Since leaving school, my patience has been decreasing. Without plenty of useless free time, I haven't read a humanities book or watched a complete movie in a long time. I haven't even opened the games I used to save up for. Recently, upon the recommendation of a friend, I spent a weekend reading Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish". As a book written by a famous modern philosopher, writing a serious reflection on it would require the same effort as writing an undergraduate thesis. Moreover, many people have already done similar things, so I won't repeat them. I want to discuss some of the content of the book based on my own observations and experiences in life.
Michel Foucault in 1974
From Drawing and Quartering to Lethal Injection: Why Did Torture Disappear?#
The book begins by describing a brutal scene of torture:
Damien, who attempted to assassinate the king, "was taken to the Place de Grève, where the scaffold was erected. His flesh was torn with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife with which he had struck the king, was burned with sulfur, molten lead, boiling resin, wax, and sulfur were poured into his wounds, and he was then quartered by horses and his body burned to ashes."
Today, scenes of beheading a fresh head in a bustling market square no longer exist. Capitalist countries see it as a triumph of humanity, Christians see it as God's love and mercy for criminals, and socialist countries see it as the superiority of a socialist system that puts people first. These views are all idealistic and one-sided. Foucault carefully analyzes the reasons behind this in his book.
The above torture has two key characteristics. The first is that the punishment process is public, and the second is that the punishment targets the body. In modern punishment, both of these aspects have disappeared.
Regarding the disappearance of "public" punishment, the author mentions a very funny and relatable reason: monarchs chose to publicly execute cruel punishments to demonstrate their power to the people. However, when the condemned criminal knew they were about to die, they often cursed the king without restraint. Many people gathered to witness this cruel act, not to express their support for the king, but to express their dissatisfaction. In this moment, the condemned criminal became the "mouthpiece" for those who harbored discontent. Therefore, it is dangerous for those in power to try to make the people join them in condemning and challenging criminal behavior. It is safer to make them forget. This can be truly felt in our society. For example, in recent years, the Oujinzhong family massacre case caused a lot of discussion. Due to long-term oppression by local officials and their relatives, Ou chose to kill a neighbor's family. After the incident, the voices on the Internet were thought-provoking. People called Ou, who committed murder, a hero. The local government mobilized a large number of personnel to search for his whereabouts, and everyone on the Internet prayed for him to be alive, hoping to hear him speak out about his grievances. When Ou's body was found, netizens unanimously expressed relief for the local government officials. As an observer, I don't know if Ou was a good person or a bad person, but in the current context, it doesn't matter who he was. What I see is that most people believe Ou's act of killing the oppressive relatives of grassroots officials was an act of chivalry. They express their dissatisfaction with grassroots managers through Ou's actions, or the actions they imagine Ou to have taken. This shows how dangerous it is to gather people together to openly discuss criminal behavior. The Tangshan assault case, which caused a huge discussion on the Internet, is another example. People were not really discussing Tangshan, but the dark things hidden in the corners of small cities. The difference this time was that the criminal did not die, and there was a judicial process of trial and sentencing. However, it was unusual that there were very few media reports on such a highly publicized event. The media should have invested more effort in reporting on such a widely discussed event. If there were no special forces intervening to create such a phenomenon, it would be unreasonable. They are very clever. They know that it is safer to make you forget than to make you discuss. As the classic saying in 1984 goes, "Ignorance is strength." Here, ignorance does not mean lack of education, but rather the corresponding English word "ignorance," which can be translated as "neglect is strength," which may be more appropriate.
Regarding the disappearance of the "body," it is because with the transformation of social relations of production, society needs free bodies. Therefore, the target of state violence has gradually shifted from the body to the mind, and punishment has naturally transformed from physical to mental. The book provides a very insightful description of this:
The foolish tyrant uses iron chains to bind his slaves, while the true politician uses the chains of their own thoughts to more effectively restrain them. The unshakable foundation of the strongest empire is built on the soft fiber tissue of the brain.
The most effective way to control your thoughts is through discipline. Discipline is the core professional term in this book. Through various clever means, it makes you believe that your thoughts are free, but you have already fallen into their trap and been successfully disciplined and controlled by them.
