Key Arguments

• Foucault defines the examination as combining ‘the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement’, explicitly identifying it as a composite mechanism of surveillance and norm-enforcing judgement.
• He characterizes it as ‘a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish’, indicating its triple function of evaluation, classification, and sanction.
• The examination ‘establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them’, so that visibility itself becomes a means of differentiation and judgement.
• Its centrality is marked by its ritualization: ‘in all the mechanisms of discipline, the examination is highly ritualized. In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth.’
• Foucault emphasizes that it ‘manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected’, capturing the double movement of making subjects into objects while demonstrating their subjection.
• He presents the examination as the point where power and knowledge are visibly superimposed: ‘The superimposition of the power relations and knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible brilliance.’
• He suggests that this ‘slender technique’ contains ‘a whole domain of knowledge, a whole type of power’, signalling that the examination is not a marginal practice but a key hinge in the power–knowledge nexus.
• Foucault proposes that beyond ideological content, the very ‘technology’ of the examination, ‘this tiny operational schema that has become so widespread (from psychiatry to pedagogy, from the diagnosis of diseases to the hiring of labour)’, is what implements power relations that make possible the extraction and constitution of knowledge.

Source Quotes

The examination The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish.

The examination The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them.

It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them. That is why, in all the mechanisms of discipline, the examination is highly ritualized.

That is why, in all the mechanisms of discipline, the examination is highly ritualized. In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth. At the heart of the procedures of discipline, it manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected.

In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth. At the heart of the procedures of discipline, it manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected. The superimposition of the power relations and knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible brilliance.

At the heart of the procedures of discipline, it manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected. The superimposition of the power relations and knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible brilliance. It is yet another innovation of the classical age that the historians of science have left unexplored.

But who will write the more general, more fluid, but also more determinant history of the ‘examination’ – its rituals, its methods, its characters and their roles, its play of questions and answers, its systems of marking and classification? For in this slender technique are to be found a whole domain of knowledge, a whole type of power. One often speaks of the ideology that the human ‘sciences’ bring with them, in either discreet or prolix’manner.

One often speaks of the ideology that the human ‘sciences’ bring with them, in either discreet or prolix’manner. But does their very technology, this tiny operational schema that has become so widespread (from psychiatry to pedagogy, from the diagnosis of diseases to the hiring of labour), this familiar method of the examination, implement, within a single mechanism, power relations that make it possible to extract and constitute knowledge? It is not simply at the level of consciousness, of representations and in what one thinks one knows, but at the level of what makes possible the knowledge that is transformed into political investment.

Key Concepts

• The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement.
• It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish.
• It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them.
• In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth.
• it manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected.
• The superimposition of the power relations and knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible brilliance.
• in this slender technique are to be found a whole domain of knowledge, a whole type of power.
• does their very technology, this tiny operational schema that has become so widespread (from psychiatry to pedagogy, from the diagnosis of diseases to the hiring of labour), this familiar method of the examination, implement, within a single mechanism, power relations that make it possible to extract and constitute knowledge?

Context

Opening paragraphs of ‘The examination’, where Foucault defines the examination as a ritualized mechanism at the heart of disciplinary procedures and as a key locus where power and knowledge are superimposed.