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Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
“Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”
—
Michel Foucault
,
book
Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish (1977) as translated by Alan Sheridan, p. 228
Discipline and Punish (1977)
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Michel Foucault 128
French philosopher 1926–1984Related quotes
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“He who opens a school, closes a prison”
Victor Hugo
(1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Also cited as Opening a school is closing a prison
This quotation has been attributed to Victor Hugo since the nineteenth century, but the earliest citations attribute the saying instead to French education minister Victor Duruy:
Déjà M. Duruy avait posé en fait, quouvrir une école, c'est fermer une prison (1865)
English translation: M. Duruy had already suggested that opening a school is closing a prison
Disputed
Source: Journal des Economistes, March 1865, p. 489 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433022399574?urlappend=%3Bseq=495
The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to the higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing.
And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately de-Stalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors; he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation.