Permanent centralized registration mediated every subject’s relation to power

Evidence

This surveillance is based on a system of permanent registration: reports from the syndics to the intendants, from the intendants to the magistrates or mayor. At the beginning of the ‘lock up’, the role of each of the inhabitants present in the town is laid down, one by one; this document bears ‘the name, age, sex of everyone, notwithstanding his condition’: a copy is sent to the intendant of the quarter, another to the office of the town hall, another to enable the syndic to make his daily roll call. Everything that may be observed during the course of the visits – deaths, illnesses, complaints, irregularities – is noted down and transmitted to the intendants and magistrates. … The relation of each individual to his disease and to his death passes through the representatives of power, the registration they make of it, the decisions they take on it. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 306

Categorization

• XREF: The registration chain (syndic to intendant to magistrate, copies triplicated) parallels the writing-based surveillance the reader finds in Oceania’s telescreen record-keeping, and echoes the law-merchant ‘full-history information’ problem from Milgrom. — connects to: Partitioned cellular space lets authority track, assess, and control each individual continuously — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 221; Power shifts attribution of actions from the subject to the power-holder; The examination fuses power relations with knowledge relations into one mechanism — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 284 (+4 more)

Related

• Totalitarian police aim to map all social relations of the entire population (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Disciplinary power stays invisible while making its subjects compulsorily visible #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 288
• Power shifts attribution of actions from the subject to the power-holder #expands (0.80)
• Power functions automatically when subjects believe they are always visible #expands (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 313
• The examination fuses power relations with knowledge relations into one mechanism #expands (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 284
• Power and knowledge mutually constitute and imply one another #expands (0.70) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 75