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Location: Plum Garden Study
Lecturer: Lan Jiang, Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University
Comments: Yudong Yang, Institute of Anthropology, School of Sociology, Nanjing University
Professor Lan Jiang first introduced Foucault's academic status: As one of the most important thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century, Foucault's research scope is not limited to a single discipline in the modern sense, which has also created Foucault's own influence to the vast art, philosophy, literature, law, sociology and even extended to the economics. It is a great pity that Foucault died young, although his academic status in the social sciences cannot be shaken, but if he can live for a longer period of time, he may leave us with more valuable spiritual wealth. Of course, this can only be an unrealistic expectation. When he first decided on the theme of the lecture, Mr. Lan realized that Foucault's research scope itself was relatively broad, and in order to meet the needs of more people, he finally chose the book "Discipline and Punishment" that entered China at the earliest time, had a wide audience, and was relatively easy to understand. For ordinary people, when it comes to Foucault, the first thing that comes to mind is perhaps discipline and a circular prison (panoramic open prison), and to some extent we even equate Foucault with these two concepts. In this regard, Teacher Lan first told the origin of the word "discipline" in the Chinese translation, in fact, if the French version of the "surveiller et punir" book is translated in a literal way, in fact, the original meaning of the French language riskiller is monitoring, in the nineties, people often use the English version to read, the English version of the French version of the sovietiller translated as a discipline, Teacher Liu Beicheng of Tsinghua University creatively translated the English disclining as "discipline", which has a certain gap with French, but it has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. After the translation of discipline, especially after it was introduced into China, more people accepted this concept, believing that the word "discipline" can better reflect the "relationship between seeing and being seen" than the word "monitoring", which is in line with foucault's concept of "gaze", and it is through the use of the word "discipline" that it can more fully reflect the power relationship contained in each of our capillaries and appear in the process of interacting with each other, so the word "discipline" gradually replaces the original word "monitoring". It has become an important concept for interpreting Foucault's thought in the context of the Middle Chinese.
In order to let readers better understand Foucault, Mr. Lan used Foucault's important works as a clue to list an almanac about Foucault, which specifically covered Foucault's doctoral dissertation "Madness and Irrationality : A History of Madness in the Classical Period", published excerpts of "Madness and Civilization", "Words and Things", "History of Sexuality", and a series of lectures. Through his writings, we can find that Foucault has an important time node" in the "seventeenth century", from the "history of madness in the classical era" to "the birth of clinical medicine" that we know best, to "words and things" and "discipline and punishment", all of which regard the seventeenth century as an important time node. For Foucault, the seventeenth century was an important moment in the true sense of the word of modernity, and much of his writings were about what happened after the seventeenth century. When we return to The Discipline and Punishment, we can find that Foucault spent a great deal of time explaining the entire process of Damian's death sentence and public execution for the assassination of Louis XV, thus creating a very bloody landscape. In Foucault's view, the choice of bloody, open execution of Damian fully reflects the "one technique of governance" in modern times, and through this barbaric and open means of slaughter, it has played a good deterrent effect on ordinary people, allowing subjects to violent domination and eliminating unstable and threatening factors, so as to create a stable society. Turning the pen, Foucault believes that the situation has changed dramatically just seventy years later, especially during the reign of Napoleon. At this time, we have not seen the bloody and violent public executions of prisoners in the past, so where have these prisoners gone? In this regard, Foucault pointed out an important historical figure: Fouché. Writer Zweig wrote a "wind blowing on both sides" type of politician, and Foucher pioneered a strict schedule of work and rest in modern prisons. In the past, prisoners would often appear in public, but now there is a whole set of isolation procedures to keep them out of the public eye. So why did it evolve from an open landscape to a hidden means of isolation? In this regard, Foucault expounded the prevailing explanatory views on humanitarian progress. In the process of thinking that humanism originated in the Renaissance and developed to its peak in the Age of Enlightenment, we have strictly distinguished between good and bad people from the past, thinking that "good people are good people, bad people are bad people, good and bad are extremely clear" Such an absolutist dichotomy transitions to the belief that human sin is not innate, but more due to being in a specific situation "misguided" results. In this regard, it is believed that every "misguided" person can be corrected by artificially exerting certain means to pull him back to the normal social track, and this process of exerting influence fully reflects a kind of humanitarian concern. But in fact, Foucault believed that this process of exerting influence was a process of discipline, and that the application of this process was not limited to the "deviant", but even derived into the daily life situation of each individual in society. In response, Foucault compared the prison schedule with the schedule of the aristocratic boarding school and found a striking similarity between the two. From this, he argues, it is not the development of humanism that has led us to choose a more tolerant approach to "deviants", but that the technology of social governance has quietly undergone a dramatic transformation: from the previous bloody means of governance to the one of Enwei and Wei. In this process, he reduces every person in our society attached to a particular network of relationships into a simple individual, and the individual forms an individual who can be disciplined, thus constituting an element of social governance. In this sense, modern governance technology is to continuously produce independent and disciplined individuals, so that each individual follows the existing social norms, so as to achieve the stability of modern society. In this regard, Teacher Lan gave an example of a mental hospital to illustrate.
