Foucault: cuerpos dóciles

Good evening. This video is about Foucault's text, specifically a chapter from his book *Discipline and Punish*. The chapter we'll be working on is " Docile Bodies." In this text, Foucault begins by analyzing the characteristics or traits by which we can recognize a soldier. He analyzes some signs: lively eyes, an upright head, a certain attitude that

seem, at a given moment, like personal traits that the person brings with them. But from the second half of the 18th century onward, there's a new element. What is this new element? Football, which is the basis of this entire chapter. These characteristics aren't traits that a person possesses from birth, but rather, the

soldier, with all these characteristics, can be manufactured. So what we're going to see is how the great machinery that produces soldiers, among others, operates. The soldier is a kind of machine. We call it a machine because we're talking about an automatism of habits. So, we're going to have a great system, a great machinery that will

produce machines. That is to say, these soldiers will now be machine-men because they will be manufactured. to be manufactured with all the gestures, with all the attitudes that are desired. So what is the novelty here? We say that, that is, what does this novelty imply, that it is manufactured? It's not that the

object is discovered precisely as a body, sorry, the body is discovered as an object, yes, as an object and as a target of power. So, who is going to manufacture this man- machine is precisely power? Yes, so the body is the point that we are going to analyze here. Yes, that is the analysis

that we are going to see: how is the body produced? If the body is no longer something that we bring from birth due to biological reasons, but rather the body is produced, and what is the body that is produced? Is it fundamentally a body that responds, a body that obeys, a skillful body?