The soul is produced by power’s technology, not given by theology

Evidence

Rather than seeing this soul as the reactivated remnants of an ideology, one would see it as the present correlative of a certain technology of power over the body. It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished – and, in a more general way, on those one supervises, trains and corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school, the colonized, over those who are stuck at a machine and supervised for the rest of their lives. This is the historical reality of this soul, which, unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 79

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The soul as effect-and-instrument of power rather than a pre-existing substance is one of modern thought’s seismic inversions — the surveillance subject is manufactured, not discovered.
• XREF: This is the exact mechanism the reader’s panopticon thesis needs: the internalized watcher is ‘the soul,’ produced by telescreen power and in turn policing the body. — connects to: The soul is the prison of the body, not its freeing essence — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 79; Power produces the individual rather than merely repressing it — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 301; Discipline is a type of power, not an institution or apparatus — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 338 (+1 more)

Related

• The soul is the prison of the body, not its freeing essence (similarity 0.86)
• Power produces the individual rather than merely repressing it (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Power produces the individual rather than merely repressing it #corroborates (0.90) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 301
• Discipline is a type of power, not an institution or apparatus #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 338
• An unseen voice is automatically attributed divine powers #exemplifies (0.75) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 45