Quotation
Last reviewed:
“The soul is the prison of the body.”
Michel Foucault · Post-structuralism · Modern · 1975
What does it mean?
The soul is the prison of the body. He reverses the older formula. Modern discipline does not only lock bodies up. It produces an inner life, a case file, a character, a delinquency, that holds the body. The soul, in this historical sense, is an effect of power. A rival reading hears a gothic denial of inner life, or a claim that there is no experience, only paperwork. He is historicising a particular soul, the one built by disciplinary knowledge, not abolishing subjectivity by decree. The reversal has a job.
Did Michel Foucault really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of his reversal of the older formula, in the discussion of how modern punishment makes a knowable 'soul' — psyche, subjectivity, consciousness — that holds the body. Translation wording varies slightly. The reversal is his.
Where it comes from
Discipline and Punish
Approximate date: 1975.
How to use it
When an institution tells you who you are inside, a score, a diagnosis used as a permanent label, a record that follows a child through a school in England, ask whether that 'inside' is a tool that holds the body. The question is the one the sentence opens. It is not a reason to ignore a diagnosis that helps.
A mindset reading
The translation varies slightly. The reversal is his, in Discipline and Punish, in Alan Sheridan's English among others. Quoting it as a mood about the mind being a trap loses the history of punishment the book is actually doing.
Understand the philosophy
The book moves from the spectacle of the scaffold to the timetable. The soul as prison is his summary of what those techniques produce. Without the timetable, the summary is a paradox to enjoy, which is not the chapter.
- power
- self
- society
FAQ
What does it mean?
The soul is the prison of the body. He reverses the older formula. Modern discipline does not only lock bodies up. It produces an inner life, a case file, a character, a delinquency, that holds the body. The soul, in this historical sense, is an effect of power. A rival reading hears a gothic denial of inner life, or a claim that there is no experience, only paperwork. He is historicising a particular soul, the one built by disciplinary knowledge, not abolishing subjectivity by decree. The reversal has a job.
Did Michel Foucault really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of his reversal of the older formula, in the discussion of how modern punishment makes a knowable 'soul' — psyche, subjectivity, consciousness — that holds the body. Translation wording varies slightly. The reversal is his.
Which work is it in?
Discipline and Punish Approximate date: 1975.