Small Acts of Cunning: Disciplinary Practices in Contemporary Life

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to offer a genealogy of some of the disciplinary practices that constitute the everyday life of contemporary postmodern America. I argue that we are witnessing the emergence of a new economy of illegalities, and with it, an increased tension between exceptional punishment and generalized surveillance. This physics of power is constituted, in part, through a new political technology of the body that directs a gaze of accountability on an individuals “life-style” and is often premised on regulating, probing or, measuring the body's functions, processes, characteristics or movements. In this way, the body is being used as a central element in the localization of contemporary power. All this, I believe, is made possible by the historical moment of late twentieth-century capitalism.