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The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms

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Discipline and Pedagogics in history: Foucault, aries, and the history of panoptical education
Jeroen J.H. Dekker & Daniel M. Lechner
a a a

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands

Available online: 23 Jun 2008

To cite this article: Jeroen J.H. Dekker & Daniel M. Lechner (1999): Discipline and Pedagogics in history: Foucault, aries, and the history of panoptical education, The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms, 4:5, 37-49 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10848779908579993

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Discipline and Pedagogics in History: Foucault, Aris, and the History of Panoptical Education
JEROEN J.H. DEKKER AND DANIEL M. LECHNER

INTRODUCTION

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For Michel Foucault, the agrarian colony of Mettray, founded in 1839 near Tours in France, aimed at the resocialisation of criminal boysone of them being the famous French writer Jean Genet, who stayed at Mettray between 1926 and 1929serves as the evidence par excellence for his thesis of the genealogy of discipline, as developed in Discipline and Punish on the history of the prison.1 Foucault seems to stand alone in this interpretation of Mettray. In historiography as well as in testimonies of nineteenth century contemporaries, Mettray is regarded as a true pedagogical institution, notwithstanding its explicit disciplinary character. In this article, we focus on these contradictory interpretations. Our status question is: How can one explain Foucault's systematic neglect of the pedagogical aspect of this part of the history of education? In section two, the two interpretations of Mettray are exposed. It will be argued that Mettray was an institution in which close watch, punishment, and education went together. Mettray was in fact a model of temporary restricted marginalisation, discipline being a means in the re-education process. In section three, a short comparison will be made between Philippe Aries and Foucault as to education and discipline. Aris was no doubt the first modern historian who systematically made use of the concept of discipline in the history of education. Although Foucault admired the French historian, he nonetheless came to fundamentally dissimilar conclusions as to the relationship between discipline and education. In section four, an analysis of Surveiller et punir (Discipline and Punish) results in the argument that Foucault's underlying philosophy was responsible for his negligence of the pedagogical dimension. At the same time it will be argued that Foucault's ideas, developed after Surveiller et punir, were not in principle anti-pedagogical.
T H E FRENCH METTRAY: CARCRAL INSTITUTION OR PEDAGOGICAL MECCA?

Frdric-Auguste Demetz (1796-1873), French judge and initiator of Mettray, before realizing the colony, founded the Socit Paternelle pour l'ducation morale et professionelle des

jeunes dtenus, to secure Mettray a solid societal basis. The French elite, amongst them Gasparin, Beaumont, Brenger, Cochin, Falloux, Guizot, Moreau-Christophe, Rothschild, and De Tocqueville, joined this society. According to the first of its statutes, the objective of the society, and consequently of Mettray, was: '... to provide those children, released on

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands. The European Legacy, Vol. 4, No. 5, pp. 37-49, 1999 1999 by the International Society for the Study of European Ideas

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a provisional basis, and gathered in an agrarian colony, with a moral and religious education, as well as with a basic elementary education; to have them learn a trade; to accustom them to agricultural work, and eventually to find a position for them at the countryside with craftsmen or farmers' [our translation] ? First, Foucault's view on Mettray is exposed. Then, some testimonies of contemporary philanthropists who visited Mettray in its first years, in the 1830s and 1840s, are looked at. It is our thesis that the pair of 'surveiller / punir' is inadequate in covering the intentions and practices of Mettray. In regarding Mettray as part of the broad Western movement of the foundation of institutions providing temporary restricted marginalisation for children at risk, it becomes possible to find a solution to the contradictions between the Mettray as seen through Foucault's eyes, and the one existing in the heads of the contemporaries. A third element then, i.e. education, should be added to the 'surveiller / punir' pair. '[I]t is the disciplinary form at its most extreme, the model in which are concentrated all the coercive technologies of behaviour. In it were to be found "cloister, prison, school, regiment".... Where Mettray was especially exemplary was in the specificity that it recognized in this operation of training. It was related to other forms of supervision, on which it was based: medicine, general education, religious direction.' Foucault develops his interpretation of Mettray in analysing the different situations in which the Mettray staff is supposed to act in their different roles, namely 'that of the family ...; that of the army... ; that of the workshop, with supervisors and foremen ...; that of the school...; and lastly, the judicial model (each day "justice" was meted out in the parlour)'. The daily course of events at Mettray is characterised as a 'practice that by means of coercion normalizes the conduct of undisciplined and dangerous individuals'. This practice is being executed by'technicians of behaviour: engineers of conduct, orthopaedists of the individual'. Within this complex institution, 'the principal punishment inflicted was confinement to one's cell'.3 Within Foucault's genealogy, Mettray constitutes the example par excellence of the carcral institutions for young criminals with pedagogics left out. Contemporaries, visiting the colony, had a different opinion. They came in great number to see the miracle in the neighbourhood of Tours. Mettray was famous all over the philanthropic world. A visit to Mettray was part of the philanthropic journey, popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.4 Mettray belonged to the civilised world, to cite the title of the famous book, published in 1880, of the American E.C. Wines, who crossed the world in search of residential institutions. The emergence of a sufficient number of such institutions was, in his opinion, clear evidence of the civilised character of a country.5 We will give attention to three testimonies written by philanthropic visitors: the observations of the Dutch philanthropist Willem Suringar; and reports of two English observers, Matthew Davenport Hill and the Reverend Sydney Parker. Willem Hendrik Suringar (1790-1872) was a famous Dutch philanthropist, author of several books on prisons and on poor relief, member of the board of the first national Dutch philanthropic society, the Maatschappij tot Nut van 'talgemeen [The Society for the General Good], and co-founder, in 1823, of the Genootschap tot Zedelijke Verbetering der Gevangenen [Dutch Society for the Moral Amelioration of Prisoners]. He belonged to the international elite of philanthropism. In My visit to Mettray, also published in Dutch, French, and German, he wrote down his impressions of his visit to Mettray in 1845. He was

