The Carceral Culture of Michel Foucault

We owe the idea of Carceral Nation to the genius mind of Michel Foucault and his argument for a growing carceral culture:

Michel Foucault
seeks throughout his work to make sense of how our contemporary society
is structured differently from the society that preceded us. He has
been particularly influential precisely because he tends to overturn
accepted wisdom, illustrating the dangers inherent in those
Enlightenment reforms that were designed to correct the barbarity of
previous periods (the elimination of dungeons, the modernization of
medicine, the creation of the public university, etc.).

As Foucault
illustrates, each process of modernization entails disturbing effects
with regard to the power of the individual and the control of
government. Indeed, his most influential work, Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the Prison, paints a picture of contemporary society that
sometimes resembles George Orwell’s 1984. He explores the ways that
government has claimed ever greater control over and enforcement of
ever more private aspects of our lives.

In particular, Foucault explores the transition from what he
terms a “culture of spectacle” to a “carceral culture.” Whereas in the
former punishment was effected on the body in public displays of
torture, dismemberment, and obliteration, in the latter punishment and
discipline become internalized and directed to the constitution and,
when necessary, rehabilitation of social subjects.

We learn from the associative minds of others and we propagate, and
change, that knowing by divining self-realization and personal
insights. Some minds change more of us. Foucault shattered all ordinary
thinking.