Body in philosophy. Anatomico-Metaphysical and Technico-Political Register
LENGTH: 4-5 pagesPROMPT: In Discipline and Punish Foucault distinguishes two registers of the modern machine-body: the “anatomico-metaphysical” and the “technico-political.” Drawing on the readings covered in class (Descartes, Leder, Schiebinger, Foucault) give an account of each of these registers. Given your account, do you think they can or should be ultimately understood as separate?
HINTS: Using the materials at your disposal please present your analysis as CLEARLY, PRECISELY, and COMPREHENSIVELY as possible given the length constraints. Don’t just speculate or make easy comparisons (“ I think Plato could have meant x and such.” “This reminds me of Freud.” “This is like an episode of Game of Thrones.”) Provide reasons and evidence for your interpretive choices (“I think Augustine meant x because that would be consistent with y and helps to explain z”). If you do use an example from outside the text make sure it performs an active, illustrative function that helps to explain the point you are trying to make.
You should generate your account from, and continually support it with, specific passages from the text(s) you are discussing. When you quote a text, make sure you do so for a good reason. Introduce the quote and make clear what role it is playing in your exposition.
Your paper will be graded according to the following general criteria:
1) A clear, precise, comprehensive analytical explanation of the piece you choose, including a clear conception of the author’s understanding of the body.
2) Sufficient textual evidence to support your account.
3) Well-written prose, correct grammar and syntax.
Most simply, if your paper has all three of these criteria, it will receive some form of an A; if it has only two, it will receive some form of a B; if it has only one, it will receive a C or less. Nuts and Bolts
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Anatomico-Metaphysical and Technico-Political Register
There are two distinct registers of modern machine body distinguished by Foucault in the “Discipline and Punish”. The first one is “anatomico-metaphysical”, while the second is “technico-political” register. The human body enters into the mechanisms of power, which carefully process it, destroy its order and reassemble. Political anatomy is born, which is at the same time power mechanics. This essay is aimed at distinguishing whether or not “anatomico-metaphysical” and “technico-political” registers should be comprehended as separate classes. It determines how one can subjugate the bodies of others in order to make them not only do something specific but act in a certain way, using certain techniques, with the necessary speed and efficiency.
Anatomico-Metaphysical Register. In the classical age, the discovery of the body as an object and target of power took place. It is not difficult to find signs of close attention to the body, which is subjected to manipulation, formation, drill, which obeys, reacts, becomes agile and is gaining strength. The great book about the Human Machine was created simultaneously in two registers: the anatomical and metaphysical.
The first pages were written by Descartes, followed by physicians and philosophers, formed by a combination of military, school and hospital charters, as well as empirical and calculated procedures for controlling body actions or correcting them (Descartes 69). These are completely different registers, since the question is, on the one hand, about submission and use, and on the other, about functioning and explanation: the useful body and the understood body.
Referring to the anatomical register, Schiebinger discussed the anatomy of difference in his book emphasizing distinct anatomical patterns among males and females (Schiebinger 116). The anatomical differences were mostly based on the racial and sexual science quoted from the philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
As far as the metaphysical aspect is concerned, the metaphysical knowledge of individual things is accomplished through universal ideas that exist in a universal way and endowed with the reality of being. In the mythological systems of the preceding period, the role of the philosopher - politics - metaphysics was performed by the priest, endowed with magical power, sent down from above. However, the general places of Plato’s studies excite the researchers to a lesser extent than the radical attempt undertaken by him to rationalize the mythological method of comprehension of power.
In the metaphysics of Plato, a completely revolutionary character arises, i.e. a philosopher is aimed at realizing the political ideal and a fair state system. Thus, the metaphysical way of understanding power is presented as a special mindset indicating the chosen course of thinking about power in close connection with the concept of eternity.
Technico-Political Register. The architectural and geometric aspect of power is roughly the one that Foucault called Technological and Political Register of Power in his chapt...
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