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impressed as much by the moral atmosphere and the pedagogical character as by the system of rewards and punishments. For Suringar, Mettray was a pedagogical institution, one of the first examples of the new approach to young criminals, which consisted of separating them from adults and regenerating them by agricultural work. Mettray was evidence of the superiority of such institutions to normal mixed prisons. Mettray was not the carcral institution par excellence: it was no prison, but a pedagogical institution. Let's quote Suringar's words. 'I left Tours at seven o'clock in the morning, and arrived at Mettray in one hour. Immediately I went to the church. All the pupils had met there At eleven o'clock all the pupils met in the school-room. Some strangers were also present. The registers were opened, and the pupils called before this moral tribunal, presided by Mr. Demetz. Each of them was accosted by him, but in a manner, so solemn and worthy, that I find it impossible to impart to my auditors or readers the impression, made upon me. Each address was an extemporaneous and a separate one Several times I was moved to tears, by his words and by the tone and way in which he spoke. Never had I witnessed any thing similar, never had I believed, that heads and minds might be so well moulded and cultivated. Demetz knows to show to each pupil the defects of his mind.... [A]nother child is called to the bar. The noble Demetz accosts him in these terms, "What must I say of you, my boy, you have been disobedient to the orders of the family-chief, but this was not the worse. It is worse, that you do not regret your unwillingness. You are indifferent, insensible, hardhearted. I am sorry for it, my boy. What must I do with you? Shall I abandon you as a lost boy? I should not like to do so. I love you and all the pupils so very tenderly."The child begins to weep bitterly, and Demetz gives to his address a masterly turn. "How, you weep?" says he. "I see tears. How I have been mistaken! I thought you insensible. My judgement was wrong. Come, my boy. Return to your place. It will go very well for the future, and I will not punish you now.'" Back in Holland, Suringar decided to found a similar institution in his own country and immediately started a campaign to collect money for it: 'If well minded persons of both sexes join their endeavours, in three or four years we shall possess in Holland a similar establishment to that of Mettray!'6 In this Nederlandsch Mettray, founded in 1851, only deprived children were admitted, due to the demands of Suringar's principal money-provider, Christian Schller. Thus, the French Mettray, an institution that admitted only criminal boys, served as the main example for the foundation of a Dutch institution for deprived children at risk. 'No Mahommedan ... believes more devoutly in the efficacy of a pilgrimage to Mecca, than I do in one to Mettray.'7 This was the impression of Matthew Davenport Hill (17921872), famous English reformer of criminal law, with much attention for juvenile criminals. He joined with Mary Carpenter (1807-1877) in their struggle for more adequate institutions for the criminal and deprived children in Great Britain, preferring institutions founded on the family principle. For Hill, Mettray was clear evidence of his belief that children at risk should not be re-educated within a youth prison, as for example Parkhurst, the English institution he and many others so fanatically attacked as being the biggest mistake in English history of institutionalised care for children at risk. In Mettray, he found his Mecca. Partly as a result of his impressions, also in England a Mettray was founded, namely Red Hill. The Reverend Sydney Turner, belonging to the same circles as Hill and Carpenter, after his visit to Mettray celebrated the Mettray approach for its focus on love in educating

