Discipline & Punish

Cruelty:  causing unnecessary and especially painful suffering.

 

This chapter suggests that the notion of cruelty has changed from the 1700s to now, and even from the 1700s to the 1800s.  It opens with a strikingly grotesque narrative from an officer witnessing an execution in 1757.  The first sentence describes the punishment:  “The flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs, and calves with red hot pincers.”  The narrator tells of the “indescribably pain” almost matter-of-factly.  It seems commonplace.  He talks about the repeated (failed) efforts of the horses to pull the man apart, and the final decision to hack the man’s limbs off instead.  He tells us that the man is still alive after all of this.  There are theories that we, in this society, are desensitized to violence, but to most of society, this kind of spectacle is unthinkable.  It seems that people were exposed to more graphic and real violence in the 1700s.  Foucault says “It was as if the punishment was thought to equal, if not exceed, in savagery the crime itself, to accustom the spectators to a ferocity from which one wished to divert them…”

 

Humanization:  compassion stemming from the acceptance of other individuals more or less as equals.

 

Foucault argues that humanization of criminals did NOT (alone) cause the change in the nineteenth century from public to private punishment.  He argues that some ignore the change because humanization is an easy explanation.  The shift was more political.  If punishment is hidden from the public, the criminal alone is vilified, not the justice system.  Foucault says “It is ugly to be punishable, but there is no glory in punishing.  Hence the double system of protection that justice has set up between itself and the punishment it imposes.   Those who carry out the penalty tend to become an autonomous sector; justice is relieved from responsibility for it by a bureaucratic concealment of the penalty itself.”

 

Consistency:  uniformity

 

In order for punishment to be effective, it must be consistent.  In the shift away from bodily punishment, uniformity was introduced.  Around this time “great institutional transformations” occurred:  explicit laws and rules and, a nearly universally a jury system, were adopted.  Hanging machines were instituted in England and a law in France stated that every man sentenced to die had to be beheaded.  It became more difficult to escape from punishment because of class or connections, and punishment became more effectual.

 

Ritual:  a custom or ceremony

 

Foucault repeatedly refers to the process of punishment as a ritual.  The unnecessary torture of criminals described here sounds very ritualistic.  Quartering prisoners was dramatic and intended to affect the audience.  Foucault says that with the end of torture, the ritual of murder loses its theatricality:  “The disappearance of public execution marks therefore, the end of the spectacle…”  He still describes modern punishment and execution as ritual, however.  He says that the inclusion of a doctor in modern executions is a ritual.  Perhaps some modern rituals are designed to make the justice system look humane.  The technique of determining madness he describes is a ritual, as are the means of controlling prisoners without bodily harm.  The ritualism of the court system is less obvious today, but just as present.  His discussion of violent ritualism in the older court system brings to mind the ritual degradation described by Monster:  it has no practical, immediate effects, only psychological ones.