Foucault's Economy of Punishment in Discipline and Punishment

In beginning of Discipline and Punish, Foucault uses the example of the execution of Damiens the regicide that took place in 1757 in order to draw attention to the way power was exercised in monarchical societies. Damiens is publicly and brutally tortured before being drawn and quartered. Punishments of the sort given to Damiens represent, according to Foucault, the “economy of punishment” under Monarchical regimes. Today's readers experience a sense of terror and disgust at the inhumane manner in which Damiens was punished/executed; yet Foucault wants to note the way Damiens' peers would have found his execution satisfying and perfectly acceptable.

            Under monarchical power, the form punishment takes is primarily meant to safeguard the power of the king, who is the sovereign-- the one who makes the law, and who makes exceptions to the law. To commit a crime under the monarchical regime is to attack the power of the king. Foucault states that besides harming the immediate victim, the criminal also “attacks... [the sovereign] personally, since the law represents the will of the sovereign, it attacks him physically, since the force of the law is the force of the prince” (DP 47). Under this system, political order is maintained through what Foucault called the “spectacle of the scaffold,” to which he dedicates an entire chapter. The phrase “spectacle of the scaffold” is intended to illuminate the open, public image of torture and punishment. 

            Under the monarchical power-structure, Foucault hints, individualization (the formation of subjectivity) is most intense at the heights of society. Foucault states, “The very excess of the violence employed is one of the elements of its glory” (DP 34). In other words, the extreme public display of violence pays homage to the king's distinction or grandeur, his rank at the top of the socio-political hierarchy. Public execution makes absolutely clear that the king is in control. One can think of the popular television show "The Walking Dead", where Negan, who is leader of the Saviors, often executes those who have trespassed against him in a grand display to reinforce the fact that it is he who is sovereign. 

            Under the monarchical regime, the concept of crime is still not completely differentiated from that of sacrilege. Punishment thus takes on the structure of a symbolic ritual intended not to reform the criminal but to clarify and restore the holiness of the law that has been transgressed. Punishment is centered around maintaining the rule of the king. Foucault writes, “the forms of the execution referred to the nature of the crime: the tongues of blasphemers were pierced, the impure were burnt, the right hand of murderers was cut off” (DP 45). These symbolic punishments make explicit the guilt of the criminal as well as making sure the crime is stopped (DP 45). Importantly, under monarchical system of power, punishment is directed towards the criminal's body-- his soul or mind is not the main object of attention. The execution makes the crime visible to all, and establishes the guilt of the criminal. It clarifies that the criminal himself has attack the king personally. Foucault writes, “Not only must people know, they must see with their own eyes” (DP 58). By having the punishment made public, fear is instilled in the King's more or less anonymous mass of subjects. The purpose of this tactic (public execution) is to keep potential criminals from committing further crimes, to show that the risk outweighs the benefit.

            There were fatal flaws with the monarchical form of power: it was incredibly inefficient, costly, and politically perilous. Power in feudal societies is generally haphazard and imprecise. Many criminals slipped through the cracks, not to mention those who were caught were destroyed (thus negating their potential for productivity). Foucault writes that under monarchical power, “The judicial apparatus... arrested only a ridiculously small portion of criminals; from which it was deduced that punishment had to be spectacular so as to instill fear in those present” (FL 232). Furthermore, when power is carried out too drastically it could run the risk of causing the king's subjects to revolt against what becomes viewed as tyranny (e.g. the gallows riot). The cost of monarchical power is high, “too costly in proportion to its results” (FL 233). Foucault views this as evidence that the reason for this shift in the power-structure did not occur because of an increase in “humaneness” or “empathy.” This argument is a staple of the whig history (i.e. presenting the past as necessarily leading to the present) of progress put forth by humanists, who argued that the shift into disciplinary power occurred due to humanity's moral rejection of brutality and violence.

