Discipline is an action, or idea that has been around for hundreds of years. We are all familiar with it, as we experience some form of it every day. As Foucaultdescribes, before the age of enlightenment, the ways of punishing deviants was purephysical torture. During this time, the person who had the ability to inflict physical pain onan individual had power over that person. As in most cases, the tormentors were part ofthe King’s staff, or a normal citizen outraged by the act the criminal committed against hisbeloved King. Lucky for us, the age of enlightenment came along. People no longerblamed natural disasters such as a tornado or a flood on God, they were learning thatthings happened because of natural causes, and more importantly, could be logicallyexplained. With this type of logical thinking, along came liberty and the rule of lawwith a democratic government. Laws were established and society became morestructured into classes; upper, middle, and lower. With people divided into classes, powerwas easily distributed to the people with most knowledge, who coincidentally were mostlyupper class. They moved away from sovereign power, where the King was the authorityfigure, as well as the visible agent of power. When he ruled, the people knew who ruledthem and in what ways he did so. By adapting a disciplinary power structure, the powerfigures were able to control all aspects of a person’s life. They had the ability to mask thepower, yet not the figure in power. This was greatly to the governments advantage, due tothe fact that it made it much harder to overthrow the government, because no one reallyknew who was in charge. So the power was distributed to many people, not just one aswith the King. The government had a hard time watching every citizen all the time, so theidea of conformity was brought in. This worked so well because citizens would “govern”each other into acting normal, or in other words, the ...
