Surveiller et punir, Michel Foucault (english version)
Presentation of the Michel Foucault (1926-184) book’s, Surveiller et Punir from 1975. Through this book, which doesn’t speak about Town Planning, my goal is to present a new the link between Town Planning and others institutional invention of the Modern period. Surveiller et Punir is a historical essay about the creation of modern jail and corollary the disappearing of public punishment.
We have to coming back on two main ideas about the relation between knowledge and power.
-The author invited us to renounce that power and knowledge are opposed: the idea of “the knowledge is possible only where the power relations are suspended”. For he author, “there is not power without the constitution of a knowledge field”, in another worlds, the power produce knowledge.
-The second points deals with the creation of this “knowledge-power”, isn’t constituted by punctual revelation but by a multiplicity of process of different origins and localisations, which converge and slowly draw a general methodology. These discoveries coming from cyclical needs like industrials innovation or new epidemics
The study of Foucault can helps to understand the modern town planning. The argumentation is base on the jails, military, medical and teaching history during the 17° and 18° century. I will focus on the first Chapter, Les corps dociles (the docile bodies) and the sub-chapter, L’art des répartitions (the art of repartition).
Three types of spatial techniques constitute the new disciplinary form.
1°- The enclosure: “the specification of a heterogeneous place closed under itself”. During the second part of the 18° century the development of the big manufactories came to rival the small manufactures dissipate in the area urban. The Creusot was a productive space clearly enclose by walls and doors. The enclosure exist also in Town Planning, all the debates about the adequate scale for zoning, from the quarter to the urban region, the need a enclose entity was not interrogating. The question is still which are the good boundaries and not why still use boundaries.
2°- The elementary localisation or grid rule: “the discipline organise an analytic space where the global and locale are put in relation, are compared, the productivity of a worker is comparing to the average productivity". The creation of specialized services in the hospitals was in time a way to a better understanding of the diseases and a way for improved of the administration management. The relative and absolute knowledge of phenomena is necessary for controlling and understanding. In front of a questionnaire we ask to ourselves “is it for know me or control me?”
3°- The build of a useful space, the functional plot: “for each individual its place and for each place its function”. In 1971, the building of a main aisle and a specific distribution of the activities in the Oberkampf plant allowed to employ 264 workers and assure in the same time a quality monitoring. We find this rule in town planning thought the zoning. The zoning allows to avoid the pollutions made by some urban function proximity but also to assure a better global efficacy. The modern Town Planning try to made functional space and synergy but also, with more success, relegated space. Thus like the teacher the town planners learn how to separated and avoid the social pollution coming from proximity.
With this study Foucault show us that the new forms of disciplinary made during the 17°-18° centuries can be find in the modern Town Planning. That gives us another history of Town Planning and link the management of the space with the power issue.
We have to coming back on two main ideas about the relation between knowledge and power.
-The author invited us to renounce that power and knowledge are opposed: the idea of “the knowledge is possible only where the power relations are suspended”. For he author, “there is not power without the constitution of a knowledge field”, in another worlds, the power produce knowledge.
-The second points deals with the creation of this “knowledge-power”, isn’t constituted by punctual revelation but by a multiplicity of process of different origins and localisations, which converge and slowly draw a general methodology. These discoveries coming from cyclical needs like industrials innovation or new epidemics
The study of Foucault can helps to understand the modern town planning. The argumentation is base on the jails, military, medical and teaching history during the 17° and 18° century. I will focus on the first Chapter, Les corps dociles (the docile bodies) and the sub-chapter, L’art des répartitions (the art of repartition).
Three types of spatial techniques constitute the new disciplinary form.
1°- The enclosure: “the specification of a heterogeneous place closed under itself”. During the second part of the 18° century the development of the big manufactories came to rival the small manufactures dissipate in the area urban. The Creusot was a productive space clearly enclose by walls and doors. The enclosure exist also in Town Planning, all the debates about the adequate scale for zoning, from the quarter to the urban region, the need a enclose entity was not interrogating. The question is still which are the good boundaries and not why still use boundaries.
2°- The elementary localisation or grid rule: “the discipline organise an analytic space where the global and locale are put in relation, are compared, the productivity of a worker is comparing to the average productivity". The creation of specialized services in the hospitals was in time a way to a better understanding of the diseases and a way for improved of the administration management. The relative and absolute knowledge of phenomena is necessary for controlling and understanding. In front of a questionnaire we ask to ourselves “is it for know me or control me?”
3°- The build of a useful space, the functional plot: “for each individual its place and for each place its function”. In 1971, the building of a main aisle and a specific distribution of the activities in the Oberkampf plant allowed to employ 264 workers and assure in the same time a quality monitoring. We find this rule in town planning thought the zoning. The zoning allows to avoid the pollutions made by some urban function proximity but also to assure a better global efficacy. The modern Town Planning try to made functional space and synergy but also, with more success, relegated space. Thus like the teacher the town planners learn how to separated and avoid the social pollution coming from proximity.
With this study Foucault show us that the new forms of disciplinary made during the 17°-18° centuries can be find in the modern Town Planning. That gives us another history of Town Planning and link the management of the space with the power issue.