Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Tran. Alan Sheridan.
New York: Vintage, 1979.

Foucault himself establishes four rules for the book: (1) punishing an offense is repressive, but has positive effects (2) punishment is a political tactic and a way of exercising power (3) technology of power can be a principle for humanizing the penal system and for the knowledge of man. (4) history of power and object relations can be understood by seeing change of punitive methods on basis of political technology of body.
The prison changed from public punishment to penitentiary and from the penal institution to the entire social body with the following results: (1) a departure from the norm presented a problem for school, court, asylum, prison. This social enemy brought with him danger of disorder, crime, and madness. (2) imprisonment allows recruitment of major delinquents and assures, in the social body, the formation of delinquency on basis of illegalities and the establishment of specified criminality. (3) the power to punish is natural and legitimate in lowering threshold of tolerance to crime. (4) the prison network in various forms with its systems of insertation, distribution, surveillance, and observation has been greatest support of normalizing power (5) the prison-like texture of society assures both the real capture of the body and its constant observation; it is the form of punishment that conforms most completely to the new economy of power and the instrument for the formation of knowledge that the economy needs. Observation of the individual, his consciousness and conduct allows the domination of the prisoner by the one in control (6) extreme solidity of the prison
The book begins with a 1757 public execution by the king of drawing and quartering of the victim. The right to punish is directly connected to the authority of the king. The book proceeds to describe historical movement through which this physical punishment is replaced with what is considered a more humane technique of incarceration. Foucault says this method allows greater sufficiency in control of the general population. In modern world power, this control is a more pervasive technique. The book looks at social and theoretical reasons behind the many changes that occurred in western penal systems during the modern age. It discusses “micro-power structures” that developed in western societies since 18th century with a focus on prisons and schools. The work concerns power and the relation between power and knowledge. For Foucault, knowledge and power are inseparable.
The book explores the beginning of the modern prison. Foucault sees a tendency in modern society in which official power depends more on ability to acquire a constant flow of information about activities or subjects of that power. It traces shifts in culture that lead to the prison’s dominance, focusing on body and questions of power. He feels that power comes from knowledge and that modern “prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons.” According to Foucault, modern society itself is prison-like. The prison system doesn’t eliminate crime, but establishes a well-identified population of “delinquents” whose crimes can be monitored and kept within limits of acts that are “politically harmless and economically negligible.” Society can define itself by exclusion of this small group.
Foucault has a theory that the reason that the prison system has lasted so long is that it benefits the ruling class that used criminality as a way of preventing confrontations that could lead to revolution. The dynamic groups of the lower class commit crime. Committing crimes is seen as a desire for a change in the social system and a rebellion against the social elite. The ruling class uses the law as a means to diminish the power of the lower class.
The legal system separates the most dynamic of the lowest social class from the rest of society, then forces them together as a group of outcasts, thus making them politically harmless. By marking them as criminals, these outcasts are more easily supervised and can be kept disorganized by moving them in and out of the prison system. The ruling class places a brand on the delinquent class by distinguishing them as a separate group from the normal lower class. This placement maintains the separation of the most dynamic group from the rest of the oppressed people, further restricting the possibility that the lower class could cause social change.
He illustrates the shift in the object of official power from bodies to the minds of the individual subjects and shows the change from physical force to knowledge as the major technique through which such power is exercised. He emphasizes the importance of surveillance and the productive aspects of power.
Foucault tries to draw conclusions about power relationships that inform specific discourses. He feels that these relationships are too complex to be understood completely and the events of history are driven by very complicated interrelationships that cannot be described in simple cause-effect sequences. The author sees history as a form of power that should study and discover the many interconnecting forces that determine what takes place in each culture or society. History should try to explain the development and interconnection of elements that were accepted, changed, or rejected to form truth and set acceptable changes for that time period.
He sees the state as all-powerful, all-seeing. The state has “panoptic,” all-seeing surveillance based on his description of Jeremy Bentham’s circular prison. The system maintains power by circulating its views throughout the body or group. These views or ideology control the thinking of all members of a given society. The operation of power structures is important in family and government. For Foucault, “thought control” implies that different thinking may become “unthinkable.” The book looks at institutions that allow maintaining power such as state punishment, prisons, the medical profession, and legislation about sexuality. Modern society has a “carceral continuum” from the maximum security prison, through secure accommodation, probation, social workers, police and teachers, to the everyday life of home and work. All are connected by the supervision (surveillance, application of norms of acceptable behavior) of some humans by others. He believes that power is internalized by those it disempowers.
The book shows a turn in Foucault’s career to political issues. The book reveals Foucault’s thoughts on how the elite in society dominate and control the rest of society. He believes that no advancement in society has occurred since the Renaissance, only technology has grown, further enslaving the human spirit. He feels that the ideas forced on us by society do not allow us to be unique individuals. His ideas about government’s role in oppressing people’s behavior and true identity have been related to why people commit crime.
The analysis in the book shows how techniques and institutions, developed for different purposes, united to create the modern system of disciplinary power. In believing that knowledge is an instrument of power, Foucault’s point in the study of human beings, the goals of power and the goals of knowledge cannot be separated: in knowing we control and in controlling we know.
The examination places the individual in a “field of documentation.” The results of exams are recorded in documents that provide detailed information about the individuals examined and allow power systems to control them (test scores, absentee records, patient’s charts.) On the basis of these records, those in control can formulate categories, averages, and norms that are in turn a basis for knowledge. The individual becomes a case—a scientific example and an object of care; caring is always an opportunity for control.
The main ideas of the book are grouped according to its four parts:
(1) Torture contrasts violent public torture with a regimented daily schedule of inmates. The intended purpose of public torture is to use the convict’s body to show violence of the original crime and to gain revenge on the convict’s body. The consequences of torture are that the convict gains sympathy and admiration from the public. Another consequence is that public execution often led to riots in support of the prisoner.
(2) Punishment went from public torture to public work gangs. The king’s right to punish became ineffective and uncontrolled. The technology of discipline and the idea of “man as machine” led to shift towards prison.
(3) Discipline develops a new economy and politics for a person’s body. Bodies must be separated according to tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. Discipline creates new forms of economic, political, and military organizations currently emerging and creates “docile bodies” which can function in factories, ordered Military regiments, and school classrooms. Discipline comes, without force, but through observation and molding of bodies into correct form through observation. Prison allows for constant observation, constant possibility of observation, and is designed so that the prisoner could never be sure whether or not he is being observed.
(4) Prison is a part of a larger “carceral system” which has become an example of an all-inclusive institution in modern society which includes schools, military institutions, hospitals, and factories. The prison creates criminals which act as the police’s proxy in surveillance.
Foucault seems to say that power is an important human dynamic that determines relationships to others, and it can be productive. It also refers to ways in which a dominant group exerts its influence over others. My concern in applying these views to literature is what special part of the literature should be looked at. Is it the power aspect, the historical aspect, or something totally different?