Another Brick In The Wall Analysis

Institutional structures have the power to configure adolescent growth through repression and liberation. The capability that adolescents have to create their own destiny and choose their own social institution can be limited, but not impossible. In Trites article, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” the author argues that kids have personal power, whether they acknowledge it and use it to their own advantage or not. Michel Foucault declares that “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Trites). Power is inevitable, there will never be no such thing as power in this world; it will never diminish or fade. Trites also conveyed that, “power not only acts on a subject but, in a transitive

Reading Foucault this year you become engaged in his philosophical exercises in self-transformation. Foucault also helps you to understand that the struggle for power in all human relations will never conclude. I also really appreciate how Foucault analyses the past to show us how we have been made docile. Docile bodies according to Foucault is subjected, used, transformed and improved. Discipline is a word Foucault uses that describes systems that are used to dominate docile bodies, in other words humans who are able to be controlled, basically all of us. How does the concept of controlling bodies through spatialization exist in other forms of trauma and violence?

From the concrete walls, the schematics of Architecture and even the way that we are taught, school can remind us of a type of prison. We are taught by repetition and to regurgitate information rather than actually go in depth to understand the topic. We are ready to absorb information and not question said info. We are like fishes swimming in a bowl, unable to comprehend what exists outside of our own sphere of learning. In an essay written by Foucault, he talks about the idea of the Panopticon. When reading his essay, it becomes clear there are striking similarities between the Panopticon and the schooling system. It is my intent to show how both the schooling system and the Panopticon strip Individuality away because of mechanical teaching. This will be conveyed by showing the comparisons of the Panopticon and the schooling system through the topics of how describing the similarity of the two locations and lead into the course of Surveillance on both subjects. I will then lead into the topic of Discipline shaping behavior and will finalize with discussing how the general architecture of schools and the Panopticon are similar.

“Another Brick In The Wall Part I” describes that Pink’s father has been shipped off to war. Pink questions his father “Daddy, what else did you leave for me?”; Pink is already feeling the effects of desertion from his father. This initiates the construction of the wall he sets himself up in. This is the initial “brick”; the commencement traumatic event that makes him feel that isolation is all that is out there.

Foucault sees discipline moving from the body to the soul or mind. Through a lengthy introduction that illustrates the torture and killing of a man in public, we see how punishment and discipline was exerted by physical means and in front of a populace. That discipline and punish is now evolved into a form of confining those to a small space behind walls where the public cannot see them. The punishment is not of the body but of the mind and soul, as Foucault calls it. Foucault argues that a new relationship has been formed between the body and punishment by saying: “from being an art of unbearable sensations, punishment has become an economy of suspended rights.”

In his book “Discipline and Punish”, Foucault theorizes that we live in “disciplinary society,” and that power exercised through disciplinary means is found in modern day institution i.e. schools, Universities, prisons, the military and hospitals. Focalult says “classical times discovered the body as a target of power to be manipulated, trained, which obeys, responds, becomes skillful and increases in forces” (p.136) Focalult states through the historical moment of discipline came the art of controlling the body. Which formed a policy coercion that acted on the body, and breaking it down. Thus Foucault says discipline makes practiced and subjected bodies “ docile bodies” that increase economic terms of utility and diminishes the body in terms of domination i.e. the body becomes a vessel of aptitude and capacity and a relation of complete subjection” Foucault states “if the economic exploitation separates the force and the product of labor, he would say disciplinary coercion establishes in the body a link between the increased aptitude and increased domination.(Foucault p.138) A blueprint for of general disciplinary methodology that overlapped, repeated and transformed spilling from education, to prisons, hospitals to the workplace according to the disciplines domains of application.

In the past, punishment was carried out through the use of physical harm to a person’s body whereas new forms of punishment were handled in a less brutal manner albeit an equally debilitating way. Discipline and punishment is now characterized to not just have an effect on a prisoner’s body, but to control every aspect of their lives. Prisons display institutional control over an individual taking the place of a king or other ruler. This shift also took discipline and punishment out of the public eye and made it a more private matter. Foucault used Bentham’s Panopticon as an example of how disciplinary power is demonstrated in modern times.

