Another life...

Foucault claims that the modern era began with what he calls ' the great confinement'. Social misfits of every stripe were rounded up and consigned to prisons, asylums, workhouses and hospitals. In Foucault's view, these institutions became the pillars of order in modern society. He consistently draws the analogy between prisons and asylums: prisons punish those who refuse to act like everyone else; asylums control those who refuse to think like everyone else. The repressive society that George Orwell imagined in his book 1984, where ' thought police' patrol the streets arresting those who commit ' thought crimes', is already upon us, according to Foucault. We simply fail to recognise it because the prisons are labelled ' hospitals' and the police are called ' doctors'. ( The Rebel Sell, 2003, How the counterculture became the consumer culture, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter, p 147-48, Quote, Foucault. ) Punk@it