Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Discipline and Punish
The body of the condemned moves from spectacular torture to disciplinary surveillance — and the panopticon's gaze becomes the modern soul
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Discipline and Punish (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Passive |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Constructed |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Discipline and Punish
Real historical time in which disciplinary techniques develop. The historical shift Foucault tracks (1757 execution to early prison) is a real change.
Space
Discipline and Punish
The Panopticon is a spatial-architectural analysis — spatial arrangements produce power effects. Substantival.
Matter
Discipline and Punish
The body is the locus of disciplinary effects. Substantival and real.
Observer
Discipline and Punish
The Foucauldian observer is the subjectivated body produced by disciplinary regimes. Passive in the precise sense of being constituted by power-knowledge relations.
Energy
Discipline and Punish
Power as energetic principle, productive and distributed through the disciplinary network.
Information
Discipline and Punish
Surveillance produces information; the disciplinary regime is also a regime of records, files, examinations. Relational and historical.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Foucault's relationship to "humanism" — whether his critique permits any normative critique of disciplinary regimes — has been disputed since the 1970s. Habermas's critique (in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 1985) argues Foucault is in "normative confusion." Late Foucault (Care of the Self, 1984) opened a different path toward an ethics of self-formation; the relation to Discipline and Punish remains the central interpretive question.