After explaining the term discipline, Teacher Lan systematically introduced us to the concept of "panoramic open view prison". Teacher Lan believes that Bentham's panoramic open prison contains optical effects, and he assumes that people have two sides: one is the illuminated and gazed side, and the other is the unlit and free side, which to a certain extent echoes the two concepts of foreground and backstage in Goffman's "pseudo-drama theory". In fact, in our daily life is also full of the phenomenon of being stared at, such as "when cheating on the exam, we will unconsciously look at the eyes of the invigilator", "girls need to play more under the gaze of others", "cameras everywhere (Skynet Project)", etc., then, we can't help but think that when this social discipline space is popularized, people tend to take more behaviors that conform to social norms. The development of so-called big data, cloud computing and other technologies is to some extent at the expense of individual privacy. When others continue to have the power to gaze, we will inevitably call for freedom not to be gazed at. In this regard, in fact, the real power holders in this era are often those who have more "seeing" power. Therefore, those films with the theme of lower class resistance often add hacker elements, because as an ordinary class of society, only through "hacking" technology can we transfer surveillance, obtain the right to "see", and become the owner of power, and only then can we have the possibility of resistance.
After Mr. Lan Jiang's sharing, Ms. Xu Jinjing once again emphasized the great influence of Foucault's book "Discipline and Punishment" in the Chinese-speaking world. In this regard, he gave examples of a very representative work and a very representative work of art to explain: First, the Taiwanese historian Mr. Wang Fansen presented to us the discipline of the modern Qing government for literati doctors through the book "The Capillary Role of Power"; second, Xu Bing launched an experimental video "Dragonfly Eye", which is a film composed entirely of surveillance pictures from all over China, which also triggered important repercussions.
Teacher Lan Jiang interprets the book "Discipline and Punishment" from a philosophical background, so how does Teacher Yang Yudong, as an anthropologist, interpret Foucault's "Discipline and Punishment"? In this regard, Teacher Yang Yudong, as a reviewer today, also shared with us two films related to it: "Flying Over the Madhouse" and "The Shawshank Redemption". Teacher Yang believes that for the previous film, the rebels who tried to "fly" over the lunatic asylum ended in failure, and the real rebels finally went to death, thus reflecting the cruelty of modern disciplinary methods, and the individual lost the possibility of successful resistance in such a "living world". But for the latter film, it wants to illustrate the possibility of a successful rebellion in the living world, arguing that even the "panoramic open prison" will have certain loopholes. And the existence of these loopholes can be used as a weapon for the weak to resist, such as "cheating" in exams and so on. Of course, Teacher Yang also added another aspect of Foucault's book "Discipline and Punishment" that he wants to present to us: the reason why the discipline society can be established is not only that it is a series of control norms and means supporting it, but also in the knowledge system constructed under the discipline, through the production and continuous production of "discipline" knowledge, so as to ensure the legitimacy and rationality of discipline. In other words, in the modern context, each of us should examine the way in which we write about ourselves and by the "other" in the modern context. In this sense, the "circle of friends" may also be a different kind of "prison", a prison of self-shaping. Finally, Teacher Yang believes that as far as academia is concerned, Foucault's thought is greatly inspired; but for life, Foucault's academic thought contains a "pessimistic" mood, in fact, real life is not as bad as he says. In this regard, Teacher Lan Jiang affirmed Teacher Yang's supplement, believing that the construction of discourse power is indeed an important foundation for the establishment of modern discipline, and it cannot be ignored.
In response to the sharing of the above three teachers, book friends also put forward their own questions:
1. Is Foucault's disciplinary ideas equivalent to a modern social de-meaning view?
Teacher Lan Jiang responded that this is not the case, Foucault is actually doing one thing, that is, judging how the modern subject is produced, he does not think that each of us is affected by the light of enlightenment like the Enlightenment thinkers, and then has the Enlightenment thought, which is a "mythological process". Foucault focused on the whole process by which the individual chooses to accept established social norms, in which he may also have his own independent mind and soul. For example, the "craftsman spirit", the craftsman is to inject his soul into the product, should not be simply understood as a process of de-meaning. If we insist on Heidegger's "de-meaningization" in a vague way, we will inevitably fall into a romantic nostalgia. Immerse ourselves in our fictional past, giving endless meaning to the past, and critiquing today's "cold instrumental rational calculations." In fact, we have today's meaning, and we should try to look forward and create a meaning that we have never had before, rather than falling into the repetition or remembrance of the old meaning.
2. Are powers mutual? Are the disciplined individuals also disciplined "discipliners"?
Teacher Yang Yudong responded that in fact, our society is a huge network of power relations, and each node is not an equal relationship. The interaction between the two sides of power does exist, but it is also an asymmetrical relationship. Foucault generally does not talk about ideology, but about power relations at the micro level, a network relationship between people, not macro relations. Due to the asymmetry of power between the discipliner and the disciplined, discipline in the Foucault sense is generally one-sided. Of course, we do not deny that in real life, the weak also have the power of the weak, and he can seek the "loophole" of discipline to transcend discipline and obtain corresponding powers, such as cheating and so on.
(Arranger: Xiao Lizhi; Approved by: Jiang Hai YiWeng; the manuscript of this article was confirmed by the main lecturer Lan Jiang and the commentator Yang Yudong; the on-site photo was taken by Xiao Weng and the book friends present.) ）
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