Foucault

Subject Position

Foucault says this is the way images designate a position for intended spectators, no matter what an individual will make of the image. There are specific subject positions that we can occupy within certain discourses of knowledge, such as the role of a teacher or student in the discourse of education.

Focualt as a Poststructuralist

He doesn't believe in structure as being composed of binary oppositions. He is much more fond of the idea of discourse that features and shapes the way we discuss things, and it's dependent upon historical time periods.

Panopticon, the gaze, and visibility

Panopticon is the way that modern social subjects regulate their own behavior, borrowed from Jeremy Bentham. The gaze, in this case, is assumed in the panopticon which makes people regulate themselves (you never know if someone is watching, but you assume someone is). Visibility in the panopticon--prisoners cannot see who is watching them. Same with society--so many survallience could be focused on us, so we never really know.

How power works

Power is dispersed throughout society and does not run top down like other theorists postulate. Modern power is not something that negates and represses--it is a force that produces (knowledge, citizens and subjects). Power is less visible because people follow rules under idea of survelliance. Power is a system enated among all strata of society and can normalize bodies so as to maintain relations of dominance and subordination across these strata.

Power/Knowledge

Power relations establish the criteria for what gets to count as knowledge in a given society, and knowledge systems in turn produce power relations.

Biopower

Relationships of power exercised indirectly on and through the body. By the state actively managing and catalouging properties of the body, these instutitional practices created knowledge of the body. They force the body to conform to norms. You can see this in photography, advertising, and ideological texts.

Discourse

Socially organized process of talking about a particular matter. Stands as a body of knowledge that defines and limits what can be said about something. They produce certain subjects and knowledge and that we occupy the subject positions (the way images designate a position for their intended spectators) within a broad array of discourses.

Survelliance

the act of keeping watch over person/place. For Focault it's one of the primary means through which society enacts control over its subjects through encouragement of self-regulation