Micro - Power Theory In Foucault 's Discipline And Punishment

Foucault’s philosophy is an important part of the French science development, and it has made a great contribution to the field of philosophy of science. With his unique perspective and methods, he put forward the theory of Micro-power and discover the interaction between micro-power and knowledge, rationality, discourse and space. As a new social theoretical framework, the theory of the Micro-Power becomes a scientific knowledge of political analysis. It is mainly embodied in his "discipline and punish:the birth of the prison" which is a masterpiece.Through analyzing the history of prisons, Foucault drew a conclusion that prisons and mental disease were not inevitable result of social history, but were caused by a very occasional social events. With the development of social history, great changes had taken place in the punishment. The harsh punishment as "public performances", public trial and public punishment had disappeared, with adopting the "discipline" as a more moderate way of punishment. Discipline carry on the strict rules on all details, through "drilling" the human body, prompting people change himself from the outside to the profound. Therefore, discipline is the deep mechanism of modern discipline-power. With three technologies such as hierarchical monitoring, standardized judge and specification supporting and operation, through space allocation, the creation art, grade distribution skills, with panopticon as a special architectural form, micro-power means monitoring and surveilling each other between individuals. Then modern society becomes a "disciplinary society" and the modern people becomes extremely same between each other.Discipline power can be seen everywhere in modem social life. From the monitoring point of view, the United States has the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies to monitor the national people and around the world at the government level. And at all other levels of society, people monitor each other. Ubiquitous "cameras" make people always being in a state of alert and tense. Through dividing people into different grades, the discipline view becomes a normal inspection mechanism, which makes modern people suffer from long-term, uninterrupted and enormous pressure. The establishment of the standardized discipline makes people be carved out of a mold, to abandon the personalities and become "standard" completely with same.Foucault believes that the micro power penetration into all aspects of society, but he does not think that we have completely lost the freedom. According to the historical situation of modern people, he put forward the ethical life style and the local battle to live a aesthetics life. And then he discoveries the intrinsic link between the micro power, the subject and the freedom, and then he said people can leave room for free outside the power.Foucault’ s micro-power theory has changed the traditional power conception. It was no longer limited to the macro national political power, but expanded to the been previously neglected, micro, govern and be governed relationship between different individuals in society. It reflects his brilliant spirit of criticizing. But at the same time, Foucault’s thought has its limitations which can not be ignored.