Michel Foucault undertakes the cumbersome endeavor of documenting a shift or transition from the spectacle punishment, administered by image of sovereign, to the carceral punishment; a move from the punishment of the corporeal to the non-corporeal; the de-centering of the body in punishment. With the emergence of the carceral regime, the body becomes rather an intermediary (110). The body is no longer the site of pain inflicted, as with the gruesome spectacles of seventeenth century torture, but rather, merely a means of denying certain liberties, such as the freedom of movement, or the ability to decide when to bathe, eat, exercise, etc. As Foucault suggests, this might be deemed a certain social equalizer, as it attacks something that every person is supposedly entitled to in egalitarian society; liberty (231).
It is important, though, to remember Foucault’s insistence that the carceral is not limited to the prison or mental institution. Throughout the latter half of the text, Foucault continually suggests that the carceral regime (note the use of “regime”) is invasive. In his discussion of the panoptic he is quick to denote that discipline becomes flexible, and that it radiates from the institution by the force of inquisition. The institution, the power structure, seeks information about the individuals outside its physical parameters (211). The power system is dedicated to the pursuit of this knowledge, for, as Foucault suggests, the formation of knowledge and the formation of power regularly reinforce each other in a cyclical fashion. The institution exerts its power on the community and individuals beyond its walls or borders. Moreover, by means of expansion, the institution becomes many things including schools, hospitals, factories, and barracks (228).
As Foucault continues, the invasive nature of the carceral designates another important point of consideration. The carceral manifests in what Foucault suggestively refers to as “channels” (300). During discussion of these channels Foucault obviates that which one has come to assume during the course of the text, that the prison, institution, and power structure, perpetuate delinquency: “Although it is true that prison punishes delinquency, delinquency is for the most part produced in and by an incarceration which, ultimately, prison perpetuates in its turn” (301). This is where Nealon’s discussion of “biopower” comes most forcefully into play. By means of its invasive nature, the carceral saturates, working through entire populations. Nealon argues, with Foucault in mind, that the individual is touched at a ubiquitous number of sites (Nealon 26). Here, again, it becomes an issue of recognizing the power that is exerted outside of the institution:
“Through the play of disciplinary differentiations and divisions, the nineteenth century constructed rigorous channels which, within the system, inculcated docility and produced delinquency by the same mechanisms” (Foucault 300)
These channels are located both inside and outside of the institution. The channels permeate physical walls and conceptual boundaries.
Just briefly, on a side thread, it seems important to remember that both Nealon and Deleuze are adamant in their insistence that Foucault is suggesting something beyond the disciplinary system; something more invasive than the disciplinary system. Deleuze, in his discussion with Negri, provides that Foucault was actually arguing a movement from the disciplinary system to sites of continual training and monitoring.
With the carceral and the channels, one is forced into a particular type of subjection; a subjection to norms which become enforceable. In a weird turn, the body is called back into question, despite being denied by the non-corporeal nature of the panoptic: “Each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements” (304). For Foucault, it still seems to be an issue of the body as an intermediary. For, as he consistently and provocatively suggests, everyone must become docile and useful.
For me, this presents an interesting challenge. It insists on conceiving the body as both absence and presence. The body is essentially denied its physicality. It is denied of pain in the case of pharmacology before death (104), in effect depriving it of sensation. Yet, the body is also necessarily trapped, bringing it into the realm of presence, but only for the extraction of labor or knowledge (which reinforces power, as stated previously). At this point, there is an inversion brought on by the change in the systems of punishment. The now isolated individual becomes the sovereign of the spectacle system. Whereas the anger of the crowd could originally be directed at the sovereign, in that the criminal was deemed “criminal” in opposition to the sovereign, the individual is now the centering point. The individual is castigated for being in opposition to norms which the system created (299); a system, which Deleuze points out, is more of a “heterogenous multiplicity” (Letters to Foucault), or a series of systems (“micro-systems”).
