We will be focusing especially on 31-69 and 131-169 (Gabriel and Micah will be focusing their discussion questions on 131-169)
Also look at these blogs for brainstorming ideas...
Reading Questions for Week 8 1. What seems to be the overall point of the book? What question is Foucault trying to answer?
2. Foucault argues that the disappearance of public torture has shifted the focus of punishment away from the body. Where did the focus go? What consequences does this change have?
3. What seems to be Foucault's methodology?
4. What does Foucault mean by subjection?
5. What is so significant for Foucault about docile bodies?
6. Does Foucault's assessment correlate to contemporary conditions? If so, in what way? If not, why not?
2. Foucault argues that the disappearance of public torture has shifted the focus of punishment away from the body. Where did the focus go? What consequences does this change have?
3. What seems to be Foucault's methodology?
4. What does Foucault mean by subjection?
5. What is so significant for Foucault about docile bodies?
6. Does Foucault's assessment correlate to contemporary conditions? If so, in what way? If not, why not?
7. Are we currently living in a Panoptic society?
FYI -- Black Panthers Video http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/17_panthers.html
Also, here are the discussion questions for the past several sessions:
Discussion Questions 5/10
1) “Knowledge of the three conditions made it possible to ground a judgement in truth. But now quite a different question of truth in inscribed in the course of the penal judgement. The question is no longer simply: 'Has the act been established and is it punishable?' But also: 'What is this act, what is this act of violence or this murder? To what level, or what field of reality does it belong?” (19)
Foucault talks about our changing definition of the truth of a crime. Do you think this has been bad or good for society? Do you think justice has become more complicated as our definition of truth has changed?
2) “But we can surely accept the general proposition that, in our societies, the systems of punishment are to be situated in a certain 'political economy' of the body: even if they do not make use of violent or bloody punishment, even when they use 'lenient' methods involving confinement or correction, it is always the body that is at issue..” (25)
What does Foucault mean by the 'political economy' of the body?
3) “This subjection is not only obtained by the instruments of violence, or ideology; it can also be direct, physical, pitting force against force, bearing on material elements, and yet without involving violence it may be calculated, organized, technically thought out; it may be subtle, make use of nether weapons nor of terror and yet remain of a physical order.” (26)
How does Foucault's definition of force differ from Arendt's?
4) “Perhaps, too, we should abandon a whole tradition that allows us to imagine that knowledge can exist only where power relations are suspended and that knowledge can develop only outside its injunctions, its demands and its interests.” (27)
To what extent do you think power and knowledge can exist independently of one another?
5) “In fact, they were revolts, at the level of the body, against the very body of the prison. What was at issue was not whether the prison environment was too harsh or too aseptic, too primitive or too efficient, but its very materiality as an instrument and vector of power; it is this whole technology of power over the body that the technology of the 'soul'.. fails either to conceal or to compensate, for the simple reason that it is one of its tools.” (30)
Based on these revolts, do you think that can ever be a 'model' prison?
Andrew Williams
Emily Cross
Tyler Adams
Sartre notes that violence is: "man re-creating himself... no gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them.”
1. Does this always have to be the case?
Right off the bat Franz Fanon notes, “National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth; whatever may be the headings used for the new formulas introduce, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.”
2. Do you agree that this sentiment is always true? Can you think of an instance where it is not? (Can you think of an instance where it is?)
Fanon notes that colonization leaves the colonized with severe inferiority complexes, stemming from the settler’s imposed beliefs that all that is “bad” stems from natives, while all that is “good” (economically, religiously, politically) stems from settlers. After being subjected to such an irrational argument to support the validity of their colonization, the indigenous population is rarely equipped with the tools to fight their oppressors in a rational way (through the use of politics). Therefore, the only solution is a cathartic release of violence that addresses those feelings of inferiority, overhauls the entire system placed upon them, and unites the indigenous people in founding a new state.
3. Do you agree with Fanon? Why or why not?
4. Why does Fanon believe that the bourgeoisie are unsuited to participate in revolution? Why does he instead believe that it will be the peasant who will lead?
Speaking of the life-altering changes that natives encounter following both physical and psychological decolonization Fanon states,“You do not turn any society, however primitive it may be, upside down with such a program if you have not decided from the very beginning, that is to say from the actual formulation of that program, to overcome all the obstacles that you will come across in so doing.”
5. Do you think a great deal of attention was paid to the potential problems that might arise following the decolonization of Africa? Speaking especially in regard to those who left in a matter of weeks...
Andrea Farred
Madeline Cavazoso
1. "The emancipated woman, on the contrary, wants to be active, a taker, and refuses the passivity man means to impose on her. The ‘modern’ woman accepts masculine values: she prides herself on thinking, taking action, working, creating, on the same terms as men; instead of seeking to disparage them, she declares herself their equal."
What do you think Beauvoir's concept of action is and how would you compare it to Arendt's notion of action?
2. "He would be liberated himself in their liberation. But this is precisely what he dreads. And so he obstinately persists in the mystifications intended to keep woman in her chains."
What do you think Beauvoir think men have to gain from women's emancipation? Also, what do you think Beauvoir thinks men have to lose from women's emancipation?
3. "It must be admitted that the males find in woman more complicity than the oppressor usually finds in the oppressed. And in bad faith they take authorisation from this to declare that she has desired the destiny they have imposed on her…So she readily lets herself come to count on the protection, love, assistance, and supervision of others…"
What you think Beauvoir means by complicity and what role do woman play in their own oppression?
4. And if women are complicit, how do they attain their freedom?
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