Discipline and Punish
Foucault described "Discipline and Punish" as providing an "historical background" to the "formation of knowledge in modern society". It provides a "history of the modern soul." He provided a "genealogy of the present scientifico-legal complex from which the power to punish derives its bases, justifications and rules." In both "Discipline and Punish" (1975) and "The History of Sexuality" (1976), Foucault developed archaeological and genealogical methods which emphasized the role that power plays in society. The carceral network, with its mechanisms of normalizing social control, made the human sciences "historically possible" through its analytical investment into "knowable man"—his "soul, individuality, consciousness, and conduct. Foucault refers to the term "discipline" as used within punitive penal systems. In his 1969 publication, "The Archaeology of Knowledge", and again in "Discipline and Punish", he investigates the origins of the "disciplines" in the humanities and social sciences. In the chapter on "Science and Knowledge", he suggested that 'disciplines' could be called "groups of statements that borrow their organization from scientific models" that once they were accepted, became "institutionalized, transmitted, and sometimes taught as sciences." He goes on to challenge these disciplines—which he also does in "Discipline and Punish"—asking "[C]ould one not say that archaeology describes disciplines that are not really sciences, while epistemology describes sciences that have been formed on the basis of (or in spite of) existing disciplines?"