Foucault And Truffaut: Power And Social Control In French Society

Term Paper Title	Foucault And Truffaut: Power And Social Control In French Society
# of Words	673
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.69

Foucault and Truffaut: Power and Social Control in French Society

Both Michel Foucault and Truffaut's depiction of a disciplinary society
are nearly identical. But Truffaut's interpretation sees more room for freedom
within the disciplinary society. The difference stems from Foucault's belief
that the social control in disciplinary pervades all elements of life and there
is no escape from this type of control. Foucault's work deals mostly with
"power" and his conception of it. Like Nietzsche, Foucault sees power not as a
fixed quantity of physical force, but instead as a stream of energy flowing
through all aspects of society, its power harnesses itself in regulating the
behavior of individuals, the systems of knowledge, a societies institutions, and
every interaction between people.
Foucault in Discipline and Punish, applies this notion of power in
tracing the rise of the prison system in France and the rise of other coercive
institutions such as monasteries, the army, mental asylums, and other
technologies. In his work Foucault exposes how seemingly benign or even
reformist institutions such as the modern prison system (versus the stocks, and
scaffolds) are technologies that are typical of the modern, painless, friendly,
and impersonal coercive tools of the modern world. In fact the success of these
technologies stems from their ability to appear unobtrusive and humane. These
prisons Foucault goes on to explain like many institutions in post 1700th
century society isolate those that society deems abnormal. This isolation seeks
to attack the souls of people in order to dominate them similar to how the
torture and brutality of pre 1700th century society sought to dominate the
physical bodies of prisoners. In Foucault's interpretation freedom from the
pervasive influence of "power" is impossible. Because his conception of "power"
exists not just in individual institutions of society like prisons but instead
exists in the structure of society and more importantly in peoples thought
systems, escape from social control is impossible. Foucault in the last chapter
talks about how even the reforms in the system have been co-opted to further the
goals of the state. Instead of a lessening of social control Foucault...

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