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the boys: 'For the spirit of fear, which is usually the controlling one in such Schools is substituted to a great extent that of love.... The master, or pre, as he is called, and the two assistants who act under him, live and constantly associate with the boys, sharing in their amusements, and having in the main the same accommodations.... The boy feels that his master is not a mere officer to watch him and enforce discipline, or a mere instructor to reach him, but is a relation,a friendto sympathise with him and assist him', although at the same time, 'the principle is, that no part of the boy's conduct, however inconsiderable, be unnoticed or overlooked.' As to the system of rewards and punishments, he seems to have another institution in mind than Foucault did. Foucault stressed imprisonment as the most important and principal punishment. In the opinion of Turner, however, the Mettray practice was a different one: 'The punishments are,making the boy stand apart from his companions privation of meals and of recreationsadmonition in the "parlour" of the directorimprisonment in a light or dark cell, with or without a dry bread and water dietand finally expulsion, which is synonymous with the boys' being sent back to the prison from which he was received. Corporal punishment is utterly prohibited'. Thus, imprisonment is indeed part of the punishment system, but it forms only one of many possible interventions.8 In sum: these contemporary testimonies, produced by well known philanthropists outside of France, show us a different institution than the one which appeared in Discipline and Punish.9 In their eyes, Mettray was a home for the re-education of criminal children, who were regarded as children, not as criminals. Mettray was, in their opinion, characterised by discipline and close watch but at the same time also by child-focused intentions and pedagogical acting of the staff. Foucault's pair of'surveiller et punir' should be extended to 'educate', when we take seriously the story present in contemporary testimonies. A way of interpreting Mettray as an institution in which close watch, punishment, and affectionately intended education went together could be to regard Mettray as an example of temporary restricted marginalisation. When boys from the urban areas are placed in agricultural institutions, far away from the urban environment, and for a couple of years, this can be considered as a 'temporary restricted marginalisation', a means intended to reach normality, that is de-marginalisation, by way of temporal isolation and marginalisation. Character and behaviour of children at risk could be redressed during their preparation for a new life in the normal world, in isolating them temporarily from the public world, especially from the dangerous big cities. 'Temporary restricted marginalisation' is inspired by the Polish historian Bronislaw Geremek, who distinguished between two social areas, namely the centre and the periphery, marginals living in the latter one.10 The frontier between these two areas is fluid. Therefore, the model should be developed further to cover what is happening just around that fluid frontier. This third zone, being principally intermediate, can be called the zone of fragility. In expanded form, the model contains three distinguished domains, namely centre, marginality, and finally, in between, the space of fragility.11 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the marginal position of children became a subject of special reconsideration. Previously, children's marginal position was generally seen as part of the social position of their parents,12 but now specific interventions as to marginal, at-risk children became acceptable. The European elite, present in

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philanthropical societies, now seriously was considering issues like youth criminality and child abandonment.13 Various methods of intervention were proposed and introduced, consisting of techniques of charity and philanthropy, which took in consideration the responsibility of the group focused on, as for example improvement of schooling and family patronage systems.14 All these methods kept the children at home, with their families. However, for certain categories of children such methods were believed to be insufficient. Risks had gone too far for the criminal and seriously deprived children, for whom a future of vagrancy or adult criminality seemed unavoidable. In most cases the parents, acting in their role of educators, were blamed for this. For these children, a radical solution was necessary, in the opinion of the majority of European philanthropists, like Charles Lucas and Frdric-Auguste Demetz from France, Edouard Ducptiaux from Belgium, Mary Carpenter, Matthew Davenport Hill, and the Reverend Sydney Parker from England, Willem Suringar from the Netherlands, and Johann-Hinrich Wichern from Germany. This opinion was shared by many schoolmasters, priests, and even parents, confronted with the daily practice of managing children at risk. It was time to take more radical measures to the benefit of both the child and society. It was a radical method indeed, the enthusiastically propagated new method of re-education in residential homes. Only by taking the children out of the dangerous big towns, into the isolated and sane country, was a healing process was possible. Various institutions emerged, mostly financed by private funds, among them famous ones like Mettray in France, Ruysselede in Belgium, the Rauhe Haus near Hamburg in Germany, Red Hill in England, and the Dutch Mettray. We call this approach 'temporary restricted marginalisation', consisting in temporarily isolating the children at risk at the margin of society, with the intention of preventing life-long social marginalisation in the future. The birth and working of the French Mettray was part of this European movement.15 In other words, Mettray was not in the first place a carceral institution, although Foucault rightly emphasised the perfect setup of the colony as to carceral methods and disciplinary practices. This, however, was only part of the story of Mettray. The colony was also explicitly pedagogical in its organisation, intentions, and practice, as many contemporary observers were ready to note after their visit. Mettray was one of the many examples of reeducational homes that emerged in Europe. The archipelago of homes that resulted from this care for the deprived and criminal children was, both in its intentions and in its practice, explicitly pedagogical. The carceral was chiefly the means by which the pedagogical goal, namely the transformation of criminal and deprived children into decent adults, should be realised. Foucault's negligence of the pedagogical dimension is the more remarkable because Aries, whom he admired, developed ideas on discipline in 1960 in his Centuries of Childhood, in which he also introduced the concept of childhood, 'le sentiment d'enfance'. On that book, Adrian Wilson wrote in the first sentence of his article in History and Theory. 'Few works have exerted a greater influence upon British and American social historians
than Philippe Aris L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien rgime'.16 Therefore, it is appro-

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priate to examine in the next section similarities and differences as to the history of education and the concept of discipline present respectively in these two books of Aris and Foucault.

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ARIS AND FOUCAULT ON EDUCATION AND DISCIPLINE

Foucault relates the origins of the carcral system to the transformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries European school system. In other words, the Enlightenment ideas on the prison, as formulated by Jeremy Bentham, for example, should be seen as the development of earlier ideas and practices of school discipline. In doing so, Foucault follows the footsteps of Aris, whose Centuries of Childhood was the only work quoted, although only once, in Discipline and Punish.17 Aris and Foucault knew each other personally. In their academic careers, some remarkable similarities can be observed. Both worked outside the established French academic circles for many years, Aris managing his information centre for tropical agriculture, Foucault working at universities abroad. In several magazine articles and in interviews, Foucault demonstrated his admiration for Aris, calling him one of the pioneers of the history of mentalities in an article entitled 'A stunning erudition'.18 In an interview with Ariette Farge et al. he recognized Aris as the pioneer of various historical themes.19 After Aries' death in 1984, in his obituary in Le Nouvel Observateur, Foucault expressed his admiration for Aris with tones of warmth and sympathy, giving all credit to Aris for the transformation of the history of mentalities as to the theme of life events: birth, growing up, adulthood, and death.20 Indeed, Foucault developed key concepts and ideas from Aris' Centuries of Childhood. However, Foucault, in his Discipline and Punish, did not make any reference, except the one mentioned, to Aris, making it very difficult for the reader to see that he indeed owed much to Aris, and was conscious of that too. In this section, we will compare two important topics, present in both books, namely the militarisation of society in the Enlightenment, and discipline and educational practice in history. Also the paradoxical connection between both processes will be examined.21 On the combination of liberalism and militarism, Aris formulates the following: 'The liberalism of the eighteenth century was therefore offset by a contrary influence, which obtained a partial triumph, and which imposed a semi-military condition on the school population. This tendency cannot be attributed entirely to Napoleon. It went back in fact to a more distant source: during the whole of the second half of the eighteenth century, one can trace the rise of the military idea, at the same time as that of the liberal idea, inside school life.'22 Foucault, on the same theme: 'Historians of ideas usually attribute the dream of a perfect society to the philosophers and jurists of the eighteenth century; but there was also a military dream of society; its fundamental reference was not to the state of nature, but to the meticulously subordinated cogs of a machine, not to the primal social contract, but to permanent coercions, not to fundamental rights, but to indefinitely progressive forms of training, not to the general will but to automatic docility.' As to the Napoleonic regime: 'While jurists or philosophers were seeking in the pact a primal model for the construction or reconstruction of the social body, the soldiers and with them the technicians of discipline were elaborating procedures for the individual and collective coercion of bodies.'23 In other words, Foucault was following the ideas formulated fifteen years earlier in Centuries of Childhood. As to the development of discipline in the school system, Aris formulates the following: 'An authoritarian and hierarchical discipline was established in the college It originated in ecclesiastical or religious discipline; it was not so much an instrument of coercion as an instrument of moral and spiritual improvement, and it was adopted not only for its

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efficiency, because it was the necessary condition of work in common, but also because of its intrinsic moral and ascetic value. The pedagogues would adapt it to a system of supervising children which, at least in theory, was constantly in operation, night and day alike [our italics] ,'24 Centuries of Childhood is full of places referring to the development of discipline and supervision, as for example this one: 'The final establishment of a code of discipline completed an evolution which led from the medieval school, a mere classroom, to the modern college, a complex institution, designed not only for the tuition but also for the supervision and care of youth.'25 Aries does not confine the process of discipline to school, the span of his concept of discipline being comparable with that of Foucault: '[S]choolboys and students were organized on new principles of authoritarian hierarchy. Admittedly this evolution was not peculiar to childhood: it extended to the whole of society, and the establishment of monarchical absolutism was one aspect of it. But at school it producedor followeda change parallel to the concept of childhood which is of particular interest to us.'26 Foucault was even more explicit on discipline, the word being the title of Part III of Discipline and Punish. 'It is this disciplinary time that was gradually imposed on pedagogical practicespecializing the time of training and detaching it from the adult time, from the time of mastery; ... For the "initiatory" time of traditional training ..., disciplinary time had substituted its multiple and progressive series. A whole analytical pedagogy was being formed, meticulous in its detail... and also very precocious in its history... .'27 Two years after the publication of Discipline and Punish, Foucault made an interesting remark on Bentham and Rousseau, both being representatives, albeit distinct, from the Enlightenment. The demand for panoptism was in the air, physicians, factory owners, school managers, specialists on penal issues all asking for a solution to order and discipline problems. With his Panopticum, Bentham offered exactly what they were demanding. According to Foucault, Bentham formed the complement of Rousseau, whose main theme was that of the transparent society, Bentham's obsession being the Panopticum, the omniregarding power.28 Indeed, Foucault was influenced decisively by Aries and he was aware of this, notwithstanding the fact that readers of Discipline and Punish were not informed about that, due to the absence of references. Aries was the initiator in emphasising the importance of discipline in the history of education and schooling. Yet, the idea of the 'carcral system' is not merely a copy of Aries' concept. Foucault's concept has some new elements. In this respect, most important for the history of education is the relationship between the development of educational practice on the one hand, and the development of scientific disciplines on the other. Especially the idea of a 'dblocage pistmologique', resulting in the birth of'normalizing sciences' such as medicine and pedagogy, is distinctly Foucault's contribution.29 Another question that arises is why Aries' original concept of discipline did not attract the attention it should have deserved, while Foucault's concept, fifteen years later, made him more famous than ever before. One reason might be that Aries' concept of childhood was so overwhelmingly present throughout his book that the ideas on discipline were neglected. This negligence might also have been stimulated by the fact that his book was largely regarded as an epoch-making contribution to the history of childhood and the family, not to school history, notwithstanding the fact that almost half of Centuries of Childhood was indeed devoted to the latter theme. Aries' concept of discipline was devel-

