Key Arguments

• Foucault claims that with the new economy of power, the carceral system ‘permitted the emergence of a new form of “law”: a mixture of legality and nature, prescription and constitution, the norm’, indicating that the central regulatory instrument is no longer merely positive law but a hybrid of legal rule and naturalized regularity.
• This emergence of the norm internally dislocates the functioning of judicial power: judging becomes more difficult (‘as if one were ashamed to pass sentence’), but at the same time there is ‘a furious desire on the part of the judges to judge, assess, diagnose, recognize the normal and abnormal and claim the honour of curing or rehabilitating’.
• Judges’ well‑known ‘appetite for medicine’—their constant appeals to psychiatric experts and attention to criminological discourse—expresses not their personal scruples but the fact that the power they exercise ‘has been “denatured”’: it is juridical at one level but fundamentally functions as a normative power.
• Thus it is ‘the economy of power that they exercise, and not that of their scruples or their humanism, that makes them pass “therapeutic” sentences and recommend “rehabilitating” periods of imprisonment’, revealing how judicial decisions are shaped by normalizing imperatives underpinned by medical and correctional knowledge.
• Conversely, even as judges hesitate to ‘condemn for the sake of condemning’, ‘the activity of judging has increased precisely to the extent that the normalizing power has spread’: judgment proliferates as normalization extends through society.
• Carried by the omnipresence of disciplinary mechanisms and based on the carceral apparatuses, judging ‘has become one of the major functions of our society’, carried out by a wide range of professionals.
• Foucault describes contemporary society as one of the ‘teacher‑judge, the doctor‑judge, the educator‑judge, the “social worker”-judge’; these are the ‘judges of normality’ on whom ‘the universal reign of the normative is based’.
• Each individual, ‘wherever he may find himself’, subjects his ‘body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements’ to these judges of normality, indicating the internalization of normalizing judgment in everyday conduct.
• He concludes that the carceral network, through its systems of insertion, distribution, surveillance and observation, ‘has been the greatest support, in modern society, of the normalizing power’, structurally underpinning the dominance of norms over legal rules.

Source Quotes

4. With this new economy of power, the carceral system, which is its basic instrument, permitted the emergence of a new form of ‘law’: a mixture of legality and nature, prescription and constitution, the norm. This had a whole series of effects: the internal dislocation of the judicial power or at least of its functioning; an increasing difficulty in judging, as if one were ashamed to pass sentence; a furious desire on the part of the judges to judge, assess, diagnose, recognize the normal and abnormal and claim the honour of curing or rehabilitating.

With this new economy of power, the carceral system, which is its basic instrument, permitted the emergence of a new form of ‘law’: a mixture of legality and nature, prescription and constitution, the norm. This had a whole series of effects: the internal dislocation of the judicial power or at least of its functioning; an increasing difficulty in judging, as if one were ashamed to pass sentence; a furious desire on the part of the judges to judge, assess, diagnose, recognize the normal and abnormal and claim the honour of curing or rehabilitating. In view of this, it is useless to believe in the good or bad consciences of judges, or even of their unconscious.

In view of this, it is useless to believe in the good or bad consciences of judges, or even of their unconscious. Their immense ‘appetite for medicine’ which is constantly manifested – from their appeal to psychiatric experts, to their attention to the chatter of criminology – expresses the major fact that the power they exercise has been ‘denatured’; that it is at a certain level governed by laws; that at another, more fundamental level it functions as a normative power; it is the economy of power that they exercise, and not that of their scruples or their humanism, that makes them pass ‘therapeutic’ sentences and recommend ‘rehabilitating’ periods of imprisonment. But, conversely, if the judges accept ever more reluctantly to condemn for the sake of condemning, the activity of judging has increased precisely to the extent that the normalizing power has spread.

But, conversely, if the judges accept ever more reluctantly to condemn for the sake of condemning, the activity of judging has increased precisely to the extent that the normalizing power has spread. Borne along by the omnipresence of the mechanisms of discipline, basing itself on all the carceral apparatuses, it has become one of the major functions of our society. The judges of normality are present everywhere.

Borne along by the omnipresence of the mechanisms of discipline, basing itself on all the carceral apparatuses, it has become one of the major functions of our society. The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ‘social worker’-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements. The carceral network, in its compact or disseminated forms, with its systems of insertion, distribution, surveillance, observation, has been the greatest support, in modern society, of the normalizing power.

We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ‘social worker’-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements. The carceral network, in its compact or disseminated forms, with its systems of insertion, distribution, surveillance, observation, has been the greatest support, in modern society, of the normalizing power. 5.

Key Concepts

• With this new economy of power, the carceral system, which is its basic instrument, permitted the emergence of a new form of ‘law’: a mixture of legality and nature, prescription and constitution, the norm.
• This had a whole series of effects: the internal dislocation of the judicial power or at least of its functioning; an increasing difficulty in judging, as if one were ashamed to pass sentence; a furious desire on the part of the judges to judge, assess, diagnose, recognize the normal and abnormal and claim the honour of curing or rehabilitating.
• Their immense ‘appetite for medicine’ which is constantly manifested – from their appeal to psychiatric experts, to their attention to the chatter of criminology – expresses the major fact that the power they exercise has been ‘denatured’; that it is at a certain level governed by laws; that at another, more fundamental level it functions as a normative power;
• it is the economy of power that they exercise, and not that of their scruples or their humanism, that makes them pass ‘therapeutic’ sentences and recommend ‘rehabilitating’ periods of imprisonment.
• Borne along by the omnipresence of the mechanisms of discipline, basing itself on all the carceral apparatuses, it has become one of the major functions of our society.
• The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ‘social worker’-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements.
• The carceral network, in its compact or disseminated forms, with its systems of insertion, distribution, surveillance, observation, has been the greatest support, in modern society, of the normalizing power.

Context

Numbered section ‘4.’, where Foucault thematizes the emergence of the norm as a new juridico‑natural form and shows how the carceral system transforms judicial power into a modality of normalizing judgment, which then proliferates through non‑judicial professions.