Sean Leahy, an Australian cartoonist released a political cartoon “Lazarus quits PUP” to satirically represent the departure of several members of the Palmer United Party, which was created and run by Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer. The cartoon itself is a re-creation of the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty, in which he falls of a brick wall. Leahy’s cartoon displays Humpty Dumpty as Palmer, who is falling besides a deteriorating brick wall. Four specific bricks are of interest as three have been displayed with the surnames Douglas, Judge and Lambie. The brick adjacent to Clive is displayed with a face, singing, “We don’t need no thought control” which is a lyric from “Another Brick in the Wall”, a song created by Pink Floyd.

In Foucault’s influential work, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1975), he argues that discipline enables individuals to perform the duties assigned to them within the new forms of economic, political, and military organisations emerging in the modern age. Foucault’s argument is that discipline creates docile bodies, ideal for the modern age – bodies that function well within academic, administrative, service and manufacturing frameworks. In a refined world, there are subtle methods to maintain order and discipline and keep the system functioning. To construct docile bodies the disciplinary institutions must be able to constantly observe and record the bodies they control and ensure the internalisation of the disciplinary individuality within the bodies being controlled. That is, discipline must be enforced without excessive force and only by way of keen supervision; the moulding of bodies into exact forms must be done through observation alone. This requires a particular form of institution which Foucault exemplifies using Jeremy Bentham’s

“The Thin Ice” returns the listener to a chronological telling of Pink’s story. In “The Thin Ice” the listener learns about Pink as a toddler. The song describes the affection Pink’s parents have for their young son. A close listening identifies what we later recognize as his mother’s overprotective characteristic. The mother who we can identify from the phrase “Oooo Babe” tells Pink “Don’t be surprised when a crack in the ice, / Appears under your feet.

Chapter Four In this chapter, the researcher answers the problem posed in this paper by providing answers to the following questions: What are the mechanics of discipline? What is Panopticon system helps in making docile body and What is docile body in Foucault’s context? Thus, this paper focuses on the mechanisms of discipline which makes the body docile, how does the body being treated, and why does the reformer revolts during the heights of the Enlightenment. And lastly, this paper discusses that the classical form of penal system has changed in the means of power relations, laws, how the body is being treated, and what is the architectural device of Panopticon all about.

In Michael Foucault’s work, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, he discusses how we are always being watched. That the way society has been structured has forced us to always think someone with more power is watching us therefore we should behave better. In his work he puts forward his main ideas and arguments which are power and knowledge, the body, the history of the soul, prison and society, and paradox and contrast. He observes and or studies the relationship between each term and elaborates on each one of his

Another conception of Foucault comes across with his “docile bodies”: he said _ “One that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved, and that this docile body can only be achieved through strict regiments of disciplinary acts” [16]. Foucault argues that we cannot choose to enter modern society; we are controlled utterly by it through it technologies of power [16]. In the theory of discipline, Discipline is a word Foucault uses that describes certain methods that are used to dominate “docile bodies” meaning humans who are able to be dominated, namely all of us. “Docile bodies” is compared by soldiers, which are actually be made. Docile bodies is an important concept because people are considered as docile, then the inclination to rule

A brick wall I may face this year, is temptation with drugs/alcohol. Many people I know drink, or do drugs which is honestly just dumb and a waste of money. This topic is important to me because I used to be very close with kids, but when we go into high school they decided to do drugs. I am not close friends with them anymore. These temptations are a huge obstacle for many people; they may think it’s the cool thing to do, or they may just like the feeling and become obsessed with it. I know for a fact people will try and tempt me with it sometime this year, because people already have tried too.

As society has progressed, Foucault explains, these practices have expanded into other institutions such as hospitals, schools, prisons and asylums. Bentham’s Panopticon embodies such disciplinary