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oped in the sizable chapter on school history, and was therefore developed in relation to the history of school and to school architecture. These factors might explain why Aries' contribution to the concept of discipline was not regarded as an essential element of his book, resulting in the fact that Aries was not acknowledged for it. Perhaps one of the main reasons why Foucault, on the contrary, was, might be the fact that Foucault's Discipline and Punish was published in 1975, in other words in the years after the cultural revolution of 1968 (during which, by the way, Foucault was working at universities abroad). During these years, topics like discipline and power were at the heart of student discussions all over the world, certainly also in France. In these years, Aries was set aside by several fellow historians, amongst them Lawrence Stone, as belonging to the right side of the political spectrum. Foucault, on the contrary, became one of the anti-establishment symbols, and was appointed at the newly founded, revolutionary minded Vincennes University. Some years later, in 1971, he accepted a prestigious chair at the French intellectual establishment par excellence, the Collge de France.30 In sum, Foucault was influenced by Aries and was fully aware of this. Due to the historical circumstances, Aries views on discipline could not rise to the same popularity as Foucault's. Another question, however, remains to be answered, viz. why Foucault so fundamentally and absolutely disregarded the pedagogical dimension, notwithstanding the fact that his ideas were so strongly influenced by Aries. Aries was very attentive to educational and pedagogical intentions and practices, even when they appeared in the context of discipline. Our hypothesis as to Foucault's negligence of the pedagogical dimension is that this was the consequence of his underlying philosophy. In the next section, we shall try to answer this question.
THE UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY OF DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH

The contrast between Foucault's interpretation and the views of the historical actors, as described in section 2, comes strikingly to the fore at the level of aims and intentions. Foucault remains silent on the aims and intentions which the historical actors themselves formulated regarding Mettray. For him, the overall objective of the institution consisted of its aim to discipline. In order to uphold this claim, Foucault deliberately had to distance himself from the views of the historical actors. This can be illustrated by examining Foucault's genealogy. Amongst historians, Foucault has often been reproached for either his lack of knowledge of the sources, or his superimposition of an a priori theoretical scheme upon the sources.31 The way Foucault was constructing his historical narrative on Mettray, namely one in which the overtly stated intentions of the historical actors are consciously and systematically being ignored, can be considered as a variant on this general kind of historical criticism. However, it is important to be aware of the differences between Foucault's genealogical projects and the historian's craft. The venture of the Foucauldian genealogy is not to provide an accurate historical picture of phenomena like imprisonment, the judiciary system, or re-education. Foucault's object of study was not historical reality, but 'the discourse of the true and the false'.32 This discourse Foucault has tried to unravel genealogically, by showing the intertwinement of power relations on the one hand, and the construction of knowledge and truth on the

