This document summarizes Michel Foucault's critique of contemporary liberal societies. Foucault argues that while these societies claim to value individual freedoms, they actually function as well-disguised systems of social control and discipline. The document analyzes how liberal societies observe, judge and examine individuals according to social norms. It also discusses how systems like imprisonment and social media subtly watch and influence people's behavior to maintain the existing social order, limiting true individual freedom. While aiming to be more humane than past punishments, the modern system still controls people and obscures this control beneath ideals of individualism, rights and transparency.

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Corinne Osnos
Professor Kammas
POSC 380
10 November 2014
Evaluating Contemporary Liberal Society
Contemporary liberal society, the poster child of the Enlightenment, is often touted as a
superior breed of civilization for the degree of freedom it provides its citizens. In “Discipline and
Punishment,” Michel Foucault offers an alternative, fatalistic view of contemporary liberal
society, exposing the reality behind the illusion. Discerning whether contemporary liberal
societies are merely well-disguised disciplinary dystopias requires a thorough dissection of the
definition, as well as an evaluation of the three crucial ways in which the individual is disciplined
according to Foucault: hierarchal observation, normalizing judgment, and examination.
Foucault’s argument proves that the first two elements of the definition are satisfied, but not
necessarily the third. The conclusion reached is that contemporary society falls somewhere in
between a dystopia and utopia. The critical issue then becomes not whether or not contemporary
liberal society is a well-disguised disciplinary dystopia, but why a system designed in such a way
is problematic.
In conjuring up an image of contemporary liberal society, certain trigger words come to
mind: rational thought, individualism, social contract, natural rights, liberty, and equal
opportunity. These are the ideals that we have been indoctrinated to believe contemporary liberal
society values above all. Foucault suggests that the ideals the system prides itself on are nothing
more than words that sound good on paper. It could instead be argued that the ideals are not
wholly void of virtuous intent, but that they are two-faced. In this sense, the ideals serve two
purposes simultaneously. The ideal is used to mask the other, hidden purpose. To evaluate
Foucault’s argument, a few of these ideals will be scrutinized.

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Contemporary liberal society is grounded in the civilized treatment of people, what
Foucault refers to as the “process of ‘humanization’” (Foucault, 7). A common justification for
the modern penal system posits that the system treats criminals as rational agents, not merely
using them as a means of deterrence. Punishment shows that their actions are being taking
seriously but is not supposed to be unnecessarily severe. In Franz Kafka’s “The Penal Colony”
pre-modern punishment tactics are demonstrated to be barbaric and unjust. The traveller, a
newcomer to the penal colony who is supposed to represent the beliefs of civilized society, is both
astonished and horrified that the condemned man in the penal colony is ignorant of his sentence
and presumed guilty from the moment of accusation (Kafka). In the criminal justice systems of
most contemporary liberal societies, safeguards exist to protect against injustice, examples of
which include due process rights, the right to a trial, and a required knowledge of accusation. The
modern punitive system is also rehabilitative in theory, “intending not to punish the offence, but
to supervise the individual, to neutralize his dangerous state of mind, to alter his criminal
tendencies, and to continue even when this change has been achieved” (Foucault, 18). This,
however, begs the question of whether the system actually treats criminals as rational agents or
merely removes them from society like heretics.
The crux of Foucault’s argument is that human beings are entirely socially constructed.
This belief flows from logic. From conception to conditioning, humans are products of social
interaction. The modern system of discipline and punishment is so effective because it is designed
around social relations, which are paramount in determining thought and behavior. In Kafka’s
“The Penal Colony,” a large, three-part device called the Apparatus is used to punish the
condemned, by inscribing their conviction with needles on their body like a tattoo in a process of
‘enlightenment.’ The problem with this form of punishment, as well as the methods of torture,

