"In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating"
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Punishment, for Foucault, isn’t the state’s moral thunderbolt; it’s a technique. By putting “punish” in the same family as “curing” and “educating,” he deliberately profanes the comforting story modern institutions tell about themselves: that hospitals heal, schools uplift, prisons correct. The point isn’t that these practices are identical in outcome, but that they share a function: producing compliant, legible subjects.
The intent is diagnostic, almost surgical. Foucault is tracing how power in modernity stops needing the spectacle of the scaffold and starts preferring quieter architectures of control. In Discipline and Punish, the prison becomes the model, but not because it’s uniquely harsh. It’s because its logic spreads. “Curing” and “educating” sound benevolent, which is precisely why they’re useful as cover: they normalize intervention in the name of care, they transform coercion into expertise.
The subtext is corrosive: the more a society congratulates itself on humanitarian progress, the more it may be perfecting forms of domination that don’t look like domination. Diagnosis categories, grading rubrics, risk assessments, treatment plans - each claims neutrality, each ranks and corrects. The subject isn’t simply punished; they are measured, compared, trained. Power becomes managerial.
Context matters: Foucault is writing in postwar France, amid expanding welfare states, psychiatric authority, and technocratic governance. His move is to ask what those “helping” institutions do in practice, and to show that punishment’s modern cousin is normalization - a continuous pressure to become the right kind of person, for your own good.
The intent is diagnostic, almost surgical. Foucault is tracing how power in modernity stops needing the spectacle of the scaffold and starts preferring quieter architectures of control. In Discipline and Punish, the prison becomes the model, but not because it’s uniquely harsh. It’s because its logic spreads. “Curing” and “educating” sound benevolent, which is precisely why they’re useful as cover: they normalize intervention in the name of care, they transform coercion into expertise.
The subtext is corrosive: the more a society congratulates itself on humanitarian progress, the more it may be perfecting forms of domination that don’t look like domination. Diagnosis categories, grading rubrics, risk assessments, treatment plans - each claims neutrality, each ranks and corrects. The subject isn’t simply punished; they are measured, compared, trained. Power becomes managerial.
Context matters: Foucault is writing in postwar France, amid expanding welfare states, psychiatric authority, and technocratic governance. His move is to ask what those “helping” institutions do in practice, and to show that punishment’s modern cousin is normalization - a continuous pressure to become the right kind of person, for your own good.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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