Use Foucault's theory of the disciplinary society to analyse three examples of body discipline - Essay Example

Foucault considers this physicality -such as pain, hunger, sorrow, joy, etc- a subject of politics and power. The idea, that body is an object that can be subjugated, threatened and tortured by the external forces and power, gives birth to the concept that body’s fear of torture and pain can be manipulated to grow body disciplines in accordance with the social disciplines. In fact, for Foucault, ‘body’ has always been in the center of the attention of any forms of power or authority because body is easily accessible and manageable by controlling its various organic needs, as referring to Foucault’s obsession with the physicality of human being, Peter Erlandson says, “Foucault stresses that as well as studying the body as a seat of ‘needs and appetites’ and other ‘biological events’ in the social sciences, the politics of the body also needs to be studied” (662-3).

This paper will explore how Foucault’s social disciplinary theory explains the body disciplines. According to Foucault, discipline as one of the social constructs developed as a response to the increasing demand of the reformists to view the public or social body in power of the state. This concept of “the power of the public body” necessarily viewed an individual as a body that needs to be disciplined in accordance with the disciplines followed by the collective social body. But Foucault notes that the social body itself is a group of individual bodies that have internalized a set of acknowledged rules and regulations through a number of social disciplinary organizations.

According to Holligan, the social institutions functions as “regimes whose purpose and success is predicated upon making bodies obedient and practically valuable within a particular social formation” (138). An individual that violates the social disciplines is viewed as a physical power or body that lacks the