Kira Cunningham

Amy Flick
Seminar in Composition
October 4, 2019
Rhetorical Analysis of Michel Foucault
Introduction: Thesis- Foucault implies that power, discipline and control are all matters of
conditioning others through the use of society as a whole.

Point 1: Discipline- We learn right and wrong by being exposed to it’s aspects of having
consequences by doing wrong and being rewards from doing right.
- Through this we learn which of the relationships means which and we adjust our behavior
accordingly through learning.
- Society conditions us

Point 2: Power- When someone does or is doing wrong, people (we) want them to know that it
is wrong so that it changes and can be taken care of/off their backs.
- This is accomplished by there being someone to “take care of it” because people (we)
allow there to be power to do so.
- Society creates an authority figure

Point 3: Control- We follow order through social norms and learning how things are around us
“naturally” or “commonly”.
- We do this by watching others from the time we were young and all through our growing
up through observations or from seeing/reflecting on aspects of our own life (how we
were raised, how are family sees things, etc)
- Society is a model

Conclusion:
Each aspect of the book (discipline, power, control) that Foucault introduces can be
broken down to explain why and how individuals are shaped to behave. Foucault implies that
these aspects have been conformed into individuals of society by society itself as it has
conditioned us, created an authority to live by, and modeled a figure for us to follow which have
all been a contributor to how we behave and can be manipulated.