After understanding this, you will better understand why you need to learn one spirit at one moment and another spirit at another moment. Clearly, you are not really learning, you only know the names of those spirits, and even your insights are copied from the internet. No one will read what you submit, but they still want you to do it because they know the importance of controlling the mind. However, due to technological limitations, they have not been able to invent a mental injector, so they have no choice but to do this. The emergence of platforms like Douyin and Toutiao, which provide a constant stream of "milk" information, brings humanity one step closer to inventing such a great thing as a mental injector. Some scholars believe that groups are unconscious, but with such a mental injector, all you need to do is add a proportionate amount of left-leaning information to your information stream, and you will become a leftist; if I add some right-leaning information, you will become a rightist. You may think your thoughts are important, but you are just a slave to the recommendation algorithm. This reminds us of the importance of being "active" in the process of obtaining information.
Panopticism: Most of Us Live in Prisons#
Since the method of punishment has changed from barbaric slaughter to civilized prisons, the topic of how to design a prison becomes a subject of discussion. Prisons cannot be built in any form, otherwise, you can imagine closing your eyes and envisioning a prison with traditional Beijing quadrangles, Japanese single-family houses, and American front and back lawn cottages. The purpose of building a prison is to discipline the prisoners, so what kind of architecture can better achieve this discipline? The book mentions a perfect prison designed by the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. It is a circular building with a high tower in the center, where prisoners are confined. This seemingly ugly and failed architecture is designed for surveillance. The person sitting in the tower can monitor every prisoner, and the prisoners do not know if they are being watched, but they know for certain that the person in the tower can watch them. This shadow of being watched prompts them to regulate their behavior, that is, to be disciplined. The design concept of this building is:
The implementation of discipline must have a mechanism of coercion through surveillance. In this mechanism, the technology of surveillance can induce the effects of power, and conversely, coercive means can make the object visible.
Power should be visible but unknowable.
If we carefully examine our own lives, our schools, the office buildings where we work, although they do not resemble the peculiar shapes mentioned in the book, they function similarly. Teachers stand on a platform several tens of centimeters above the ground to be able to monitor everyone. In state-owned enterprises and government agencies, having an independent office is a symbol of a high position. These enterprises and agencies know that being watched is painful, and the higher the position, the more exempt you are from this surveillance. When using the internet, there are no specific words that are prohibited, but once you use a certain word, you will be punished with account suspension or banning. It is like not knowing when the person in the central tower is watching you. If you know when they are watching you, you just need to regulate your behavior when they are watching you. But when you don't know when they are watching you, you are enveloped in the shadow of being watched and dare not relax for a moment.
I would like to give a special example, which is the ingenious use of network cameras in schools in my country. I remember when I was taking an Internet of Things course, network cameras were considered one of the iconic inventions of the Internet of Things. But now, many teachers believe that the external, physical, and subtle surveillance generated by architectural forms is still not enough. Therefore, they install network cameras inside the classrooms. Obviously, they don't have the energy to monitor students' every move 24/7, but this network camera is equivalent to the tower in the panoptic prison. Students know the existence of the surveillance camera and know that it can monitor them, but they don't know if they are being watched. Under the shadow of being watched, they suppress their true nature. This small surveillance camera does make education work easier, but it also suppresses education. What will they be like when they grow up and enter society, having a space where they are not monitored?
Disciplinary Programs in Times of Plague: The Manifestation of Current Doctrine#
According to an order issued in the late 17th century, when a city was hit by a plague, the following measures should be taken: first, strict spatial isolation: close the city and its suburbs, prohibit leaving the city, and execute those who violate the order. Kill all wandering animals.
The plague has brought about various disciplinary programs. It does not require dividing the masses in half, but rather requires complex divisions, personalized allocations, deep organization of surveillance and control, and the strengthening and networking of power.
The measures described in the book for dealing with the plague in the 17th century seem like diary entries or social news today. Although we have experienced two industrial revolutions and the wave of informatization during this period, the methods of governing human beings have not fundamentally changed. Perhaps all politicians have a dream of establishing a utopian society, but implementing it is met with enormous resistance. However, something as terrifying as a plague makes such strong control become legitimate and an excellent catalyst. If you only read this part, you may feel despair, that we can never escape from our current predicament. But the good news is that Foucault describes the strict control during the plague period only to point out its backwardness. It is just a brick in the brick-and-jade game, symbolizing barbarism and vulgarity. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that some people read half of the book and start implementing it as an instruction manual. This strict control brought about by the plague is just an attempt in a specific time and space and is destined to be replaced. Are you filled with hope when you hear that it will be replaced? Unfortunately, the disappointing news is coming. Strict control will disappear, but the experience accumulated in this social experiment on discipline, the new inventions explored, will always accompany us. They will integrate into our lives like high towers, surveillance cameras, and air. They will make you willingly accept them and make you believe that you have freely chosen them.
Hello, beautiful new world!
Refs:#
- "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by Michel Foucault
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oujinzhong_case
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon