small acts of cunning

The Bundaberg chapter of the Foucault reading group convened yesterday.

Actually it's less of a chapter and more just two of us working our way through Discipline and Punish (quite slowly). I've read it previously during the crazy years of my thesis, but my fellow reader is delving into the big wide world of french theory for the first time.

We were doing quite well meeting very regularly until the term started in March and teaching took over. So, after a break of a few months we found ourselves beginning again yesterday with Part three "Docile bodies".

It seems like here Foucault really starts to get into the guts of what he wants to say, beginning by elaborating on the type of body the new social operations of discipline requires and produces. We noted how disciplinary power entails a shift from explicit operations on the body (corporal) to more subtle coercions. I loved Foucault's description of these "small acts of cunning"(139) - so evocative. We found interesting his contrast of the "natural body" of discipline with the previously "mechanical body" - wondering in just what sense he was using the term natural. What we decided was that the natural/ docile body is one that is open to various uses, it can respond and adapt to a multitude of operations of force and power. Furthermore what came out of this for us was that the docile body was one that was controlled through procedures of analysis, classification, definitions and temporalisation. Foucault's archival descriptions of the beginnings of the timetable resonated with contemporary values of productivity. We were both a little freaked by how apt his descriptions were, particularly when we think of the multitasking that is expected of workers in the discourses of contemporary management.

So in the interesting of "exhausting" (rather than just "using" our time) (see (154) we are meeting again thursday afternoon to continue through the next section: The means of correct training.