Soldier — a person “who fights for their country and in what they believe, even if it means death.”

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 silently into the automatism of habit; in short, one has ‘got rid of the peasant* and given him ‘the air of a soldier’ (page 135)

The definition of a soldier has severally changed since the late eighteenth century. It is cruel to think about turning a man into a cooperative machine, a form of punishment that the king has placed upon “peasants” in order to form a docile body.

What is a docile body?

It is the body of a soldier, a student, and even a worker. It is someone who is disciplined and does not put up resistance. A docile body runs like an automatic machine. It follows orders and does not question their master.

The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it. A ‘political anatomy’, which was also a ‘mechanics of power*, was being born; it defined how one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practised bodies, ‘docile* bodies. Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience). (page 138)

To have a docile body is a form of punishment that removes the soul (a person’s total control of oneself) and forms a micromanaged body. It was a tool that the King used in order to create people that he was able to control to carry out his wishes.

In a way, we are all docile bodies. The government controls us in a way that we must follow their laws and rules. These laws and rules are to protect citizens and keep them safe but it is also a way for the government to manage us and keep stability within our society. We do not entirely have freedom. We follow rules otherwise we will be punished, such as going to jail and getting shot down. We are very similar to a soldier who must carry out his commands. Even though today’s laws and rules are nothing compared to the “totalitarianized” commands that the soldier carried out, we, nonetheless, still follow orders.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more prefect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States.”

This constitution protects our rights and states our freedom. But at the same time, it gives power to people to represent us by placing them in the branches of government in order to “form a more perfect union”. Do these groups of people represent the majority of the United States? Do these people we give power to share the same beliefs and ideals as the 320 million people living here in the United States? It is these people that finalize laws for citizens.

In the end, not everyone can be represented. And we, as citizens, must obey every law that the “majority” has passed in order to live here in the United States and to keep from getting punished. We have been taught to become a docile body.

What is a docile body?

It is someone who is disciplined and does not put up resistance.