In the chapter, “the body of the condemned” and “the spectacle of the scaffold” in Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, he starts out with the idea of a corporal punishment, then shifting to the punishment of the soul, where inflicting harm and wounding the body is excluded from the picture. Foucault uses the example of a public execution to construct his theoretical argument about the current prison system and public executions of the past. The fabrication of a new embodiment that is not the physical body, allows for news forms of punishment that goes beyond the limits of the physical body. This inherent shift from the body to the spiritual realm of the body, creates a space that is more private, closing off the public aspect of the execution. Therefore, “the disappearance of public executions marks therefore the decline of the spectacle; but it also marks the slackening of the hold on the body” (p. 10). Also that, “in our societies the systems of punishment are to be situated in a certain ‘political economy’ of the body: even if they do not make use of violent or bloody punishment, even when they use ‘lenient’ methods involving confinement or correction, it is always the body that is at issue- body and its forces, their utility and their docility, their distribution and their submission” (p. 25). Thus, there are many aspects to the imprisonment of the body that involves the judgement of the body, where other bodies are playing the role of the judge, even when that role is not certain, this in turn creates for discourses that traps the body. The distribution and the role of power then takes on a strategic perspective, where there are multiple players in a societal setting where there is not a specific individual controlling it. As Foucault mentions in chapter 2, “of all the reasons why punishment that was in the least ashamed of being ‘atrocious’ was replaced by punishment that was to claim honour of being ‘humane’ there is one that must be analyzed at once, for internal to the public execution itself: at once an element of its functioning and the principle of its perpetual disorder” (p. 57). As atrocity represents the most terrorizing part of a crime, it is seen as a necessity to reveal the truth of the crime. Even though, it is a representation of the violence present in the crime as a whole, it also demonstrates the violence that is inherently present within the crime.
On the other hand, in the article, “percepticide” by Diana Taylor and Chapter 2 of the book The Scapegoat, “Stereotypes of persecutions” by René Girard, tackles the different acts of violence in persecutions and different spectacles of power. Taylor talks about the acts of terror in the Argentinian society that create a spectacle, that involved the society as a whole, and presented the atrocities that lies within violent acts, while portraying a theatrical presentation of such events, though it was not meant to be such. Thus, “the house theatrical space, like the junta’s appropriation of the domestic, subverts the lines of demarcation between public and private” (p. 127). The presentation of the private spaces is shown through the lens of the juridical systems, that has created such a private space that eliminated the spectacle of public prosecutions. Therefore, showing how public perception is controlled by the different systematic power holders. The manipulation of power and its various forms draws upon the spectator’s role in the system, while the authority uses fear and terror to shape its control. In Girard’s book, he mentions, “ultimately the persecutors always convince themselves that a small number of people, or even a single individual, despite his relative weakness, is extremely harmful to the whole of society” (p. 15). This alludes to the creation of certain bias and development of stereotypes for a specific group of people, which becomes part of the prosecution. To add to this, Girard talks about how, “the rich and powerful exert an influence over society which justifies the acts of violence to which they are subjected in times of crisis. This is the holy revolt of the oppressed” (p. 19). This speaks to the boundaries that demonstrate the different faces of persecution. The intention is to provide a specific idea of collective violence that intersects with different cultures, but not necessarily providing an idea of what is seen as good or bad in a social context. Therefore, the idea of scapegoating connects directly to the cultural aspect of culture and create some sort of calmness in the society. The unconscious side of this makes room for the continued presence of this scapegoating and shows the different forms in which society address and represents power.