Punishment and the Political Technologies of the Body
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3 Punishment and the Political Technologies of the Body Jonathan Simon Foucault (1977) and published in French in INTRODUCTION: REVISITING THE 1975, and two years later, the Prison and BIRTH OF THE PRISON AND THE the Factory2 written by Italian sociologists REAWAKENING OF THE SOCIAL Dario Melossi and Massimo Pavarini (1981). STUDY OF PUNISHMENT Perhaps more than any other contributions, these two books helped to awaken the sociol- In important respects the 1970s was the ogy of punishment from its long 20th-century foundational moment for the revival of pun- slumber. ishment and society as a distinct and pro- Discipline and Punish and The Prison ductive intellectual field at the intersection of and the Factory shared a focus on the trans- criminology, sociology, political science and formations in the form of punishment at the history. We can point to multiple intellectual end of the 18th century, ‘the birth of the sources of emergence in the decade. In the prison’ as the Foucault put it, and the ‘origins UK, and the USA British cultural studies of the penitentiary’ as Melossi and Pavarini (Cohen, 1973; Hall et al.), radical criminolo- did. This historical moment was critical for gies (Platt, 1977; Taylor et al., 1973) and all these themes that were reanimating pun- historians studying crime and society in 18th- ishment and society, the problematization of century England (Hay et al., 1975; Thompson, crime rates, the beginnings of a rehabilitative 1976) all rediscovered Durkheim’s interest focus to punishment, a moment of profound in the relationship between crime and social social and political revolution. These were order (Garland, 1990). not the only studies at this time reexamin- On the continent two books written quite ing this phase of penal history, but compared independently helped bring punishment and to others historians who focused more on its forms and methods to the fore of this new changes in the political and moral ideas interest in criminal justice; Discipline and associated with punishment at the end of Punish: The Birth of the Prison,1 written by the 18th century (Rothman, 1972; Ignatieff, French philosopher and historian Michel 1979) the two books shared attention to the 55772-Simon-Ch03.indd772-Simon-Ch03.indd 6600 44/24/2012/24/2012 33:22:20:22:20 PPMM PUNISHMENT AND THE POLITICAL TECHNOLOGIES OF THE BODY 61 precise relationship between changing forms and the Factory, were dedicated. Both books of punishment and developments in the were primarily concerned with understand- available schemas for coordinating and con- ing the emergence of the penitentiary in the trolling human bodies to produce power or context of the 18th and 19th centuries, and political authority, or as Foucault framed it the emergence of an industrial capitalist to ‘try and study the metamorphosis of puni- economy. Both studies focused readers on tive methods on the basis of a political tech- the importance of discipline as a specific (if nology of the body in which might be read very broad) technology of power that was a common history of power relations and crucial to the emergence of the penitentiary object relations’ (1977: 24). Each book exam- as the solution to the political problems of ined the early prison and many of the same traditional forms of outdoor physical punish- carceral practices that had preceded it (like ment that had come under scrutiny at the the work house), not from the perspective end of the 18th century. This creates a sig- of it is determined by either crime or law, nificant problem for contemporary students nor even as a function of some generalized coming to the study of punishment in the features of the social order, but for its capac- early 21st century, at a time when resurgent ity to harness effective technologies of power global capitalism has little interest in disci- over the body. plining a domestic working class (finding it This approach was a radical break from the cheaper to search globally for culturally docile classic works of the sociology of punishment, ones), and when the disciplinary logic of the including both Rusche and Kirchheimer’s prison has largely been superseded by other (1939 [2003]) analysis of punishment with penal projects, especially in the USA, the respect to labor markets,3 and Durkheim’s exclusionary logic of ‘mass incarceration’. 