Michel Foucault, despite courting controversy and enduring countless criticisms of his work up until his .
death in 1986, contributed much to modern sociological thought. His work can seemingly lack coherence .
but there are underlying themes to his writings, most notably that of power, the subject, and truth. However, .
when debating his importance in the sociological sphere, it would be more productive to analyse the .
importance of the topics that constituted most of his studies: discipline, sexuality, the genealogy of the .
present, the dangerous individual, and ethics. Through this one can learn about the formation of the human .
subject at the intersection of knowledge and power. It must be stressed, however, that Foucault's work has .
come under much criticism from other sociologists, many of whom have found theoretical difficulties with .
his work. .
In Discipline and Punish (1975), Foucault examines our reasoned compulsions as human beings to .
normalize individuals, to punish and reform deviance. Foucault juxtaposes an account of a mid 18th century .
torture and execution and an early 19th century prisoners" timetable. In the eighty years that separate these .
two accounts, he observes the evolution in penal methods from public execution to one that associates .
punishment with incarceration. The human being becomes a representative model for modern society, a .
society Marshall (1998, p.237) summarises as "a regime of observation, surveillance, classification, .
hierarchy, rules, discipline, and social control." Foucault's study of the penal system stretches to a view that .
almost echoes Marx in so far as social transformation is relative to an economic need for a rationalized .
superstructure. He uses the term "disciplinary power" to describe this new form of power relations that .
Foucault (1975, pp.25-26) argued existed in the human body: "The body is directly involved in a political .
field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it.
