The author is constantly battling her fear, that springs from her past assault, to push boundaries and meet with the prisoners in one-to-one sessions, or in closed rooms without guards nearby, and even on the outside after the prisoners have earned their release. I wondered whether this drive to confront “the other” was her way of seeking healing for her own trauma. She is motivated by her father’s words, “If you expect the best of people, they will rise to the occasion.” Then, to adduce Francis Bacon, as Foucault does on p. 226, is really a blunder, for Francis Bacon was actually one of the very few people who recognized that induction had its roots in the Socratic dialectic (see Novum Organon, 1.105). Foucault simply doesn’t know what he is talking about. To seek to reduce ‘analysis’ to a juridico-investigative root is simply ignorance. Every prisoner that Dr Brown met in those years had a unique story, some of which would cause you to wince. Some were downright traumatic; others had a lugubrious tint. Suç ve ceza fikirlerinin sıkı sıkıya bağlı olmaları ve ''birbirlerini aralıksız olarak izlemeleri gerekir...Böylece yurttaşlarımızın kafasında fikir bağlantısını kurduğumuzda, onları yönetmekle övünebilirsiniz. Aptal bir müstebit köleleri zincirlerle zorlayabilir; fakat gerçek bir siyaset onları kendi fikirlerinin zincirleriyle çok daha güçlü bir şekilde bağlar; bunun ilk halkası aklın sabit düzlemine bağlıdır; dokusunu bilmezsek ve onu kendi eserimiz sanarsak bu bağ daha da güçlü olur; umutsuzluk ve zaman demirden ve çelikten bağları kemirirler ama fikirlerin alışılmış birliğine karşı hiçbir şey yapamazlar, bunu yalnızca daha da sıkılaştırırlar; ve beynin yumuşak liflerinin üzerinde en sağlam impartorlukların sarsılmaz temeli atımıştır.''

I didn't expect to love this as much as I did, but I've always had an interest in prisons, which began I'd left school. I had a strong desire to become a social worker, and would be based working in a prison, enabling me to work with the other prison staff, and the prisoners themselves. This never happened because life happened and things change, but I always ponder about the what if? We like to see our world as one on a kind of slow incline towards progress. And, let’s face it, it would be hard to read the description above and not think that from that particular south pole of inhumanity no matter which way we might have gone would have probably been ‘up’.There is a wonderful bit in Stephen Fry’s Moab is My Washpot where he says that having been at an English Public School meant that he had much less difficulty adjusting to prison life than other people. That a boarding school was run in much the same way that a prison is run and so it all seemed quite normal to him. This is Foucault’s point exactly, I think. Elinde az da olsa bir birikimi, bir altın bileziği, bir bakır tası, bir cep telefonu olan, onları kaybetmekten, çaldırmaktan korkuyor ister istemez. Korkuya eşlik eden şey, bunlara sahip olmanın hazzı bir yandan da. İşte iktidar, bu haz ve bu korku üzerine temelleniyor. As I read this book I was surprised to read the responses of the inmates to the various books they read. Some of the reactions were insightful and intelligent.

I've read this book three times: First time was in undergraduate, second time was in law school, third time was last week. I can honestly say that my understanding of this work has grown with each reading, but that growth in comprehension has come more from my reading of other books either discussing or related to Discipline and Punish. When I revisit, my game-plan starts with: revisit critical engagements with Foucault by Graeber's idealism, as well as Marxist historical materialism especially on the topic of “primitive accumulation” (the often-censored violence to set up and perpetuate capitalism). Relevant texts include:Spierenberg, Petrus (1984). The Spectacle of Suffering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52126-186-9. Thus, my vague baseline was status quo, default-liberal assumptions (think: cosmopolitan capitalism: ex. "multi-culturalism" rhetoric, while relying on the imperialist global division of labour). Even towards the convicts who had committed heinous crimes, Dr Brown assured them that she was not there to judge. That she was there simply to help them. She was not informed of their crimes unless there was reason to out of concern for her safety, and nor did she inquire after them. Many of the prisoners ended up dissolving into tears or opening up about their fears in the consultation room because they felt that they had no one else to talk to and simply needed an outlet for their emotional baggage. To be a good doctor is not just to be skilled in the technical aspects of medicine, but also to be a receptive listener, a companion, and a provider of comfort and solace. Most Interesting Part of the Book The panopticon was the ultimate realization of a modern disciplinary institution. It allowed for constant observation characterized by an "unequal gaze"; the constant possibility of observation. Perhaps the most important feature of the panopticon was that it was specifically designed so that the prisoner could never be sure whether they were being observed at any moment. The unequal gaze caused the internalization of disciplinary individuality, and the docile body required of its inmates. This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they believe they are being watched, even if they are not. Thus, prisons, and specifically those that follow the model of the panopticon, provide the ideal form of modern punishment. Foucault argues that this is why the generalized, "gentle" punishment of public work gangs gave way to the prison. It was the ideal modernization of punishment, so its eventual dominance was natural. The emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Foucault. He looks at the development of highly refined forms of discipline, of discipline concerned with the smallest and most precise aspects of a person's body. Discipline, he suggests, developed a new economy and politics for bodies. Modern institutions required that bodies must be individuated according to their tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. Therefore, he argues, discipline created a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today.

