The Many Forms of a Docile Body

If we think about it, there are many forms of a docile body besides soldiers. Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault was by far one of the readings that really caught my attention. The Body of the Condemned chapter had a difficult introduction to read but after passing all the gruesome details the rest was interesting. Docile Bodies was another chapter that was eye catching. Not only that but I felt that I was able to relate with that chapter. These two chapters by Foucault really make you think about your life and life in general. Foucault starts off by public torture which is something that must be hard for many people to watch. Punishment starts off by being public torture to it than being private. Foucault mentioned a king and how the king does not want the public to feel any sympathy when witnessing a public torture. Those witnessing the public torture would then feel bad and feel anger towards the one who is causing it, which in this case would be the king. This makes me think about what is going on today with the shootings. In these days you will not see that type of punishment, at least not exactly in that form. Even though we are not seeing that form of punishment we are seeing it in a different way. We are witnessing African Americans being killed by police officers, specifically white cops. Michael Brown is an example, he was an unarmed 18 year old who was shot by a police officer. Some said that Brown tried to attack the police officer while others said that the police officer was the aggressor. Michael Brown’s case is just one of many cases of the type of public punishment that we have right now. It can be related to The Body of the Condemned and their type of punishment but just in a different form. In this case Brown’s body was being “punished” for something that he was not supposed to do. In many of these cases that we see now in days people of ethnic minority are being punished by white cops. It seems that all these shootings would be a form of public punishment.

I also wanted to talk about Docile Bodies. In this chapter Foucault talked about the body being disciplined. Foucault defined it as “one that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved. And that this docile body can only be achieved through strict regimen of disciplinary acts.” He used soldiers as a representation of a docile body. Soldiers are trained to obey and follow the rules. They have a schedule for the whole day and every single soldier has the same schedule. One form of a disciplinary act that soldiers show is by the way they march together. Another is the example shown below. As you can see these soldiers have to get up a certain time and they have to stand a certain way. They all seem to look exactly the same in the picture. If they do not follow these rules they then have to attend to the consequences. Now this is just one example of a docile body. I feel that there are other forms that represent a docile body. Another example would be students.

If you compare these two pictures (the soldier and students) , they seem to look somewhat similar. The students in the picture below seem to be positioned the same way. I found this to be very interesting. They are also all wearing uniforms just the way soldiers do. I think that people go to school to have a better education. People want to learn and many times from the beginning of school we are given this idea by our parents and society that we should go to college. As a child my parents always encouraged me to do good in school. One thing that they would always tell me is that I should get good grades in high school so that I could be accepted to a university. Now that I think about it, students are “trained” to be more educated. During school hours there is a schedule. Everyone starts school at the same time, lunch is at the same time, and we all leave school at the same time. Even in our daily lives we all have a schedule that we follow.

I mentioned at the beginning how I am able to relate to a docile body. Since I was a child I never really rebelled against my parents because I knew what the consequences would be. I always followed the rules at home and at school. And till this very day I have a schedule that I follow. I wake up at the same time every time I have class. I tend to eat at the same hours almost every day because that is what my body has gotten used to. I try to go to sleep at the same time during the week. After reading Docile Bodies it made me think about life in general and how many people in some way are docile bodies. Many of us tend to follow rules at school or at work because we know that if we do not then we have to face certain consequences. Overall this reading made me open my eyes about something I did not even realize.