Foucault

Whoa what an intense first bit of this book!  I enjoyed his explanation/historical information about past punishment and torture techniques and norms.  As they were incredibly detailed, it worked to start the book in this way because as he points out this was less than 300 years ago.  It was interesting that he touched upon punishment as the most "hidden part of the penal process"
The consequences of this were that: "it leaves the domain of more or less everyday perception and enters that of abstract consciousness; its effectiveness is seen as resulting from its inevitability, not from its visible intensity" pg. 9
This passage to me eluded to the fact that many of our current punishment practices everyday people know nothing about.  Many do not know of the horrific status of the majority of the prison industrial complex.  Our society has pushed the punished into boxes and held them firmly out of the spotlight.  It is interesting to dissect the implications of this.
"As a result, justice no longer takes public responsibility for the violence that is bound up with its practice" pg 9.  What do you think this means?

I also really enjoyed this passage:
"In short this power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the privilege, acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions- an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of those who are dominated" pg 27
I thought of Beauvoir a bit in her mentioning that some women are happy in their current state, and definitely benefit and usually do not feel subordinate.  How does this help to extend the power over them?