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scaffolding, and execution employed in pre-modern societies, is that it acts primarily on the body
and not the mind. By branding the criminal as abnormal and removing them from society until
they are ‘corrected,’ that is, made to once again fit with the norm, the modern penal system gets at
the essence of a person.
In an effort to humanize punishment, contemporary liberal societies are increasingly
abolishing capital punishment. In the United States, for example, the argument in favor of
abolition stems from the belief that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment, and
therefore a direct violation of the Constitution. To take an opposing viewpoint, however, it can be
argued that imprisonment is worse than death. Removed from comforts, stripped of liberties, and
quietly ignored, prisoners live a miserable and mundane existence, one that makes the alternative
of not existing sound appealing. Although there is validity to the point that as a form of
punishment, incarceration is more humane than torture, this is not the sole reason for its existence.
The hidden intention is to extricate the criminal insofar as possible from society because of the
threat they pose to the existing order. Making them effectively invisible facilitates the turning of a
blind eye by the rest of society. The ‘bad’ behavior is branded but obscured, and thus
marginalized. The system therefore benefits not only the prisoner, but the system itself as well.
Foucault attacks the concept of the ‘individual’ as the greatest myth of contemporary
liberal society. The model of Bentham’s Panopticon, which mirrors the modern disciplinary
system, illustrates how the system is both well-disguised and disciplinary. Order is maintained in
the Panopticon because "the individual is constantly located, examined, and distributed among the
living beings" (Foucault, 197). Persons each occupy their own singular, enclosed cell in a large
building that is under constant supervision from a nearby tower. The people in the Panopticon are
aware that they are being observed, but they never know how much or when. Visibility and

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transparency are the means of control in the Panopticon, ironically the exact principles advocated
for in modern institutions and governments. The overt intention is to maintain the integrity of
these bodies. Foucault’s scrutiny of these concepts, however, reveals an underlying purpose, as
greater transparency and visibility lessens the amount of supervision necessary to preserve the
system. Thus, it becomes clear that contemporary liberal societies are cleverly designed. The
concept of the ‘individual’ is merely a construction of power, Foucault explains, providing a
tangible body to measure against the norm. People are conditioned to value their individuality
above all, driven to compete for the rewards society promises, despite the evidence, mathematical,
logical, and historical, that there is strength in numbers. Society is created under the pretense of a
contract among individuals, yet individuality in itself is the very thing that creates divides
between individuals and facilitates manipulation by those in power. Each of the Enlightenment
ideals, when carefully scrutinized, is revealed to serve a dual purpose.
Individuals in modern society, like in the Panopticon, are controlled by the potentiality of
being seen at any given moment in time. The tower is intended to symbolize the institution of
power, which in the case of most modern societies is government. It is important to consider,
however, that individuals in modern society are not only being watched from above, but also by
each other. This dual coercion is subtle but causes people to play by the rules. Visualized, the
pressure from both sides limits the individual’s range of motion (behavior) to a little box (the
norm). Discipline and technology also have a symbiotic relationship. It is for this reason that the
more advanced and wealthier societies are also perceived as the most ‘free’ and productive. These
societies are not, in actuality, more free. Rather, these societies have the means to discipline more
effectively and less blatantly. Technological advancements, in particular, have facilitated the
process of supervision in contemporary liberal societies. Consider, for example, the restriction of

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social media in China, which is often a point of attack by Western democracies as evidencing a
lack of freedom. The critics fail to realize that the very technology that ‘frees’ also controls. The
means of supervision are merely different. Consider the extent to which the average person in the
United States utilizes social media. Snapchat, Facebook, Find your Friends: all of these
applications show how the individual is under constant observation by peers. The reality is that by
using these technologies, the individual willfully submits to being supervised by others.
Consequently, there is less of a need for the government to supervise the individual.
The system is proven to be both well-disguised and disciplinary, as it does an excellent job
of keeping people in check while simultaneously keeping them from realizing the fetters that
constrain them. Foucault poses the following rhetorical question to the reader: “Is it surprising
that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (228).
The prevalence of the contemporary liberal system is a testament to its efficiency. The system is
capable of regulating and replicating itself. It is therefore no surprise that the model spreads
rapidly from the punitive institutions to characterize how all institutions within modern society
are run. There are, however, many problems with the system that make it borderline dystopic.
The reality of politics is that power creates truth. A troubling aspect of the modern system
is that it makes the illusion of freedom, what society says constitutes freedom, and not freedom
itself, desirable. Foucault explains how “in a system of discipline, the child is more individualized
than the adult, the patient more than the healthy man, the madman and the delinquent more than
the normal than the non-delinquent” (193). This is because the discipline increases with age,
exposure, and willingness to understand and comply with the system. Authentic freedom,
however, decreases with the same factors. The system is constructed in such a way that being
disciplined feels like succeeding because the individual is rewarded for compliance. In

