In “Two Conferences”, Michel Foucault criticizes historical materialism for having insufficiently explained social phenomena. He mocks scholars who use bourgeois domination to explain various social trends, including the exclusion of madness and the repression of infantile sexuality. Foucault calls this type of social theory too easy and criticizes it for producing results that are both true and false at the same time. However, Foucault commits the same error when he derives the origin of disciplinary power from bourgeois domination in Discipline and Punish. According to Foucault, the transition from the illegality of rights to the illegality of property in the 18th century encouraged the bourgeoisie to protect its property by making the penal system more effective. They abolished public executions and torture, symbols of the sovereign's ineffectiveness, and attacked the soul of the criminal. Later, the upper class created the concept of delinquency to regulate and normalize the poor (Discipline 277). By using bourgeois influence to explain penal reform, Foucault ignores other social trends and insufficiently explains power outside of prison. Without providing substantial evidence to support his claims, Foucault rejects the idea that reformers could have changed sanctions by appealing to human sympathy. Instead, it forces their efforts to fit into a broader, bourgeois-dominated discourse. Although upper-class influence offers a plausible explanation for penal reform, it fails to justify disciplinary power in its other forms. Foucault asserts that disciplinary power extends to the whole of society, but gives no reason for it to exist outside of prison. The errors in Foucault's ideas about penal reform reflect a larger problem with his idea of ​​power. Foucault finds power in discourse and social relations, but neglects to discuss why power exists in a given situation. His problems in determining the origin of modern discipline arise from the fact that he conceives of power as a strategy, but leaves the employers of power and their objectives unclear. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In Discipline and Punish, Foucault attempts to create a genealogy of the modern soul by examining the evolution of punishment (Discipline 29). His main interest is in how punishment stopped targeting the criminal's body and instead controlled his behavior through scrutiny and discipline. During the 18th century, protests against public torture grew and people demanded that the punishment respect the humanity of the criminal. According to Foucault, the call for humane punishment lacked a rational explanation (Discipline 74). He rejects the idea that sympathy for others is at the origin of this change and instead emphasizes a transformation of criminality. As society's wealth increased, crime became more widespread and shifted from physical violence to material goods. Foucault cites the fact that from the end of the 17th century, rates of murder and assault declined, while those of economic crimes increased (Discipline 75). The increased prevalence of crime and its new nature call for a change in sanctions. Foucault argues that the concentration of power in the hands of the sovereign has rendered the penal system incapable of functioning by delivering irregular justice. The old system demonstrated royal power through excessphysical torture, but was not effective in preventing economic crimes. It left open loopholes that allowed popular illegality to develop at the end of the 17th century (Discipline 78-9). For example, the king could suspend the courts or annul their judgments. The king could also sell part of his judicial power to magistrates who made the application of sanctions even less consistent. Thus, Foucault believes that the change in punishment was a strategy to control a new and rapidly spreading type of crime. Although reformers appealed to a concept of humanity, a broader discourse calling for penal regulation influenced their demands. In Foucault's terms, a discourse defines what is conceivable in a field of knowledge. Foucault believes that knowledge and power are inseparable, because every opinion must be situated in a discourse (Discipline 27). Saying something outside of a speech is almost impossible, and Foucault gives the example of the modern penal system to illustrate this point. Although many people realize that prison fails to rehabilitate criminals and prevent crime, its abolition is inconceivable. According to Foucault, modern thinkers aim to improve the penal system, but the discourse about it presupposes the existence of the prison (Discipline 232). Regarding the relationship between power and knowledge, Foucault writes that “we should rather admit that power produces knowledge...that power and knowledge directly involve each other; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge which does not both presuppose and constitute power relations” (Discipline 27). Thus, Foucault asserts that reformers' efforts to make punishment more humane must be placed in the discourse of the time. The protest against torture and public executions coincided with a shift in the focus of crime from harm to the bodies of others to theft of property. According to Foucault, this transformation required less severe modes of punishment and more subtle ways of ordering the lives of individuals (Discipline 89). Foucault believes that there was a strategic coincidence between what the reformers wanted and what the bourgeoisie needed. He argues that the reformers' criticisms were not aimed at the cruelty of power, but rather at its ineffective management. Reformers wanted to eliminate public executions, because it was there that the excess of power of the sovereign and the illegality of the people were most visible. They thus establish man and respect for his feelings as the limits of power. In this explanation of penal reform, Foucault's placing of each opinion within a discourse results in a very cynical and limited view of social change. Without providing any evidence beyond the coincidence of the reformers' efforts with other trends, he rejects the idea that human sympathy could have brought about penal reform. Foucault suggests that 18th-century reformers acted within a discourse of bourgeois power, whether consciously or unconsciously. The bourgeoisie not only made the sanctions less severe, but also gave the prison its current disciplinary qualities, according to Foucault. After economic crime caused the first change in the penal system, another change in illegality led the prison to focus on surveillance and normalization of the criminal. Foucault asserts that in the 19th century, we moved from material illegality to political illegality. He refers to the period of political uprising from the French Revolution to the Revolutions of 1848 to illustrate this point.(Discipline 273). The ruling class began to recognize that the majority of “murderers, thieves, and idlers” came from the lower class and associated that class with crime (Discipline 275). People no longer associated illegality with the passions and momentary circumstances of men, but rather made it an inherent quality of the poor. Thus, the upper class sought to control those prone to crime by creating the concept of delinquency. The offender is the product of the prison system and the human sciences. It is defined as abnormal and is therefore subject to the disciplinary power of society. Foucault writes that “it would be hypocritical or naive to believe that the law was made for all in the name of all; that it would be more prudent to recognize that it was made for a few and that it was applied to all "others" (Discipline 276). Prison separates delinquents from the rest of society and makes them less dangerous than they would otherwise be. Foucault contradicts his own theory of power when he uses bourgeois influence to craft penal reform. He argues against the traditional idea that power is held by dominant groups and used against. marginalized people within society. Foucault believes that dividing people into tyrants and bullies is too simplistic He asserts that power is a strategy used by all, rather than a possession belonging to the dominant class (Discipline). 26). “This power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition against those who “do not have it”; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them, affirms Foucault; exerts pressure on them, just as they themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the influence it exercises over them” (Discipline 27). that the modern prison arose from class struggle, the lower classes have no influence on the development of methods of punishment. The bourgeoisie uses punishment to supervise, normalize and weaken the lower classes. Foucault emphasizes that power is something that circulates, even if its distribution can be random. uneven (Critique 37). However, in Discipline and Punishment, the bourgeoisie has total control of the penal system. The upper class decided to focus on regulating the soul instead of inflicting pain to protect their livelihood. delinquency to control the lower class. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault gives the poor no choice but to obey the wishes of the bourgeoisie. Although Foucault focused on the development of the penal system, he believed that disciplinary power extended throughout society. “The ideal point of punishment today would be infinite discipline…” Foucault writes: “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, and hospitals, all of which resemble prisons? " (Discipline 227-8). Schools, hospitals, and military institutions all control the individual's time and movements. The goal of these organizations is to force the individual to conform to a standard by defining what is acceptable within society. Despite the similarities between schools, hospitals and prisons, they serve different purposes according to the Foucauldian conception of power. Prison is the result of the bourgeoisie's effort to control the lower class, but schools and hospitals are not part of this effort. Everyone, rich or poor, must go to school and is therefore subject to disciplinary power. While the penal system is a tool of bourgeois domination, school affects everyone by subjecting them to standards and managing their time. Foucault does not explain the purpose of disciplinary power within schools in the same way as he does for.