable, the partitioned space, the constant training and observation. Kevin: So the goal of school isn't just to teach us math, it's to teach us how to be punctual, obedient workers who sit still for eight hours a day. Michael: It's to produce a certain kind of individual—one who is predictable, measurable, and useful to the economic and political system. It’s a power that doesn't need to be violent because it's built into the very architecture and rhythm of our daily lives. It works on the soul to command the body. Kevin: That is a deeply unsettling thought. It reframes so much of what we consider normal. But okay, so society is training us to be obedient little workers. The prison is still different, right? That's where the real control happens. Michael: It is. And the prison becomes the laboratory where these disciplinary techniques are perfected and taken to their logical, and most terrifying, conclusion.

Michael: To understand the modern prison, Foucault introduces a concept from the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham: The Panopticon. Kevin: The Panopticon. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. What is it? Michael: It’s an architectural design for a prison. Picture a circular building with a watchtower in the center. All the prison cells are arranged around the circumference, facing inwards. Each cell has two windows: one on the outside wall to let light in, and one on the inside wall, facing the tower. Kevin: Okay, so the guard in the tower can see into every cell. Michael: Yes, but here's the genius of it. The guard in the central tower is hidden behind blinds or screens. The prisoners in the cells are perfectly backlit, like actors on a stage. They are completely visible. But they can never see the guard. They never know if they are being watched at any given moment. Kevin: But they know they could be. Michael: Exactly! And that's the psychological masterstroke. The inmate has to assume they are being watched at all times. So, what do they do? They start to police their own behavior. They follow the rules perfectly, even if no one is actually there. Power becomes automatic and internalized. Kevin: That's terrifying. The guard doesn't even have to be there. The idea of the guard is doing all the work. It’s a machine for creating paranoia and self-control. Michael: Foucault called it a "marvellous machine." It dissociates the see/being-seen dyad. The inmate is always seen, but never sees. The guard sees, but is never seen. And this, for Foucault, is the ultimate metaphor for modern disciplinary power. Kevin: And it's not just a prison design, is it? It's a metaphor for... everything. Michael: That's the mind-bending leap he makes. He argues that the logic of the Panopticon has escaped the prison walls. Think about open-plan offices, where managers can survey all their employees. Think about CCTV cameras on every street corner. Kevin: Or social media! We are constantly performing for an unseen audience, curating our lives, policing our own thoughts and posts because we know we could be judged at any moment by anyone. We're all in the Panopticon now, aren't we? Michael: That is Foucault's chilling conclusion. We live in a "carceral society." The systems of observation, judgment, and normalization that were perfected in the prison have become the model for social control everywhere. And this is where his idea of "power-knowledge" comes in. The more we are observed, the more data is collected about us, the more "knowledge" is produced. This knowledge—about our productivity, our health, our preferences—is then used to create new norms, new standards, and new ways to control us. Kevin: So the surveillance creates the knowledge, and the knowledge justifies more surveillance. It’s a feedback loop. Michael: A perfect, self-perpetuating loop of power.

Kevin: So, looking back, the journey from that gruesome, bloody execution of Damiens in a public square to my boss being able to see my screen from across the office... it's all part of the same story. It’s a story about power getting smarter. Michael: Exactly. It's not a story about us becoming more humane. It's a story about power becoming more economical, more efficient, and more invisible. Foucault's ultimate point is that modern power doesn't need chains and axes when it has observation and norms. Kevin: The goal isn't to crush the body anymore. Michael: The goal is to shape the soul. To produce what Foucault calls the "knowable man"—an individual who is an object of information, constantly documented, classified, and corrected. We become a case file, a data point, a subject of a continuous domination-observation procedure. Kevin: Wow. It really makes you look at the world completely differently. Every time you see a security camera, or feel that pressure to look busy at work, or even post a picture online, you can feel the shadow of the Panopticon's central tower. Michael: It leaves us with a profound and unsettling question: In a world of total visibility, where does true freedom lie? How can you be yourself when you're always, potentially, on stage? It's something to think about. Kevin: It definitely is. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Does your workplace, your school, or even your online life feel like a Panopticon? Let us know your stories. You can find us on our social channels and join the conversation. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.