**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Philosophy > **🌱 Planted:** Tue 7 January 2025 --- > [!quote] > "Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise." — Michele Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Before the postmodern world, our society was governed by a type of external control and obedience which shapes individuals through surveillance and the threat of punishment—what Michele Foucault called "disciplinary society". In such a society, people are constantly monitored and controlled according to rigid rules and regulations, creating a pervasive sense of fear and obedience. A defining feature of the disciplinary society is its reliance on institutions to enforce obedience. Prisons, factories, madhouses, barracks, and schools functioned as mechanisms of control, separating the "normal" from the "abnormal" and conditioning individuals to conform. [[人 人 Byung-Chul Han]] that pointed out that Foucault's disciplinary society is characterised by negativity, which imposes restrictions and prohibitions from an external authority. This form of control shapes behaviour by defining what is forbidden or obligatory, relying on negative modal verbs like "may not" and "should", which Han describes as "the negativity of should". As such, the individual in the disciplinary society is shaped into what Han calls "the obedience subject"—a subject governed by duty, conformity and subjugation—never expressing any autonomy or individuality, let alone experiencing freedom. The outcome of this society is a binary divide between those who conform, and those who do not. Those who fail to meet its oppressive standards are excluded and punished, becoming examples that reinforce societal authority where institutions like prisons serve both to contain deviance and to symbolise the consequences of disobedience, thereby perpetuating the cycle of compliance and fear. While these overt forms of surveillance and control are indeed outdated in our modern society, they have now evolved into more subtle forms of internalised control where individuals are no longer forced to conform—they instead willingly self-control to ensure they meet the expectations of the society. --- **➡️ Next:** [[]] --- **🈁 See Also:** - [[Achievement Society enforces control through internal self-exploitation]] [^1]: [[Lab/Readwise/Books/The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han]]