Resumen de Narratives of power and law: the Foucauldian prison
This working paper proposes a marginal approach tothe institutions of power understood by us as power apparatusesarticulating the relations between the production of knowledge,norms, and modes of exercising and validating law in Foucauldiantheory. To this end, the description of certain institutions present inthe thought and work of Michel Foucault on the relations of force thatare established between power and the law have been examined,focusing on those which at a certain point in history constitutedfor the author a change in the object of analysis, particularly thenorm as a disciplinary paradigm for social behaviour. The narrativeon power and norms is descriptively analysed, distinguishing forthat purpose between the individual systems in the approach of theauthor - the prison - that Michel Foucault treated as an example ofthe disciplinary institutions (after the manner of Gofman) that seekin the Foucauldian theory to mould the body and the soul of citizenswith the ultimate aim of regenerating such citizens according to aset social model. This paper seeks to lend weight to the descriptiveanalytical methodological aspects of the author’s thinking regardingthe prison system as a mechanism correlating forces between the lawand norms. The paper concludes that Foucault’s genealogy allowspragmatic observation of the system as a whole and of very currentautopoietic systems individually, while applying Foucauldian theoryto the question of whether we should continue to be integrated ina disciplinary society or if, perhaps, this is an outdated normativeparadigm.
