Discipline And Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Do you agree with the ideas of moral relativism and factual relativism? Do you believe in concepts of absolute truth and morality?

Apply Foucault’s theories about power and the body to other works in which the body plays a significant role. For example, compare Foucault’s theories to Margaret Atwood’s description in her essay “The Female Body.” How does power both produce and repress the body in this work?

How has the evolution of technology advanced and altered hierarchical observation, surveillance, and discipline? In what ways does technology function like a Panopticon?

How has the concealment of the penal system contributed to humanitarian issues in contemporary prisons?

Apply Foucault’s theories of power and docile bodies to other institutions. For example, how do modern schools utilize elements of geneses and docile bodies as strategies of power?

How might Foucault’s work contribute to an understanding of contemporary issues of police and prison reform? For example, how does Foucault’s theory of the usefulness of crime correlate with perceptions of modern campaigns to defund the police?

In what ways are the concepts of spectacle and concealment still a part of contemporary punishment?

How do Foucault’s arguments about the coding of ideas connect with or diverge from his writing about language in The Order of Things and other works?