#sah dá pitaco

[sahsahhh]

im reading foucault but i cant make annotations in the book because i borrowed it so im gonna use tumblr as a notebook

My thoughts about Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault, Part 1 - Chapter 1

red is for key concepts, green is for parts im confused abt, purple is for stuff that isnt in the book but i correlated

it starts by contrasting two really different punishment styles: a dismemberment and a prisons routine

Punishment Economy spread in Europe and US (late 18th century/early 19th century)

scandals

reforms

new law and crime theories

new moral and political justifications of the right to punish

old ordinances abolished

habits supressed

modern codes <- new era of criminal justice

body as the target of repression disappeared -> this process was brushed off as humanization

less directly physical punishment

Supression of the Punitive Spectacle - understanding of the punishment rite as equally or more cruel than the crime itself, approaching the spectator to a violence they desired to be far from, inverting the roles and turning the judge into an assasin and the condemned into a victim

punishment as a cruel reality -> punishment as an omnipotent force

death and pain caused by the Justice is an intrinsic consequence which it (the Justice itself) is ashamed to impose; so it watches from the distance, encharging others of this burden and mechanizing the punishment execution - the Justice system as a religious system

Theoric Negation - no judge will ever say the objective of a sentence is to punish, but rather to reeducate

end of the public torture -> Extinction of the Mastery over the Body; not touching the body, or touching the bare minimum, in order to shake someting that isnt the body; the body becomes an intermediary to deprive the individual from their liberty

the executioner was replaced by guards, doctors, teachers etc who guarantee the justice system isnt aiming to cause pain - they use ways of annulating the pain, ex. annesthesiating somebody condemned to death

double process: Supression of the Spectacle/Annulation of the Pain

equalization of the punishment to every condemned: the death penalty would only occur by decapitation, by the gallows <- start of the punishment system mechanization and reduction in the contact between the executioner and the condemneds body

The Death Industry and Hannah Arendt"s Banality of Evil

the condemned should wear a veil when being decapitated - a crime without a face. you cant develop empathy when you dont see whos suffering

The Era of the Punitive Sobriety

The French Revolution turned the gallows into a spectacle again - the governmemt had to take action to contain this popularization

liberty deprivation as a penalty has never really worked without some mastery over the body as a complement - innevitable consequences of the prison? should the criminals suffer more? what would be an intangible punishment?

Relaxation of criminal severity (goal change)

"May the punishment, if i say so, hurt more the soul than the body" - MABLY, G. de, 1789

division between the allowed and the forbidden

by judging a crime, the problems that led to the crime are also being judged -> "second hand" villanification of defects and differences, of the "shadows" -> the criminals whole history is brought up during a judgement, being a decisive factor for their sentence, not for explaining a fact, but for qualifying an individual -> these "shadows" are punished in order to change the individuals core and turn them into a docile member of society

the scientific field may back up a condemnation by showing the individuals biological inadequacies, thus providing the judge with a reason to punish not the infraction, but rather the infractor for being who they are, the infractors soul

the evolution of the criminal procedure:

"what was the crime?" -> "what does this crime mean? how should we classify it?"

"who is the criminal?" -> "how was the criminal made? where, inside his soul, is the crimes origin?"

"whats the laid down punishment?" -> "how can we correct them? how can we make sure theyll get better?"

The Question of the Madness in the Justice System

1810 french code: "theres no crime if the infractor was in a dementia status" <- many judges misinterprted the code, treating madness as a mitigating factor, not as an annulating factor

1832 french code: any crime includes, as a legitimate causative factor and as right to use, the possibility of madness <- implies an appreciation for normality and the sentence gives a precription for a possible normalization

the judgement process is divided, shared between many people - psychiatrics, teachers, cops share the right to punish

judges dont judge crimes

judges do something other than judge

the right to jugde isnt exclusive to the judge

the judgemet doesnt involve only legal aspects -> the figure of the judge isnt only the one who punishes

Punishment and Social Structures by Rusche and Kirchheimer

political economy of the body -> punitive systems adapt to them

the history of the body: how do historical events interfere in the biological basis of existence? - political investment in the body to use it in the economy as a production force in a submission system. the body is useful only if it's productive and submissive at the same time. this submission may be established through ideology, but also through direct action, which is not necessarily violent - power microphysics

power isn't a propriety, but a strategy - it's a web of dynamic relations. poqer isn't a privilege of the dominant class, but their strategic positions which are reproduced by the dominated ones. this power infiltrates between the dominated and these, even fighting against this power, sustain it. profound, multipolar relations of power. the fall of these micropowers doesnt obey the law of all or nothing, they aret extinguished because of the fall of an institution, and no significant episode happens without the effects induced by them.

power produces knowledge and knowledge produces power - Political Anatomy: study of the materials and techniques that sustain the power relations

the king had a double body: mortal and immortal; but the condemned has no body, only a soul - the "soul" is where the power effects are, its thetool used to control and punish through a complex system. the men thats invited to free is in itself an effect of a profound submission.