Conclusions

In spite of the fact that Foucault strived as much as possible to compete with his contemporary Sartre, he did not provide an ideal political order under which the prison system acquires a different form from hitherto known forms. It is not by chance that Foucault did not offer an alternative to the modern penal system or the modern panoptic society at large. This is because Foucault, unlike Plato, Aristotle, Marx or even Sartre does not have a clear cut philosophical/political system. Nonetheless, his contribution is immense to the social sciences at large and to structuralism in particular, he provided proper tools of analysis to investigate the status quo as is, with no decorative setup. His point is strong in that he conducted a practical test in the very structure of knowledge. Although Foucault was enriched with the whole concept of Enlightenment, he grasped a variety of Kantian concepts and employed them, and considered himself to derive from the Kantian school of thought. What Foucault did in his epistemology was a build on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

If one is to evaluate Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, one cannot but take into consideration the formative trends that shaped his political thinking then. With the publication of this book, Foucault had already abandoned his communist inclination. Two major formative parameters shaped Discipline and Punish. First and foremost the aforementioned May 1968 events in Paris, in which university students attempted revolutionizing the educational system. The second factor is his involvement in the Maoist Gauche Proletarienne (GP), and founding in particular the Prison Information Group, which was meant to vocalize the prisoners’ plight.

It is quite a daring step on behalf of Foucault to venture into the whole concept of prison. Not only does he trace its history but also comments on its psychological ins and outs. In his dense and documented Discipline and Punish, he approaches reality with a photographic eye describing and assessing the very details of the modern penal system. If he does not offer a reformative and adequate solution to the prison, he at least unveils the terrain of the human fate within iron bars. His method is quite instructive in the sense that it shows reality as is, but with a shrewd insight one arrives at a crystal clear critique of the prison itself.

Reference:

Danaher, G. (2000).Understanding Foucault. New York:Allen & Unwin.