Analysis of the article from Foucault’s perspective Essay

In â€Å"Discipline and Punishment†, Foucault focuses on the major social control institution, which is penitentiary system, or system of punishment and prevention of delinquent and deviant behavior. Andrew Jacobs in his article entitled â€Å"Whistle-Blowers in Chinese City Sent to Mental Hospital† discusses the government’s struggle against undesirable, yet legal, actions of citizens like petitioning and seeking justice. The present paper is intended to analyze the article through the lens of Foucault’s framework of punishment.   First of all, it needs to be noted that neither Foucault nor Jacobs write about the justice as the conceptual and moral foundation of the so-called law enforcement authorities. In Foucault’s opinion, what actually underlies the entire punishment system is striving for power as the end in itself: in the Middle Ages, for instance, public executions were administered in cases of those criminals who obviously undermined the ruler’s power and political influence. The article by Jacobs in fact is additional evidence of this thesis: whereas the citizens do actually nothing unlawful by   preparing petitions, they are nevertheless placed in mental health institutions, due to the fact that they to certain degree interfere with the execution of absolute power. This also proves the fact that the modern authorities and power/ governance institutions nowadays have become so complicated and autonomous system that they begin to function for their own sake, â€Å"forgetting† about their initial purpose, which consisted in serving the interests of the multitude. Foucault admits that the present-day punishment is free of tortures in order to evoke in potential criminals the fear of the penalty itself, rather than the pain and physical suffering. The scholar also adds that science in technology increasingly more often serve the purposes of this system so that a number of professionals including lawyers, police officers, engineers and psychiatrists are involved into the examination and investigation.   In this sense, the case of Shandong Province clearly shows that relatively painless measures are used to prevent citizens from excessive petitioning ; moreover, a successful tandem of police authorities and mental health specialists increase the reliability of this practice: â€Å"During a 20-day stay, he said, he was lashed to a bed, forced to take pills and given injections that made him numb and woozy. According to the paper, when he told the doctor he was a petitioner, not mentally ill, the doctor said: â€Å"I don’t care if you’re sick or not. As long as you are sent by the township government, I’ll treat you as a mental patient† (Jacobs, par.5). Thus, even health care as a social institution in general is actually an institution of social control, fully supporting and following the ambitions and interests of the existing authorities. Due to the fact that justice-seekers, as it has been noted above, act legally, they are not eligible to become prison inmates, so law enforcement agencies send them to mental hospitals. This means, the punishment and corrections system has become so vast and multifaceted that it can now achieve a number of different goals, including the goal of imposing a penalty on the individual, whose actions are not fully beneficial for the institutions of power.   Thus, such institutions, which serve their own needs, find strategies of curbing unfavorable behavior and select a path of minimal resistance: instead of officially declaring active petitioners as criminals (which will result in the need for reviewing and revising the entire legislation), these officials make an open statement that truth-seekers are simply mad and need special medical treatment. Thus, they even show this situation as the act of saving the society from one more mentally imbalanced citizen and preserving or improving this   person’s health. Thus, the philosophy ostensibly underlying this practice   seems noble, but it needs to be remembered that the institutions of power and social control work moistly for their own sake and attempt to expand and strengthen their influence. Foucault also dedicates a part of his work to describing the concept of discipline. In particular, the scholar asserts that discipline is one of behavioral compliance-gaining techniques, which consists in managing the distribution of individuals in space, controlling their time and clearly defining their relations with the institutions of social control. In this sense, the Chinese authorities obviously seek to introduce a new discipline and eliminate the habit of creating petitions and lawsuit against the governmental institutions, i.e. the practice of   hospital confinement is intended to deter individuals from interfering with the government’s course. This is actually the heart of discipline – the recognition of power, obedience and absolute acceptance of the programs and campaigns of the ruling institutions. Moreover, this out of common type of discipline allows finding supporters, who would be the social engines of the promotion and progress of the government’s activities. Finally, it is important to focus on the pure concept of punishment as explained by Foucault and addressed by Jacobs. Obviously, hospital incarceration includes all the components of punitive measure including control over the inmate’s body (i.e. the person depends on the institution in terms of the satisfaction of their basic needs); management of the prisoner’s time and activities and, thirdly, modulating the penalty. In the context of the article by Jacobs, the last component means administering additional therapies, which make the person half-unconscious for days or suggesting the release from the institution in exchange for signing a refusal of the petition. Importantly, the inmate is surveilled, but cannot see all of their â€Å"watchers†. As one can conclude, although the incarceration in mental hospitals is not a traditional form of punishment, it is actually similar to the regular imprisonment, because of the similar concepts like panopticism, discipline, painless punishment and the execution of the government’s authority. Bibliography Rainbow, P. The Foucault Reader. New York: Random House, 1984. Jacobs, A. â€Å"Whistle-Blowers in Chinese City Sent to Mental Hospital†