Outline of Foucault's 'D and P'

An Outline of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish:
For Students and First-Time Readers

Colin Koopman, UC Santa Cruz

In the following analytical summary of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish the Roman numerals refer to Parts of books text (as divided in the English edition) and the Arabic numerals refer to subdivisions in the different parts (of the same edition). Parenthetical numbers refer to page numbers. For example, II.1 (78-82) refers to Part II, section 1, pages 78-82.

Three Stages of Power (cf. pp.115, 131, 236, 264, 307)

1. Monarchial power and punishment as torture (I.2), 18^th century
2. Reformative punitive semio-technique (II.1), late 18^th c. to early 19^th c.
3. Discipline and surveillance; punishment as prison (III/IV), 19^th c. to 20^th c.

Contents of Discipline and Punish

I.1
End of Torture (8-14)
Scientifico-Juridical Complex (19-23)
Intention of the book (23)
Four General Methodological Rules (23)
Body & Soul (25-31)

I.2
Torture and Supplice defined (33-5)
Truth via inquisition and confession of body (35-47)
Torture as ritual (47-54)
Torture reveals a particular regime of truth and power (54-7)
Dual role of the people (57-65)

II.1
Humanitarian Reformers (74ff.)
New Theory of Power (78-82)
Contractarian Parallels (89-92)
Utilitarian Parallels, prevention (92-101)
Objects of this regime of truth and power (101-3)

II.2
Conditions of semio-punishment (104-114)
A new theory of punishment, from semio- to prison (114ff.)
Two problems facing imprisonment (117-120)
Stating the explanatory problem of new power (120-31)

III.1
Disciplines in 18^th century (137-41)
Analytic of space (141-9), of acts (149-56), of time (156-62), of efficiency (162-9)

III.2
Observation (170-7)
Normalization (177-84)
Examination (184-92)
Disciplinary power: social and individual (192-4)

III.3
Confinement and Discipline (195-200)
Panopticon (200-9)
Spread of Discipline (209-17)
Cultural context: economy, law, science (217-228)

IV.1
Prison technology (231-5)
Isolation, vocation, modulation (235-48)
Delinquents (249-55)

IV.2
From chain gain to police wagon (257-64)
Critique of the prison (265-8)
Seven maxims of prison technique (269-70)
Failure of the prisons (271-8)
Advantages and motivations of delinquency (278-85)

IV.3
Spread of punishment throughout society/culture (296-8)
Results of diffusion of punitive discipline (298ff.)