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contemporary liberal societies, ‘freedom’ usually takes the form of capital, for example enabling a
person to buy a mansion or send their children to private school. Equal opportunity is another
faulty indicator of freedom in contemporary liberal society, as the opportunities granted to any
given person are products of the system. A child born into poverty will never have the same
resources or opportunity as the child born into affluence. Hence, the system is one that benefits
some members of society while greatly disfavoring others.
Control is maximized in contemporary liberal societies because individuals spend the
majority of their time in panoptic institutions. They are kept busy under a watchful eye. Foucault
explains how “the disciplines, which analyze space, break up and rearrange activities, must also
be understood as machinery for adding up and capitalizing time” (157). In the United States, for
example, the average person spends a majority of their time working: eight hours a day, five days
a week. Yet, a survey finds a job satisfaction rate of 47.7% in 2013 (“Job”). Rather than induce
productivity, the modern system creates excess, idleness, and frustration. A society in which the
amount of time working is minimized, but the effort expended maximized, would arguably be a
more productive one filled with happier citizens. This is congruent with Thomas Moore’s
depiction of a utopia, in which all citizens are required to participate in some form of hard labor
for six hours a day; the remainder is free time. Arguably, the capitalist system employed in
contemporary liberal societies causes workers to be “exhausted by constant labor like a beast of
burden” (More, 61).
The most frightening part of Foucault’s argument is the depth of the conditioning. The
modern system is so engrained into every aspect of life that modern society knows no other self
than the one that is socially constructed. The Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments, which
arguably give Foucault’s argument scientific grounding, are equally enlightening and alarming.

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Under the false pretenses of studying the effects of punishment on learning, participants in the
Milgram experiment were instructed by an authority figure to administer shocks to an unseen
subject for incorrect responses. The actual purpose of the experiment, however, was to study
obedience to authority. Contemporary liberal societies teach deference to authority, perhaps
explaining why 50% of the participants administered the most severe shock to the unseen subject
despite obvious discomfort. In the Stanford Prison experiment, participants were selected at
random to be prisoners or guards in a prison simulation intended to last two weeks. The
experiment had to be prematurely concluded for ethical reasons because what started as a
simulation became a reality for the participants. Guards forced prisoners to urinate and defecate in
a bucket, exemplifying the extent of the dehumanization. The fact that the prisoners complied,
however, is equally telling. The experiment demonstrates how readily people adopt and become
the roles given to them by society. This is particularly frightening when considering the number
of atrocities that have been historically committed in the name of society; for example, the
Holocaust, the bombing of Nagasaki, and the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay. The modern
system reduces citizens to actors, as they are more concerned with role-playing than morality.
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking one contemporary liberal society is ‘freer’ than
another, yet in truth, any modern society constructed in the way Foucault describes is constrained.
To accept contemporary liberal society as an end point is to settle. The system, albeit not wholly
dystopic, is far from perfect. The heart of the issue is that we have arrived at a point where we can
no longer fathom another system. This paralysis is dangerous. Foucault himself falls into this trap.
By providing no plausible remedy, he suggests that people are too far into the system to be
extricated and that modern society is essentially a lost cause. There is, however, another option:
keep looking.

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Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House,
1995. Print.
"Job Satisfaction: 2014 Edition." The Conference Board, 1 June 2014. Web. 7 Nov. 2014.
<https://www.conferenceboard.org/publications/publicationdetail.cfm?publicatio
id=2785>.
Kafka, Franz. "In the Penal Colony (e-text)." Kafka, In the Penal Colony (e-text). Vancouver
Island University, 19 Feb. 2007. Web. 7 Nov. 2014.
<http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm>.
More, Thomas. Utopia. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001. Print.
Zimbardo, Philip G, and Ken Musen. Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Study. Stanford, CA:
P.G. Zimbardo, Inc, 2004.
Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority. Alexander Street Press, 1962.