1892 (1997) analysis of punishment with This chapter aims at recovering the pro- respect to social solidarity. While Rusche and ductive potential for analyzing punishment Kirchheimer and Durkheim moved the study as a political technology, by suggesting that of punishment away from an exclusive focus Foucault, and Melossi and Pavarini demon- on law and crime, they treated penal prac- strate an analytic approach that can be useful tices themselves as mostly a reflection of the well beyond the specific historical terms social structure in which they were being of its application in their celebrated books, deployed. Their powerful insights about the and by examining the work of subsequent work punishment does in society are often authors who have pursued this kind of analy- accompanied by fairly superficial analyses of sis in revisiting the history of the prison, how punishment is actually carried out and and moving forward in history through two what it does to those subjected to it. It is other periods of profound change in punish- Discipline and Punish and The Prison and ment in many industrial and post industrial the Factory that the ‘how’ of punishment societies. comes sharply into focus.4 Today this focus To speak of a technology of power, or a punishment in relation to technologies of political technology,5 is not to engage in a power continues to shape a great deal of metaphor. Foucault is not suggesting that the work in punishment and society (Shalev, intellectual schemas he extracts from the 2009; Garland, 2010; Harcourt, 2011). emerging vision of the prison are can be In this chapter, I want to extract the ana- analogized to machines. Technology comes lytic approach of studying the changing from the Greek techne meaning ‘art, skill forms of penal practice in relationship to or craft’; it is, in that sense nothing techno- technologies of power over the human body logical in our common sense of machine and its conduct and relations from the spe- operated. It would be a mistake in this con- cific case of the birth of the prison to which text, to conflate penal technologies, like say both Discipline and Punish, and The Prison the electric chair, or the one piece toilet sink 55772-Simon-Ch03.indd772-Simon-Ch03.indd 6611 44/24/2012/24/2012 33:22:21:22:21 PPMM 62 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PUNISHMENT AND SOCIETY used in many modern cellular prisons, and as well as dispositifs the overall ensembles the political technologies of the body upon or structures that bring them together to which a broad configuration of the power to anchor the exercise of power at particular punish rests. Tools and techniques are part times and places. However, the researcher of technology, but it also includes ‘crafts, in punishment and society does not have to systems, or methods, for organization in adopt this whole framework, to make pro- order to solve some problem or serve some ductive use of the analytic strategy of reading purpose’ (Wikipedia). A political technology penal change through technologies of power. of the body, then, is a craft, system, or But rather than working this term into the method for organizing bodies to produce broader structure of Foucault’s terminology specific effects that have a political value or (e.g. bio-power, governmentality, etc.) it is purpose. Punishment is a political technol- more valuable to see the analytic work that ogy in this sense, but changes in how punish- political technologies do in Foucault research, ment is carried out can also be related to the as comparable to what social theorists, such circulation of technologies of power from as Pierre Bourdieu (1986), get from their elsewhere into the penal field. analysis of differential capitals, and sociolo- The focus on punishment and politi- gists of science, such as Bruno Latour (1987), cal technologies should not lead us to ignore get from concepts such as ‘black boxing’ or institutions, specific techniques, or penal ‘actor/network’. actors and their strategies and projects. Any Both Discipline and Punishment and particular penal institution, such as capital The Prison and the Factory gave their central punishment, imprisonment or even the fine, focus to ‘discipline’, a technology of the has a history of its own and is shaped by a body which according to Foucault, combined variety of factors. Technologies of power surveillance or monitoring, corrective exer- are only part of the ensemble of determining cise and examination to constitute control the features of penal institutions over time. over a group of individuals but in ways that They become particularly important, I will also make them as a larger ensemble, more argue, when institutions are undergoing pro- productive and effective. Both books identi- found pressure for change, and activists and fied the continuity between the disciplinary reformers are seeking new strategies and colonization of the spaces and procedures of projects to address suddenly apparent scan- penal justice in the 18th and 19th centuries dals or flaws in the operation of traditional and contemporary prisons and the broader institutions and practices. In doing so they criminal justice field (as of the 1970s). Many will often promote a particular technique, readers ever since have take the point to be for example, isolation or the silent system in the relationship between prison and disci- the early penitentiaries. pline, or a disciplinary technology of power, I argue that analyzing change in penal or even, more misleadingly, ‘disciplinary methods through political technologies pro- power’.