Anamnesis_ Foucault

In "Discipline and Punish" Foucault effectively gives a history of the penal system. He begins with a graphic description of the public execution of Damiens, an attempted regicide. his intention in this is to trace the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle and the transformation that occured in methods of punishment thereafter. In short, this transformation entails a move from the specific punishment of the body to the punishment of the mind and only partially the body with regard to restricted freedoms. Imprisonment thus became something psychological and the judgments which are imposed on the prisoners prior to their imprisonment is one concerning the nature of the criminal's very soul. The judge is no longer the soul proprieter of this judgment but is accompanied by a series of specialists who help in the final decision.

The panopticon is physically real (it was invented by Jeremy Bentham) but it is also an allegory for all of society. Foucalt believed that it benefits the ruling class to have prisons set up they way they are because it keeps a steady flow of dissidents going in and out of them, and creates generations of those prisoners who will hand their ideas down to others in their section of society and therefor never really pose an ideological threat to the ruling class. I don't think that Foucault believes that the modern methods of punishment and imprisonment are very effective, and actually I thinke believes that prisons only exacerbate crime by helping to create criminal milieus in which the culture inside the prison extends out into the families and friends of the criminals. A cycle.

Foucault is a great historian and he is a Nietzschean who believes that it is best to gravitate toward the primitive personage and gain pleasure in any way possible. He likes to trace the transformations and perceptions of marginal topics like madness and the reasons for institutions built for marginal figures. His theory of madness is especially interesting because he does not look upon it as a detrimental condition but rather as an enlightened condition. So he favors artist who have not been the spouses of history, like Artaud. I think the "new philosophers" like Guatarri and Deleuze embrace him because they can place his idea of schizophrenia into the fragmented, late capitalist systemm saying that everyone should just fall into spontaneity