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wohnjick's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.75
Foucault's analysis is detailed, persuasive, and prescient. There's a reason this is considered a classic of contemporary philosophy; go read it.
lorenzobc's review against another edition
4.0
This is totally the better intro to Foucault's thoughts than "The History fo Sexuality" which sit he primary text I started with. It's not only much easier to follow, but it also articulates the strongest models of Foucault's philosophy: bio-power, the panopticon, and disciplinary control. Honestly, you will not look at prisons, the military, or schools the same way after reading this book.
Foucault effectively shows how power is not inherent to a particular social structure (monarchy, the catholic church..) but is rather an emergent phenomenon of the drive of any social force (education, the justice system, free markets) to bring everything under its influence. He also shows how surveillance ends up reinforcing social norms in a distributed way by pressuring individuals towards conformity to a standard. He also shows categorizations and empirical management end up creating hierarchies between people and spectra that restrict how people can be, especially in education. The very act of dissecting an individual into evermore granular data points in a broader statistical distribution produces self-fulfilling prophesies as institutions stop controlling individuals and instead control entire populations by defining what's normal and abnormal in order to justify interventions to limit outlier behavior.
Def one of my favorite books of all time.
If you are interested in learning more about Foucault though, I recommend checking out "Foucault: A Very Short Introduction" by Gary Gutting
Foucault effectively shows how power is not inherent to a particular social structure (monarchy, the catholic church..) but is rather an emergent phenomenon of the drive of any social force (education, the justice system, free markets) to bring everything under its influence. He also shows how surveillance ends up reinforcing social norms in a distributed way by pressuring individuals towards conformity to a standard. He also shows categorizations and empirical management end up creating hierarchies between people and spectra that restrict how people can be, especially in education. The very act of dissecting an individual into evermore granular data points in a broader statistical distribution produces self-fulfilling prophesies as institutions stop controlling individuals and instead control entire populations by defining what's normal and abnormal in order to justify interventions to limit outlier behavior.
Def one of my favorite books of all time.
If you are interested in learning more about Foucault though, I recommend checking out "Foucault: A Very Short Introduction" by Gary Gutting
sloppybuster's review against another edition
5.0
Mine is a docile body that requires daily spankings to keen in line :3
arcticgorilla's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
Enormous amount of research, but two main points which made this rather interesting topic a painful read for me:
1. Foucault's style of writing. It is borderline unreadable. First and last chapters are so full of repetitiveness and half-a-page-long sentences with thoughts being formed like a flow of consciousness, that it was VERY challenging to get through it. However, the 2.2 chapter and most of the 3rd chapter are awesome and bring out really good points as well as present a characteristic of the topics they discuss.
2. Foucault's style of building an argument mostly and sometimes only from the position of "power dynamics". If only this book had more variations or at least self-critique about how "power dynamics" don't really explain every aspect of jails and tortures. Very one-sided.
1. Foucault's style of writing. It is borderline unreadable. First and last chapters are so full of repetitiveness and half-a-page-long sentences with thoughts being formed like a flow of consciousness, that it was VERY challenging to get through it. However, the 2.2 chapter and most of the 3rd chapter are awesome and bring out really good points as well as present a characteristic of the topics they discuss.
2. Foucault's style of building an argument mostly and sometimes only from the position of "power dynamics". If only this book had more variations or at least self-critique about how "power dynamics" don't really explain every aspect of jails and tortures. Very one-sided.
lottie1803's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.25
grb8's review against another edition
4.0
Only chose this as my start of Foucault’s full texts because there happened to be a copy at home. But, it’s as good as any starting point.
This was a heavy read in that it bogged me down several times. Sometimes I’d planned to go 100 pages and could only go 60-70 because of its density of thought. It was nice to reconsider from friends from the French Revolution class I took in college for the first 130 pages or so.
Here Foucault rather convincingly outlines both the history of the prison system as well as its toxicity. But he takes care to note that it’s quite effective. So much so that it’s been adopted by the institutions we’ve surrounded ourselves with: school, church, work. What’s most concerning is how empty the humanist push for discipline reform was. The powers that be just found a new way to enact the power of the still existent sovereign. This is what Foucault means when he says knowledge and power and inextricable from each other. True knowledge is the privilege of power in that it allows you to direct those without power to do what you want, thinking it was their goal all along. Harrowing stuff!
This was a heavy read in that it bogged me down several times. Sometimes I’d planned to go 100 pages and could only go 60-70 because of its density of thought. It was nice to reconsider from friends from the French Revolution class I took in college for the first 130 pages or so.
Here Foucault rather convincingly outlines both the history of the prison system as well as its toxicity. But he takes care to note that it’s quite effective. So much so that it’s been adopted by the institutions we’ve surrounded ourselves with: school, church, work. What’s most concerning is how empty the humanist push for discipline reform was. The powers that be just found a new way to enact the power of the still existent sovereign. This is what Foucault means when he says knowledge and power and inextricable from each other. True knowledge is the privilege of power in that it allows you to direct those without power to do what you want, thinking it was their goal all along. Harrowing stuff!