미셸 푸코의 ‘규율 권력’과 근대 교육

Abstract

In his book Surveiller et punir (1975), Michel Foucault explained that the basic mechanism of the modern prison, 'confinement and correction', has been developed outside of the judicial system. 'Discipline', from which the principle of ‘confinement and correction’ had come, became the basic mechanism of modern prison. According to Foucault, in the Classical era, the discipline which was developed in the schools, military, hospitals, and factories, became ‘the general formula of domination’ of modern Western societies in the late 18th century. Schools are the disciplinary institution of modern society which shares various technologies of the disciplinary power with the punishing institution. Foucault argues that the modern Western institution of education and that of the prison are homogeneous. That claim has important implications for the Koreans who have been practicing the schooling modeled on the Western modern education, since almost one hundred years ago. In recent years, South Korea makes a boast of the highest level of educational achievement in the world. At the same time, South Korea's school organizations carry out very disciplinary ‘confinement education’. Thus, Foucault's critique of modern education has a realistic lesson for the correct analysis of Korean educational practices. This paper examined Foucault's power analytics which regarded the modern education as an apparatus of the disciplinary power. Modern education system is the central part in Foucault’s theory of the disciplinary power and one of major disciplinary machines of the modern world. However, Surveiller et punir, which includes Foucault's critical analysis of modern education, should be understood as some sort of tatics in connection with his political practice, rather than as a negation of the significance of modern education as a whole. This paper showed that the aim of Foucault's critique of modern education is not to negate the historical and practical importance of modern education itself, but to problematize the oppressive and normalizing characteristics of the contemporary schooling. Foucault's genealogical analysis of the modern schooling can be a useful tool for the theoretical practices in relation to the highly disciplinary ‘actualities’ of Korean education.