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other. The closing sentence of the last chapter of Discipline and Punish (which is actually a footnote in the French version) in this respect speaks volumes: 'At this point I end a book that must serve as a historical background to various studies of the power of normalization and the formation of knowledge in modern society.'33 From this perspective on Discipline and Punish it can be made clear why Foucault passed over the utterances and selfconcepts of the historical figures around Mettray. In order to employ the productive operation of modern power in the analysis of the discourse of the true and the false, Foucault had to deal with and offer an alternative for the standard view on power. Foucault's understanding of power differs on several aspects from this standard conception of power, which we could identify as the modernist-humanistic conception of power, and which has found its apex in critical social theory. We limit ourselves to three main differences, namely as to the productivity, the property, and the structure. The first point of divergence concerns the aspect of productivity. According to Foucault, power does not operate just repressively, exclusionary and concealing, but contains besides this negative dimension first and foremost a positive dimension: power organises experience and produces subjects and objects, in short, power generates reality. This way the subject does notas in the humanistic theory on the subjectform the source of power (and knowledge), but is its result; the subject does not exist a priori, but is being produced. In Discipline and Punish, he states: 'In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production'.34 Secondly, according to the standard view, power is either the exclusive possession of the autonomous subjectin the liberal versionor the repressive instrument of the ruling classin the critical version. For Foucault, however, power is a property of certain relations between individuals. Power in this view emerges within a complex and differentiated web of physical, spatio-temporal practices, in which the outward conduct of subjects is directed, controlled, and evaluated. Finally, Foucault's notion of power does not refer to a clearly defined, asymmetrical relation between two dichotomous entities, the rulers and the oppressed, but instead exhibits a diffuse and decentral character. An excerpt from the first volume of The History of Sexuality distinctly demonstrates this insight. 'Power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power-relations, and serving as a general matrixno such duality extending from the top down and reacting on more and more limited groups to the very depths of the social body. One must suppose rather that the manifold relationships of force that take shape and come into play in the machinery of production, in families, limited groups, and institutions, are the basis for wide-ranging effects of cleavage that run through the social body as a whole.'35 Against the background of this 'microphysics of power' it becomes clear why Foucault has so strikingly subordinated the historical evidence to his theoretical constructions. Foucault's objective was to develop an alternative interpretation of the operation of modern power. Such a Foucauldian theory of power could be constructed successfully only if a considerable measure of distance from the historical actors was being safeguarded. Where the subjector the ruling classis regarded as the exercising agency of power, that can employ power at will to the benefit of its own interests, it would still be legitimate to speak of a self-conscious historical praxis that reflects its own mastery of power. Where, however,

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the subject is merely the result of a productive power, where power is generated in complex constellations of heterogeneous and multi-dimensional functional relationships, as in Foucault's theory of power, there the subject cannot be expected to show any awareness of these supra-individual power structures. Nevertheless, Foucault indeed violated historical reality, when he fully ignored the caring, benevolent, in other words the pedagogical aspects of the intentions and actions that the masters, teachers, preachers, and supervisors at Mettray displayed. In fact, there is something counterintuitive to Foucault's claim that Mettray was merely a disciplinary institution, all the self-proclaimed educational efforts of its staff-members being aimed exclusively at a full-scale discipline. Perhaps the later Foucault might not have been entirely comfortable with the idea that true education can be nothing more than a desperately haunted phantom. Kenneth Wain emphasises the distinction Foucault has made between processes of domination and control on the one hand, and processes of self-creation on the other. Wain shows that Foucault's objective was not just to track down the processes by which human beings are turned into subjects, viz. the processes of subjection, but also those 'ethical practices through which the individual turns himself or herself into a subject', for which Foucault reserved the expression of subjectivation. The former set of practices were the subject of study of Discipline and Punish, Madness and Civilization,36 and other earlier studies, while the latter set of practices was the subject of History of Sexuality in the Western World. Wain claims that Foucault's view as to education was not exclusively negative. Drawing upon several statements relating to education, made by Foucault in interviews in the 1980s, Wain states that Foucault envisioned the possibility of genuine education. That sort of education should correspond with 'a pedagogical project that enables subjects "to give laws to themselves" ..., which provides them with skills to exercise power, with "techniques of management", and, more fundamentally, with certain "practices of the self and of freedom".'37 In other words, on the one hand Foucault is disposing of the pedagogical through the front door by declaring that all pedagogical action in the traditional sense in truth is nothing more than disciplinary action, showing a deep aversion towards the educational archipelago. On the other hand, he opens up the back door to let the pedagogical reenter as a pedagogical project in the sphere of ethics. Moreover, the idea of a pedagogical project that enables the student to work in freedom on the development of his self-chosen individuality is of course not new. Already in 1778, in Rousseau's Emile, ideas occur about the pedagogical virtues of sincere freedom, social tolerance, self-determination, and aesthetic self-formation. Foucault seems to draw his educational views for a large part from the Enlightenment pedagogical tradition he so vehemently has criticised. By doing so, he in fact was undermining his own criticisms of educational theory and practice, as for example in his description of Mettray. His program of human empowerment does presuppose the possibility of communicative, noninstrumental interaction between teacher and student. Therefore, not all teacher-student interaction, according to the later Foucault, needs to be instrumental, noncommunicative action, that is, action directed at discipline. This impinges directly upon Foucault's analysis of the agricultural colony of Mettray, for if we can distinguish genuine pedagogical action from disciplinary action within an educational setting, then this leaves room to distinguisheven upon Foucault's own termsa pedagogical dimension in Mettray as well.