Note: “primitive accumulation”, despite being a critical concept, is a bit of a misnomer. It comes from Adam Smith’s assumption of an idyllic “previous accumulation” (so, "primitive" simply means "previous", not "barbaric" or "vulgar") where future capitalists first accumulated their capital through hard work. The Iowa Department of Corrections prohibits bookstores and nonprofit organisations from sending books to incarcerated people entirely. People must instead buy books from a list of approved vendors. The structures Foucault chooses to use as his starting positions help highlight his conclusions. In particular, his choice as a perfect prison of the penal institution at Mettray helps personify the carceral system. Within it is included the Prison, the School, the Church, and the work-house (industry) – all of which feature heavily in his argument. The prisons at Neufchatel and Mettray were perfect examples for Foucault, because they, even in their original state, began to show the traits for which Foucault was searching. Moreover, they showed the body of knowledge being developed about the prisoners, the creation of the 'delinquent' class, and the disciplinary careers emerging. Additionally, they also read along with external book clubs and exchange notes sharing their thoughts with the other group.Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise.”

Enacting the revenge upon the convict's body, which the monarch seeks for having been injured by the crime. Foucault argues that the law was considered an extension of the sovereign's body, and so the revenge must take the form of harming the convict's body. What started as a erudite historicity of incarceration and penal practices ends with underscoring the problem and the power of normalization in the mass society making it all the more 'undemocratic' and its further production of knowledge and 'disciplines.' Are we all prisoners of this constructed human reality? ii) Graeber: while Graeber's provocative rhetoric can create a mess (ex. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity), the best of Graeber still seeks a synthesis [from Direct Action: An Ethnography, bold emphases added]: It has always been these kinds of practical, moral questions that have tended to stir anarchist passions: What is direct action? What kind of tactics are beyond the pale and what sort of solidarity do we owe to those who employ them? Or: what is the most democratic way to conduct a meeting? At what point does organization stop being empowering and become stifling and bureaucratic? For analyses of the nature of the commodity form or the mechanics of alienation [i.e. capitalist structures, materialism], most [anarchists] have been content to draw on the written work of Marxist intellectuals (which are usually, themselves, drawn from ideas that originally percolated through a broader worker’s movement in which anarchists were very much involved). Which also means that, for all the bitter and often violent disagreements anarchists have had with Marxists about how to go about making a revolution, there has always been a kind of complementarity here, at least in potentia. Amanda yra bendrosios praktikos gydytoja, kuri po daugiau nei dvidešimties metų praktikos perėjo dirbti į paauglių kalėjimą. Tai jos atsiminimai apie jos darbą trijuose Anglijos kalėjimuose: paauglių, vyrų ir moterų. Prisiminimuose atsispindėjo gydytojos asmenybės augimas, jos požiūris į darbą ir darbo kalėjimuose specifika. Ji pasakojo kalinių istorijas, kurios tiesiog pribloškia.Having laid out the emergence of the prison as the dominant form of punishment, Foucault devotes the rest of the book to examining its precise form and function in society, laying bare the reasons for its continued use, and questioning the assumed results of its use. The bloodcurdling sights, sounds and smells that fill the prison walls formed a startling deviance from the peaceful, pristine and immaculate clinic that she used to run, but Dr Brown soldiered on through the daily affair of expletives, insults and mental health problems, sometimes interlaced with blood and gore. To her, the most fulfilling part of the job is being a listener, a counsellor and a friend to inmates who are drowning under the weight of their circumstances or harrowed by the length of their sentences. Some of them experience caustic guilt and shame, while others are more obstreperous but still in need of medical help.