            Multiple 18^th century theoreticians picked up on these problems inherent in the monarchical model of power and attempted to come up with various solutions. Foucault famously draws attention to Jeremy Bentham's panopticon, an architectural design for prison with one guard located in an elevated tower in the middle surrounded by cells. Each room would have two windows, allowing light to enter from the outside, thus allowing the guard in the center to always see movement within each cell, while remaining incognito to the prisoners' sight. The prisoners, however, are unable to see whether there is a guard located in the tower. Foucault writes, “This invisibility is a guarantee of order” (DP 200). Surveillance becomes invisible-- the prisoners are always unaware of whether they are being observed or not, and thus they must always act as if they are being monitored-- thus procuring the effect of omniscient, perpetual observation. The panopticon brings to life a new, more efficient exercise of power, “without any physical instrument other than architecture and geometry” (DP 206). Foucault's description of the panopticon is much more than simply an account of one form of the exercise of disciplinary power. It summarizes Foucault's analysis of the modern forms of social and political administration, uniting the concepts of centralization, and increasing effectiveness of power with the concept of the replacement of direct open coercion by interiorization (instilling particular cultural codes and practices into the modern subject). Power in modern societies, as the thrust of Foucault's analysis of the panopticon implies, is oriented towards producing self-policing subjects. Disciplinary power wins out because it is more efficient, and better at unleashing productive energies sapped under monarchical power.

            With the rise of industrial capitalism, new techniques of power needed to come into existence for society to work. Foucault writes, “A new technology had to be invented that would insure the free-flow of the effects of power within the entire social body down to its most minute of levels” (FL 233). New more subtle and efficient methods -- what Foucault calls “tactics” or “techniques” -- of social and political control came to the forefront.

            Foucault explains that the disciplinary form of power, in contrast to the monarchic power, relies on increasing surveillance and thus requires less energy to carry out. Disciplinary power does not rely completely upon the threat of physical violence or coercion, but rather, “Just an observing gaze that each individual feels weighing on him, and ends up internalizing to the point that he is his own overseer: everyone in this way exercises surveillance over and against himself” (FL  233). There is a shift in the way crime is dealt with.  Power becomes less reactive and more preemptive. The point of disciplinary power is to get one to reflect on one's activities, thoughts, and feelings before one even commits a crime. Disciplinary power attempts to detect and remove poisoned seeds before they take root. Individuals are to be self-policing.

            Foucault contrasts Damiens' ruthless execution with the seemingly banal prison time-table written by Leon Faucher in 1884. Foucault wants to show how each time period has its own “certain penal style” (DP 7). Foucault's juxtaposition brings to light the monumental changes in attitude and practice that occurred in the 80 years separating the two events. Damiens' peers who would have looked upon his execution with indifference or even approval, but Damiens' peers would find Faucher's schedule completely foreign and impossible to obey. Today, "we" supposedly cannot imagine morally accepting public torture, yet many have become oblivious to the power-structures shaping our own lives. 

            Foucault argues that the subject's identity, soul, or personality under disciplinary power “is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished” (DP 29). Foucault sees a broader pattern of power at work “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” (DP 29). The power structures and techniques borrowed from the prison become widespread within the military, hospitals, factories, and schools, et al. during the 19^th century. Faucher's time-table is unwittingly adopted in structuring modern existence, which becomes increasingly regimented and standardized down to the smallest detail.

            The example of Faucher's time-table signals a shift in emphasis to a different form of power-- attention shifts from inflicting harm upon the body unto the criminal's soul or personality, and personal history. New forms of surveillance aimed at upholding new legal frameworks and institutions give rise to a whole new way of looking inward at oneself, new forms of self-reflection and consciousness. Rather than physically ruining an individual's body, the new “economy of punishment” intends to reform the individual, to change the way one thinks and acts. In modern societies, the institutions of punishment merge seamlessly into a pervasive impersonal system of observation and correction which increasingly attends to the idiosyncrasies and details of a particular case. Above all, this this system looks to the psychology of an individual because intention-- as opposed to transgression – comes to be the basic criterion of culpability in a crime.

            One should not assume that Foucault is merely interested in history for its own sake, but rather because of the insights it can furnish for the present. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault limits his investigation until the period up around 1830. Yet some readers took Foucault's inquiry as a direct description of modern society. Though one can find similarities from the past with the present, Foucault writes, “You won't find an analysis of the present in the book, although it's true that for me it was a matter of living out a certain experience related to contemporary life” (Foucault on Marx 37). Foucault calls Discipline and Punish a “correlative history of the modern soul” (DP 23). Foucault's writing intends to change the way we think about our own experiences and cultural values, the hidden presuppositions that animate our lives. In other words, Foucault extends an invitation to others to reflect upon their own experiences.

Works cited

Michel Foucault, Remarks on Marx: Conversations with Duccio Trombadori, Semiotext(e) Columbia University, 1991.

Michel Foucault, Colin Gordon, ed., Power/Knowledge, Brighton, 1980.

Michel Foucault, Sylvere Lotringer, ed., Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984,   Semiotext(e) Columbia University, 1996.

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Random House, 1995,