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Our main question was how to explain why Foucault neglected systematically the pedagogical aspect of nineteenth century re-education, especially as to French Mettray, focusing on the disciplinary aspect. Through the examination of testimonies of contemporary actors, it could be argued that Mettray was an institution in which close watch, punishment, and education went together. The colony was a model of temporary restricted marginalisation, focused on re-education, for which discipline was an important, even an indispensable, means. A comparison between Aries and Foucault as to education and discipline made clear that Aries was indeed the first modern historian who systematically used the concept of discipline in the history of education. Aries did not neglect pedagogical aspects. On the contrary, he fostered the concept of'sentiment de l'enfance'. Foucault's negligence of education was the consequence of his genealogical approach and views on power. His object of study was not historical reality, but 'the discourse of the true and the false'. In order to clarify that discourse, he applied his genealogical method, by showing the intertwinement of power relations on the one hand, and the construction of knowledge and truth on the other. Nevertheless, Foucault was not principally anti-pedagogical in all his works. His statement on the omnipresence of disciplinary power has recurrently been criticised by advocates of the humanistic legacy. Foucault's rejoinder to such criticisms, formulated by for example Geertz, Habermas, and Rorty, has essentially been this: 'My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad'.38 If everything is dangerous, not bad, this certainly holds for Mettray. The view that there was nothing pedagogical about Mettray, the view that Foucault initially held, essentially comes down to the belief that all and everything about Mettray is bad. According to the later position Foucault took, in his famous 1983 interview, such a point of view should be discarded and be seen as a misconception of his own ideas. After all, it is not as if everything is bad, but merely dangerous. It makes much more sense, therefore, to treat Mettray as a potentially dangerous venue, where a compassionate intention to educate could easily digress into a disciplinary situation.
NOTES 1. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Middlesex/New York/Victoria: Penguin Books, 1977) (orig.: Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: ditions Gallimard, 1975). A. Dichy and P. Fouch, Jean Genet, Essai de chronologie, 1920-1944 (Paris: Bibliothque de littrature franaise contemporaine de l'Universit Paris, 7, 1988). Genet's novels Miracle de la rose and L'Enfant criminel were inspired by his stay at Mettray. 2. Rapport Annuel adress MM les membres de la Socit Paternelle, Colonie agricole et pnitentiaire de Mettray, douzime annee (Tours, 1854). 3. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 293-296 (Surveiller et punir, 300-301 ); on Mettray and other French agrarian colonies, see J-G. Petit, Ces peines obscures: La prison pnale en France 1780-1875 (Paris: Fayard, 1990); C. Carlier, La prison aux champs: Les colonies d'enfants dlinquants du nord de la France au XIXe sicle (Paris: Les ditions de l'Atelier, 1994); H. Gaillac, Les maisons de correction, 1830-1945 (Paris: ditions Cujas, or. 1970); M. Perrot, L'Impossible prison: Recherches sur le systme pnitentiaire au XIX e sicle I runies par Michelle Perrot; dbat avec Michel Focault (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1980). 4. J.J.H. Dekker, 'Transforming the Nation and the Child: Philanthropy in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and England, c.1780-c.1850', in H. Cunningham and I. Innes, eds., Charity, Philanthropy and Reform: From the 1690s to 1850 (Basingstoke: Macmillan / New York: St. Martin, 1998), 130-147, 137.

