Although the example of the factory workers may, on the surface, appear to be one that only targets the body, this is not the case upon closer inspection. To explain this Foucault’s conception of what a docile body is must be explained. For Foucault, a docile body is one that “may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved” (136). It is a body that can easily be controlled to suit the whims of the person in power, and it is a body that is created through disciplinary practices. The modality through which these disciplinary practices were enforced is important here: Foucault believed that a docile body was created through “an uninterrupted, constant coercion,” that is, by having the people in question repeat the same tasks over an over until it sunk in (137). This form of discipline essentially targets both the physical body and the psychology of it—people were being constantly controlled by ‘superiors’ and since they were being constantly corrected, their psyche was heavily affected—people essentially began to obey without thinking. That the workers were molded into obedient, docile bodies is important here, because it denotes a change on a level beyond that of the body and its actions. This form of domination over the bodies is a more passive form for those in power in that the bodies were not being controlled by an active form of punishment, like torture— the bodies were being controlled by the soul and the psyche. Furthermore, while it is the bodies that were being disciplined, it was through the controlling of their spatial possibilities. To further illustrate how the souls of these people were molded, Foucault draws a contrast with soldiers:
By the late eighteenth century the soldier has become something that can be made; out of a formless clay, an inapt body, the machine required can be constructed; posture is gradually corrected; a calculated constraint runs slowly through each part of the body, mastering it, making it pliable, ready at all times, turning slightly into the automatism of habit; in short, one has 'got rid of the peasant' and given him 'the air of the soldier' (135)
He points out that only a century earlier, the soldier was born not made—soldiers were identified by their body types and by an inherent sense of “courage… pride… strength and valour” (135). This new model of discipline works around the body by transforming the person. The body became the site of an exertion of power: through observation, exercise, and normalization. This all worked with the power of knowledge: the soldiers knew what was normal and what was expected of them, so they conformed. In terms of the factory, the workers were made into obedient subjects who did as their supervisors expected because they were conscious of being watched. Foucault defines “disciplines” as the totality of methods, which produced “subjected and practised” docile bodies ready for “utility” (139). The bodies and souls were regulated through the disciplinary techniques of hierarchical surveillance and perpetual assessment.
Imprisonment is another disciplinary technique that uses the body as a means of accessing the soul. Prison may be the place where bodies are confined, but it is also “a machine for altering minds” (122). One of the ways through which this was done is by solitary confinement: this “isolation provides a ‘terrible shock’ which, while protecting the prisoner from bad influences, enables him to go into himself and rediscover the depths of his conscience” (122). Solitary confinement, Foucault claims, was a means of invoking a spiritual relationship with God. The magistrates in charge believed that by turning the prisoners into religious people, it would be easier to steer them away from evil. The magistrates also made sure that “the prisoners were rewarded” for good behavior (122). This was, in essence, operant conditioning at work: the prisoners would learn through reward, and as such, would (hopefully) continue to do the good deeds in question out of habit. Lastly, imprisonment also became a way for “certain punishments” like “forced labor to be carried out” (114). The prisoners had to work on a certain time schedule, and this constant working was done under the belief that by keeping them busy, they would be less inclined to do wrong. In this way, it can be seen that the way that the soldiers thought and operated had been transformed. As such, it can be seen that through bodily discipline, the magistrates had in fact accessed the prisoners’ souls and psyches.
This penetration of the psyche and of the soul was more effective than simply punishing and disciplining in a corporal manner. The workers in question were being monitored for the efficiency of their movements, and a repetition, or exercise of their movements and actions was necessary so as to achieve a perfection of these movements. This form of discipline essentially targets both the physical body and the psychology of it—people were being constantly controlled by ‘superiors’ and since they were being constantly corrected, their psyche was heavily affected—people essentially began to obey without thinking. The workers in this case were essentially subjecting themselves to this sort of discipline by allowing the idea of being watched to force them into working in an efficient manner. As such, it can be seen that the bodies are utilized so as to mold the prisoners’ psyches and souls into obedient, docile beings.
In this way, it becomes clear that while it is the person’s body that is confined to the walls of the prison, and it is the person’s body that is doing all of the manual labor, it is the person’s soul, the person’s psyche that is being truly affected— all of these exertions of power and discipline were done with the intent of changing the way that the prisoners operated by instilling good behaviors into them. Furthermore, Foucault highlights this all by saying that “this control and transformation of behavior were accompanied…by the development of the knowledge of individuals” (125). The knowledge that Foucault speaks of here is a knowledge of the norm and knowledge of individual deviations from the norm; the soldiers’ psyches were changed because they were aware of the way that they should be behaving.
Another way through which the idea of transforming the prisoners’ souls was imposed upon them was through the controlling of time. Time controlled their bodies in that it told them how long they would be imprisoned for. In this way, while the bodies were indeed being imprisoned, the souls were also being taken into account, since judges took “to judging something other than crimes, namely, the ‘soul’ of the criminal” (19). In other words, criminals were being punished depending on the intent of their crime and their knowledge of it, not the just crime itself. Setting the sentence also involved “calling on psychiatric expertise” in order to more fully evaluate the psyche and soul of the individual (20). This was a huge movement away from corporal punishment in that corporal punishment had the same end for all: death. This new type of punishment and of discipline was tailored to the prisoner in question. Furthermore, the time spent in jail could be decreased as a result of good behavior. As such, the prisoners knew that they would have to discipline themselves and exhibit good behavior in order to get out as soon as possible. In this way, the bodies of the prisoners were still being used as means of accessing the soul: by using both time and discipline as tools, the prisoners would want to genuinely change their behavior in order to attain liberty.
When looking at the types of eighteenth century disciplinary techniques that Foucault describes, it may at first seem contradictory to assert that disciplinary practices shifted away from the corporal. The reason for this is that bodies were still being used in these types of punishments. However, it is the aims of these disciplinary tactics that were different here. Before this ‘shift,’ bodies were disciplined and tortured with the only ends being death. After the shift, disciplining the bodies was seen as a means to getting to the soul and changing its nature through the constant discipline and through the controlling of both time and space. Since the bodies are the vehicles of the soul, it made sense that the bodies would have to be used as means of getting to the soul, “acting in depth on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations” (16).
