The Function of Power: The Sovereign in the 'Classical Age'

On my last blog post I summarized the first section of Discipline and Punish, this meant describing the shift from punishing the body to disciplining the soul. As I discussed in that post, these changes did not occur on their own, they were expressions of a change in the body of knowledge and power over time. In Foucault’s terms, the nature of the penal system changed between epistemes. Before I begin applying these concepts to education it will be important to understand how these epistemes, or bodies of knowledge, are defined.

In the second section of Discipline and Punish, Foucault goes into more detail in describing how punishment functioned in, what he calls, the classical age. This was the 16^th, 17^th, and most of the 18^th centuries. As alluded to in my last post, brutal public executions were common in this time. Based on my reading of this section, it is useful to outline the content in terms of a couple questions. These questions are: what function did these public displays have? What about the classical age necessitated them? And why would these spectacles fade away?

Foucault paints public torture and execution as an expression of the sovereign’s power. In other words, when a law is broken, retaliation is necessary because it is a direct attack on authority. This means that these public executions can be interpreted as the revenge of those in power. This is why these executions could be so brutal, so that the power of the sovereign was as visible as possible. Though Foucault does not go so far to say this, based on the account that he gives these public displays of brutality must have been necessitated by the way power was concentrated in one or a few individuals.

Towards the end of Foucault’s more detailed account of how torture and public execution functioned, he introduces an additional factor. The people. An important part of the public execution was the public. So that the power of the sovereign could be witnessed and experienced, however this did not come without risks. If the sentenced criminal was, by chance, supported by the people then an execution is a direct confrontation between the people and the sovereign. This is why riots after, or sometimes during, an execution would become more common. Though the execution could restore the sovereign’s power it also was a medium that could channel rebellion. Notably, Foucault’s account seems to indicate that instances of rebellion became more common closer to the end of the 18^th century, a time when the divine right of the kings would be suspect. And also a time when the penal system would begin to ‘reform’. The classical age of torture and public execution would end as executions were moved out of the public sphere and punishment would begin changing towards a more efficient reformative approach.