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5. E.C. Wines, The State of Prisons and of Child-Saving Institutions in the Civilised World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1880). 6. W. Suringar, My visit to Mettray (Leeuwarden: G.T.N. Suringar, sd [1847]), 11-12, 14, 23. On the Dutch Mettray, see J.J.H. Dekker, Straffen, redden en opvoeden. Het ontstaan en de ontwikkeling van de residentile heropvoeding in West-Europa, 18141914, met bijzondere aandacht voor 'Nederlandsch Mettray' (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1985). On Suringar, see Dekker, 'Transforming the Nation and the Child', 141; J.J.H. Dekker, 'Rituals and Reeducation in the Nineteenth Century: Ritual and Moral Education in a Dutch Children's Home', in Continuity and Change 9 (1994), 121-144; Ch. Leonards, De ontdekking van het unschuldige criminele kind. Bestraffing en opvoeding van crimnele kinderen in jeugdgevangenis en opvoedingsgesticht 1833-1886 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1995), 73-74. 7. Cited in D. Owen, English Philanthropy, 1660-1960 (Cambridge, MA: Belknapp Press, 1964), 153. On Hill, see L. Stephen and S. Lee (eds.), The Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1917-...), vol. IX, 853-855. 8. Cited in M. Carpenter, Reformatory Schools for the Children of Perishing and Dangerous Classes and for Juvenile Offenders (London: Gilpin, 1851), 325-327. 9. Other testimonies can be found in Wines, The State of Prisons. Edouard Ducptiaux (1804-1868), the famous Belgian prison reformer, also visited Mettray; see M.-S. Dupont-Bouchat, De la prison l'cole. Les pnitenciers pour enfants en Belgique au XIX e sicle (1840-1914) (Kortrijk-Heule: UGA, 1996), 43-44. Cf. Dekker, Straffen, redden en opvoeden, 204-206. 10. B. Geremek, 'Le marginal', in J. Le Goff (ed.), L'homme mdival (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 381-413, 388. 11. J.J.H. Dekker, 'The Fragile Relation between Normality and Marginality: Marginalization and Institutionalization in the History of Education', in Paedagogica Historica XXVI (1990), 2, 13-29. The concept of fragility was inspired by A. Farge, La vie fragile. Violence, pouvoirs et solidarits Paris au XVIII e sicle (Paris: Hachette, 1986), 321. Cf. A. Farge.'Marginaux', in A. Burguire (ed), Dictionnaire des Sciences Historiques (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986), 436-438. 12. See S. Woolf, The Poor in Western Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: Methuen, 1986). 13. See Cunningham, Charity, Philanthropy and Reform, and C. Bec, C. Duprat, J.-N. Luc, and J.-P. Petit (eds.), Philanthropies et politiques sociales en Europe (XVIIIe-XXe sicles) (Paris: Anthropos, 1994), for an overall view on philanthropy in the nineteenth century. 14. See F. Ttard, 'Fin d'un modle philanthropique? Crise des patronages consacrs au sauvetage de l'enfance dans l'Entre-deux-guerres', in Bec et al., Philanthropies et politiques sociales, 199-212. 15. Dekker, 'Transforming the Nation and the Child', 139-142. 16. Ph. Aris, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962) (orig. L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien rgime [Paris: Librairie Pion, 1960]; quotations from the 1973 reprint at ditions du Seuil). A. Wilson, 'The Infancy of the History of Childhood: An Appraisal of Philippe Aris', in History and Theory, 132. 17. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 141 (Surveiller et punir, 143, n.3). 18. M. Foucault, Dits et crits: 1954-1988, III, 1976-1979, eds. D. Defert and F. Ewald, (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 503 (orig. 'Une rudition tourdissante', Le Matin, 20 January 1978). 19. Foucault, Dits et crits, IV, 1980-1988, 650 (orig. Le Matin, 21 February 1984). 20. Foucault, Dits et crits, IV, 646-649 (orig. Le Nouvel Observateur, 17-23 February 1984). In an interview with J.-P. Barou and Michelle Perrot, he referred to Aris' new ideas on the history of architecture in relation to the development of discipline, Dits et crits, III, 190-207 (orig. 1977), 192. 21. An earlier version of this comparison was published in J.J.H. Dekker, 'duquer et punir', in Socits & Reprsentations 3 (1996), 262-265. 22. Aris, Centuries of Childhood, 267 (L'Enfant, 295). 23. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 169 (Surveiller et punir, 171). 24. Aris, Centuries of Childhood, 284, 333 (L'Enfant, 316, 373). 25. Aris, Centuries of Childhood, 173 (L'Enfant, 185, 316). 26. Aris, Centuries of Childhood, 252 (L'Enfant, 278). 27. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 159 (Surveiller et punir, 161). 28. Foucault, Dits et crits, III, 190-207, interview with J.-P. Barou and Michelle Perrot (orig. 1977), 195.

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29. P. Veyne, Comment on crit l'histoire, suivi de Foucault rvolutionne l'histoire (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1978); Ulrich Brider, 'Foucaults Geschichte', in Geschichte und Gesellschaft (1998), 248-282. 30. Foucault, Dits et crits, IV, 647, defends him in his obituary against this attack, which also included the suggestion of Aris having a relationship with the Action Franaise. The Collge de France inaugural lecture was published as M. Foucault, L'ordre du discours (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). 31. G. Noiriel, 'Foucault and History: The Lessons of a Disillusion', in Journal of Modem History 66 (September 1994), 552-3; J. Goldstein (ed.), Foucault and the Writing of History (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1994), 2. 32. Foucault, cited in Noiriel, 'Foucault and History', 549. 33. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 308 (Surveiller et punir, 315). 34. Before Foucault, knowledge was only believed to produce power, not the other way round; see Th. Popkewitz, 'Restructuring of Social and Political Theory in Education: Foucault and a Social Epistemology of School Practices', in Educational Theory 47:3 (1997), 297-313, 306. Foucault reverses this by pointing out that power produces knowledge as well, Discipline and Punish, 194. 35. M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (translation of La volont de savoir) (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 94. 36. For the impact of Foucault on the psychiatric practice, see P. Vandermeersch, 'Zur Bedeutung von Michel Foucault fr die heutige Psychiatrie', in Fundamenta Psychiatrica 1997, 11, 141-146. 37. K. Wain, 'Foucault, Education, the Self and Modernity', in Journal of Philosophy of Education 30:3 (1996), 358 (citation), 352, 355. 38. Foucault cited in H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Brighton: Harvester, 1983), 343.