Law, Power, and Regulation: Foucault Flashcards
Who was Michel Foucault (1926-1984)?
A french philosopher, historian, and anti-prison activist.
What were the key concepts of power according to Foucault?
Power must be studied from below to in order to understand self-regulation and moral governance in relation to social systems. All types of power work in a circle.
What is the definition of power according to Foucault?
A decentralized force that runs through multiple sites, institutes, and bodies. Not solely centralized at the top. Power as repressive and productive, technical and creative. Power as operating through various knowledges and discursive formations.
What is Sovereign Power according to Foucault?
Essentially the government. Associated with the state spectacle of violence- prior to prisons, state punishment included exile, torture, public executions.
What is the Marxist perspective on power and regulation?
The state protects capitalists interests-military, education, and criminal law act in the interest of the bourgeoise. Everything is in the interest of the ruling class.
What is the Juridical model of power?
Repressive and top-down, controlling. State and the law would fall into this model.
What is the idea behind the term “cutting off the kings head?” (Foucault).
At the end of the 19th century, power was no longer grounded in punishment- instead, more humane methods and sympathy towards the executed happened, along with internalizing norms aimed at changing the soul.
What resulted from this cutting off of the kings head?
The emergence of disciplinary power.
What is disciplinary power?
A force that is not merely repressive and violent, but also creative and technical, with a productive dimension.
What was the idea behind Jeremy Benthams Panopticon metaphor?
People are always subject to the possibility of surveillance. This changes behaviours and norms through self-regulation. Prisons classify and regulate through changing the soul, in a similar fashion to schools, workplaces, and mental institutions.
What does disciplinary power believe the reason is behind our self-regulation?
People don’t self regulate due to being forced into it (through fear). They internalize what it means to be a good citizen and police their own behaviour. (agency and power exist at the same time).
What is the idea of false consciousness (Marx)?
We internalize norms because we are not educated about it, or we have a false consciousness about it. (Very top-down perspective).
What is an example of how power is not concentrated solely at the top?
Coercive forces can also come from below- the state and the law operate from already existing power relations. Additionally, laws don’t necessarily mean that people stop doing these things, people have agency to do what they please.
What is the idea of the matrix of domination?
Gender, racial, heteronormative, colonial- each system must be grounded and analyzed within it’s own context (internalisation of preconceived norms). Can be negative or productive.
What is productive power?
Subtle internalization,s such as eating the right food and exercising, which are based on discourses and knowledges. We respond to these discourses and knowledges by regulating ourselves and create internalized norms for what it means to be fit or not fit. (productive power produces an outcome).
