Analysis Of Discipline And Punish By Foucault

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault asserts that we are living in a disciplinary society. Prison is used as a compelling example. Foucault asks, “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (p. 228). Bureaucracies combine similar methods as prisons for arranging and disciplining bodies in an effort to exert and retain power in the status quo. The discipline associated with the modern prison is not contained within prison walls, but originates from the society outside the walls. The mechanisms of control, examination and classification operate within all the institutions and power, in its various forms, flows through all of them. These other institutions resemble prisons as they fulfill similar functions in society.

I write this reflection from my position as a white, middle-class, female leader in the public K-12 education system. While I have regularly experienced oppression, judgement, and been marginalized and dismissed because I am female, I am aware that I have not had to endure what women of color have had to endure.

One of the things he spoke about that has stayed with me is relevant to the content of this reflection. In talking about the Black Lives Matter movement, he said if you are if you care about women 's equality, then you should be for the Black Lives Matter movement. If you care about equality for people of color, regardless of race, you should care about the Black Lives Matter movement. He went on to include other marginalized groups following the same sentence frame. He tied it up by explaining that whenever a marginalized group gains more equity, it benefits all marginalized groups. If you truly believe in equity, you believe in equity for