Tuesdays With Mannies

I love clarifying questions. I also debated if “epochal readings” made sense, or said what I wanted, but I’m trying to deliberate less with the blog writing. What I mean is that sometimes Foucault characterized things in terms of large, overarching transitions: from an era of sovereignty, to a disciplinary society, for example. Then Deleuze said (once, but it proved really tantalizing) that now there was a transition from a disciplinary society to a “society of control,” which some have interpreted as a “biopolitical society” or as “Empire.” But in other places Foucault suggests that discipline describes a practice/technique/technology, and not a type of society — such that disciplinary tactics could be found in any type of society, though maybe more so in certain types, or at certain times. So while epochal readings are fun (they have an apocalyptic flair, often, like “worst era ever!”) I think they (1) make things too neat, (2) cast the past as “better” or “worse,” rather than “differently organized,” (3) make it harder to theorize the multiple and contradictory techniques that might exist in any place/time, especially in terms of differential and uneven application (as in, maybe right now in a time characterized by a rise of post-disciplinary technologies, some (raced) people are subject to old fashioned pre-disciplinary forms of sovereignty, i.e. put to death). For example, there has been much Foucault scholarship on how in terms of psychiatry we live in an age of self-regulation and self-control (we take our prescription drugs, take ourselves to therapy, do anger management exercises, write in our mood diaries). This “epochal reading” cannot account for direct and coercive forms of treatment, found in places like housing programs for people diagnosed with psychiatric disabilities.