Embodiment of days gone by, Hanging Not Punishment Enough[1] expressed a sentiment that closely followed the abolition of spectacular, public executions whereby offenders would undergo slow, gruesome torture as an entrée to death. These highly ritualized ceremonies prescribed detailed steps based on symbolisms, typically starting from relatively non-invasive procedures like supporting a heavy burning candle and gradually escalating to the tearing of flesh, severing of extremities, disembowelment and dismemberment, regularly interjected with rest periods to ensure the victim would be conscious for the next step.
The advocacy of punishment by a “thousand deaths”[2] as the only righteous way for the serving of justice would nowadays largely be unsupported and undoubtedly frowned upon. Yet, though difficult it might be for a contemporary civilization to fathom such longing for abominable acts, the transition from ancient public punishment to a modern form of it was indeed painful to accept for some members of the public.
Foucault illustrates how the advent of modernity both affected and was affected by changes in punishment practices; gradually, bodies became instrumentalized, sacrificed, as it were, on the altar of control, through the prescription of disciplines – “formulas of domination, […] an art of the human body […] which was directed not only at the growth of its skills, nor at the intensification of its subjection, but at the formation of a relation that in the mechanism itself makes it more obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely. […] a policy of coercions that act upon the body [and] produces subjected and practised bodies, ‘docile’ bodies.”[3]
Undoubtedly, “from art of unbearable sensations, punishment has become an economy of suspended rights,”[4] but more importantly, it also ceased to be overtly explicit by virtue of its violent and public nature, and became covertly subtle, hidden, silent. While in antiquity the gruesomeness of the punishment reflected that of the crime it was meant to address, thus bringing the connection between the two to the fore, the modern approach to punishment manifests, both directly and indirectly, a sense of guilt towards it, “the execution itself […] like an additional shame that justice is ashamed to impose on the condemned man.”[5] In short, discomfort has ostensibly acted as catalyst for the trading of the slow ‘thousand deaths’ sentence for even longer, perennial control, and has consequently extended the repentance paradigm to the multitude while furthering the reach of authority by protecting the sensibility of the elite in charge of judgement.
Indeed, modernity is the period in which prisons become penitentiaries, and hospitals and labour appear as part and parcel of detainment, effectively marking the beginning of the aforementioned constant, endless and indefinite paradigm of surveillance. In this context, the “new punishment [is] intended to correct, reclaim, ‘cure’” and pursues “disciplinary penality […] on the basis of the two opposed values of good and evil […] instead of the simple division of the prohibition”[6] – a paradigm shift that becomes further characterized when considering both the translation of Foucault’s work from French, and the Latin origin of penitentiary, paenitentia, largely meaning repentance and semantically neighbouring concepts like penitence and remorse. The values underlying judgement become rooted in ideas of moral superiority, and consequently power, control of otherness, expressed through methods reflecting monastic practices.
Classification is ruled by similar dynamics, as those in positions of power reproduce both their own supremacy and biases by keeping the other at a distance through categorization; it is a way of imposing power through knowledge, and knowledge through power,[7] while claiming to possess the “God’s Eye view”[8] of the natural world. For Foucault, as they relate to the organization of “‘cells’, ‘places’ and ‘ranks’, the disciplines create complex spaces that are at once architectural, functional and hierarchical […] and indicate values. […] a question of organizing the multiple, of providing oneself with an instrument to cover it and to master it; […] a question of imposing upon it an ‘order’.”[9] In other words, classification expresses a ‘view of the world’ which reflects the perceptions, judgements, beliefs and biases of its authors, and leverages their societal position to apply definitions to and discipline the multitude.
Because of their interest in analysing the evolution of discipline and punishment, within their analysis of the antiquity/modernity dichotomy, Foucault characterizes it only briefly in terms of few-to-multitude. This paper argues that by expanding that logic and analysing the dichotomy through the lens of mereology[10], and by consequently extending such approach to the realm of classification, further insight concerning the relationship between antiquity and modernity can be identified, particularly by also applying to it criteria of visibility (visible/opaque) and attachment (personal/detached) (Fig. 1).
While describing the consequences brought on by the concept and reality of the panopticon, the author illustrates how, on one hand, antiquity’s problem was “‘to render accessible to a multitude of men the inspection of a small number of objects’” while on the other hand, modernity’s problem is “‘to procure for a small number […] the instantaneous view of a great multitude.’”[11] When evaluated within the circumstances of discipline and punishment, this analysis readily illustrates the juxtaposition of a “civilization of spectacle” in which the criminal was routinely punished publicly, and one of “expiation of evil-doing”[12] in which a relatively small group of judges discipline society. Discipline and punishment were made visible and personal in antiquity, opaque and detached in modernity.
A less linear pattern appears to rule the evolution of classification throughout history. In antiquity, a small group of people in privileged positions concentrated on classifying the minutia to, in turn, conquer the general: “every detail is important since, in the sight of God, no immensity is greater than a detail, nor is anything so small that it was not willed by one of his individual wishes.”[13] Concentration on the specimen generated overarching rules of classification to be applied to the population. Conversely, in modernity, and postmodernity especially, efficiency appears to be the only consistent force underpinning a remarkable polarization in classification practices. While the “exceptional discipline”[14]that characterized classification in antiquity consistently continues to rule classification at large by virtue of the resulting paradigms persisting through time, indeed a multitude of actor types, interests and targets are now at play: summarily, a) the individual concentrates on other individuals, multitude and natural world at once, e.g. mass media, social media, general opinion, political polls, climate trends, big data science; b) relatively small groups with highly concentrated interests focus on large numbers of individuals on the unit level as well as on generalized behaviour, e.g. advertising, tech and media companies, increasingly through the employment of semi-autonomous agents which extend classifications and recommendations of taste and behaviour. In this sense, big data and machine learning practices embody the continuation of the established classification paradigm – a new, efficient modality and application of discipline, in which categories can readily be extrapolated from and applied to raw data. Classification criteria were visible and personal in antiquity, opaque and detached in modernity.
The present version of this paper, admittedly, raises more questions than it answers. What it attempts to provide is additional insight into the societal changes the transition from antiquity to modernity has brought on, as well as additional ground upon which further explorations of the theme may take place. By standing on the shoulders of giants, it attempts to characterize the transition Western society negotiated away from morbid acts and qualities, and in favour of new, less overtly violent practices – from torture of the body to torture of the spirit.
The main question that is left unanswered is whether it was all worth it: after all, the abandonment of the ‘thousand deaths’ model paved the way for classification practices that lead to discretionary definitions which ended up underlying juxtapositions of Aryans to non-Aryans in Europe; Whites to Blacks to Coloureds to Indians in South Africa; Ottomans to Armenians; northerners to southerners; rich to poor; young to old; native to foreigner – to name a few; in other words, criteria that define arbitrary groups of people as adversarial. Are those demarcations, and the consequences they lead to, responsible for anything more dignified than the ‘thousand deaths’ approach?
Fig. 1
[1] Anon. Hanging Not Punishment Enough. London, England, 1701.
http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/waleslaw/hanging.htm.
http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/waleslaw/hanging.htm.
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid
[8] Adler, Melissa. “Disciplining Knowledge at the Library of Congress.” Knowledge Organization 5, no. 39.
[10] The philosophical theory of part-to-whole relations
[12] Ibid
[13] Ibid
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