After reading the excerpt from Foucault's Discipline and Punishment, I was really struck by the realities he presented on how compliant we are to the authority "figures" within society. Until now, I had never thought about why I behave a certain way or follow certain rules, but just do so because I was taught to. There are certain rules within society that we don't question, especially those enforced by the justice system. But, as Foucault points out, what are we truly afraid of? Or rather, who is it that has conditioned us to behave in the ways that we do, and to consider certain behaviors, misbehaving? The idea of a faceless warden watching over us all kind of gives me the creeps, but in reality that is truly how our society keeps itself in check. The authoritative powers of our society have conditioned us to be afraid of disobeying them, even though we really can't be sure who is our authority figure and why we should be afraid to disobey them. Obviously, there are federal and state governmental bodies that allow us to put a face to these authoritative bodies, but really, aren't they also governed by some sort of authority as well? We feel comfortable in having a person and system to blame our behaviors on, but really, who is telling us to act that ways we do?
This work reminded me a lot of a study I learned about in my Psychology 101 class freshman year; the Milgram experiment. During this experiment, volunteers were labeled as "teachers" and "learners", and then placed in separate rooms. Then, an "authority figure" who was never identified as a scientist, but wore a lab coat, asked the "learner" questions. If the learner got a question wrong, the "teacher"was then asked to deliver different levels of electric shock to the "learned" depending on how many questions they answered wrong. Even though the "teachers" knew they may be inflicting pain on another person, they continues to administer the electric shocks because of the authority figure, even though the authority figure was not a real authority figure within the experiment, but was believed to be simply because of their appearance (luckily, these "teachers" were not actually shocked but instead were informed of the experiment and made convincing sounds so the "teacher" would assume they were actually being hurt). Because we are not able to put a true face to authority, we look for signs of authority that we have learned to associate with authority figures, but because someone represents these signs does not mean that they have authority. Here is the danger that lies within the authoritative systems of our society; we rely on authority to tell us how to act, but in reality, we really can't put a true definition to this authority or the methods behind it. "Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance," and through this unknown authoritative figure, we allow our actions to be governed without question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOYLCy5PVgM
I remember reading about this experiment in CMC 200 alongside the Stanford Prison experiment, and while incredibly disturbing, both of these events were fascinating insights into dynamics of authority and power in our society. I know that the Stanford experiment was brought up in class to support the idea that we are willing to survey and enforce authority, even violently, without anyone explicitly telling us how to do so, and I think this is a valid point. Foucault is strongly in agreement with the argument that we become agents within the panoptic system of power. But there's one nagging thought that bothers me whenever the Stanford Prison experiment, or Lord of The Flies (exhibiting a similar situation and result and often used to support the same argument) is brought up in conversation to make points about society or human nature.
ReplyDeleteIn both of these accounts, real and fictional, all of the subjects are men. I am personally of the opinion that you cannot argue that these are universal representations of human behavior (whether societally inscribed or not), because they aren't—they're representation of men's nature in our society. Speaking societally, men and women, while raised with many of the same ideological beliefs, are not the same. There are ideologies that are only applied to women, and there are ideologies that are only applied to men. In the case of the Milgram experiment, you have direct instructions being delivered to participants; under explicit authoritative commands, men and women behaved the same. However, I don't think that if you replicated the Stanford Prison experiment with women you would get even close to the same result. Patriarchy and the metanarratives that govern our society dictate that men need to be powerful, aggressive, and authoritative by nature. I believe that men are victims of this metanarrative nearly as much as women are; it's obviously psychologically damaging and emotionally exhausting. However, these ideologies are limited to men - nearly the opposite apply to women. So using the Stanford Prison experiment as a model for how humans behave is inherently flawed because of the different ideologies imposed onto individuals depending upon aspects of their identity.
In conclusion, I believe that social experiments such as the Milgram experiment and the Stanford Prison experiment are fascinating insights into human behavior, but it's equally fascinating to think about how the different ideologies that form the expectations of certain identities can change dynamics of power and control.