Foucault News

Do you ever feel like you’re being watched when you’re studying in the library?  

This is a question I’ve been asking a number of students lately as part of my research study- which has resulted in some interesting points for consideration.  It’s a question that often needs a bit of unpacking, because what I really mean when I ask this question is whether they experience Foucauldian concepts of surveillance as a result of the power structures related to the library and university, as a whole, including the formation of docile bodies with regard to hierarchies of social control and disciplinary powers.

Yes.  Him again. 

Image by Juan Nahuel Novelletto

If we start by looking at Foucault’s Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, we begin to understand how the education system is entwined with power and how it relates to the development of ‘docile bodies,’ surveillance…