While one can discern the major points that Foucault is making-namely, that a panoptic structure in education, the military, hospitals, and other groupings of individuals allows them to be disciplined without ceding power to one or a few other individuals-it is difficult to understand the finer points of his argument if one is not an expert in a number of specialized historical and sociological subjects.

Despite these difficulties in understanding the specifics of Foucault's argument, his overall points are relatively easy to understand-that society is moving toward a generalized power structure that may be imposed with very little individual involvement, similar to that of an institutionalized population such as a prison or hospital or boarding school. These overall ideas, of reducing "the number of those who exercise [power] while increasing the number of those on whom it is exercised," and the prediction that this type of discipline and social structure...
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