ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3 we focused attention on the mentality that underlies the punishment paradigm. This mentality defines punishment as the necessary and obvious tool to be used in governing security. According to its logic, governmental ends can only be achieved through the exercise of pain and constraint, all alternative possibilities being literally ‘unthinkable’. We saw this mentality in action when the stud owner insisted that though something ugly was about to happen, it was both necessary and unavoidable if the stud’s objectives were to be met. However, this ‘taken for granted’ assumption about the inevitability of punishment is not only the product of a particular mentality. That mentality is, itself, embedded in practices which become habitual. These, in turn, ‘contain’ the technology, the organisation and the mentality of governance which is being deployed. To suggest this, is not to claim that practices are ‘determined’; nor is it to deny that those who deploy them may reflect upon what they have done in order to improve their procedures and transmit their techniques more effectively. Rather, as Foucault suggests, thought is less a ‘cause’ of action than part of a process in which practice and reflection work together. Through ‘imagination’ or ‘problematisation’ (Foucault, 1988) thought produces images of practice which, in turn, reflect back on that practice. While no practice is thoughtless, neither thought nor practice are reducible to one another. The relationship between mentalities, practices, institutions and technologies is enabling rather than determining.
