GS201 Chapter Notes -Michel Foucault
Document Summary
Docile bodies are ones that can be shaped and adapted to fit the needs of the being shaping them. The needs of the shaper often are a duty or a task they need to docile body to complete. Schooling is the example used from lecture to describe docile bodies, as students we are conditioned from kingergarden to perform tasks and behave accordingly. We have internalized these tasks and expectations, also internalizing the power balance within a classroom. In order to make a body docile sometimes it becomes necessary to break any previous norms and rebuild new ones in their place. For gs231 we have discussed the ability of the army to build soldiers by destroying all that they understood as normally and morally correct and replacing these values with what the military needed them to do. That is why they recruit young people, their values have not yet been solidified and it becomes much easier to change their thinking.
