Abstract
In this chapter, we want to discuss poor survival. Because there are many possible instances of poor survival, we selected an especially vivid example, i.e., an example that illustrates everything that is possibly worrying about it. We take this example from Foucault’s book Surveiller et Punir (1975, 1977).
In this book, Foucault discusses the emergence in the eighteenth century of what he calls the “disciplines.” According to Foucault, the disciplines constituted a new way of subjecting human behavior. It was the aim of the disciplines to make human behavior both “productive” and “controllable” and to do this in a scientific, deliberate, and methodical way. As such, the disciplines were applied in all kinds of societal domains and in all kind of institutions such as factories, schools, asylums, hospitals, barracks, or prisons.
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Notes
- 1.
The production process and its analysis provide the context for determining what can be “basic” operations. For instance, at a production line for mobile phones, “basic operations” may be defined at the level of minute arm, hand, and finger movements that must be carried out with high precision in very short cycle times. “Gardening” may require quite different “basic operations.” Or, in modern “knowledge oriented” organizations “basic operations” may be translated into systems of more or less specified competencies enabling, for instance, problem solving, presiding meetings, negotiating, etc.
- 2.
A number of presuppositions have to be met if the disciplines are to work. For instance, prisoners must once in a while witness the punishment of (other) prisoners. In such cases, they must be able to connect the reason for punishment (the undesired behavior) both to the punishment and to their own behavior. It is not opportune here to explore all these presuppositions.
- 3.
Bauman quotes Milgram (1974): “Any force or event that is placed between the subject and the consequences of shocking the victim, will lead to a reduction of strain on the participant and thus lessen disobedience. In modern society others often stand between us and the final destructive act to which we contribute”, and he then adds, “Indeed, mediating the action, splitting the action between stages delineated and set apart by the hierarchy of authority, and cutting the action across through functional specialization is one of the most salient and proudly advertised achievements of our rational society” (Bauman 2005, p. 155).
- 4.
Bauman calls this “free-floating responsibility,” “We may surmise that the overall effect of such a continuous and ubiquitous responsibility shifting would be a free-floating responsibility, a situation in which each and every member of the organization is convinced, and would say so if asked, that he has been at some else’s beck and call, but the members pointed to by others as the bearers of responsibility would pass the buck to someone else again. One can say that the organization as a whole is an instrument to obliterate responsibility” (2005, p. 163).
References
Beer, S. (1995). The Heart of Enterprise. Chichester: Wiley.
Bauman, Z. (2005). Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Sheridan, A. (Trans.). London: Allan Lane.
de Sitter, L. U. (1998). Synergetisch produceren. Assen: Van Gorcum.
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Achterbergh, J., Vriens, D. (2009). Poor Survival: Disciplining Organizational Behavior. In: Organizations. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00110-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00110-9_9
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