The Black Iron DUNGEON vs the Black Iron PRISON

[Cain]

Lets get a little metaphysical and overextend our metaphors, shall we?

I was reading Foucault again (a bad habit), this time on the subject of prisons and power relations, and it got me thinking.  For Foucault, a power relation only exists where there is intentionality, therefore in a social sphere.  Prison therefore, is an example of power at work, because the presence of guards, a "reform" system (that doesn't work), a criminal lawyer profession, a prison reform political lobby, a tough on crime lobby, a whole host of politicians, "scare" crime TV etc form a vast chain of interlinking strategies which form a social arrangement we call a prison, where the influence and domination of one group of people is forced upon another.

By contrast, consider a dungeon. A man chained up and left in a cell, forgotten by the world, unwatched, physically constricted and forgotten, but otherwise unmolested, is not caught up in a social power arrangement.  He is physically constricted, to be sure, but otherwise left alone.

Would it not be sensible to consider the Black Iron Dungeon a metaphor for our own physical limitations, our inability to hear beyond certain ranges, our cognitive defects, our lack of strength or whatever as this dungeon?  They are (as of now, at least) conditions we cannot help, they are built-in defects that we cannot overcome.

On the other hand, the Black Iron Prison, like its real life namesake, is that of a social arrangement.  There are factors at work, levels of power, of control, strategies that form the particulars of this prison. 

You see what I mean?  There is an element of power and social relations in the latter not present in the former, which call for different methods of analysis and consideration, concerning their effects and means to change this.  To change the dungeon may involve the utilization of technology, of genetic engineering or smart drugs or whatever, whereas to change the prison, it would involve strategy, social hacks, the utilization of emergence and application of control of options to affect outcomes.

[LMNO]

I take you point, Cain.

So, are we saying we're in a prison inside a dungeon, or vice-versa?

[Cain]

Uh, its a particle and wave thing.  You know, quantum.

Anyway, that aside, it would be more like both.  One on level of analysis, that of biological/chemical/physical, its clearly a dungeon.  However, as soon as you turn from that to social questions, of notions such as "peer pressure" or "identity" or "law" or the like, its a prison.  And that effects how you rearrange your cell.

The BIP is

full of different forces, individual and corporate, struggling with one another. Sometimes there is cooperation towards shared goals. At other times there is open combat. The more powerful force may utterly destroy the weaker, or force it into subjugation, or it may itself be forced to compromise and reach a settlement with the weaker force in order to pursue other objectives, or out of exhaustion. Any settlement is inherently unstable: the forces will change, the same old forces will try again to gain the upper hand, but after such disturbances, new accommodations will be found. The net effect of all this gross struggle is the production of an ensemble of power relations whose strategies are those of enforcing the social settlement.

Therefore, the strategies used to rearrange it are different, but the barrier of entry is singificantly lowered when compared to the BID, because of the inherent nature of those qualities, making it harder to effect any change, but on the other hand increasing its permamency (for example, if you lost your eyes, or were bioengineered to see infrared vision) or putting greater reliance on technological methods (such as infrared goggles, or cameras with human/computer interfaces for vision).

[LMNO]

I like the extension of the metaphor.  It might take a bit for me to make "dungeon" value-neutral, but if I could do it for BIP, I can probably do it for BID.

[Cain]

Teasing out the biological/social distinction may take some work.

I'll drop some quotes here, from the book that caused the spark of inspiration.

Foucault in fact stipulates that slavery is only not a power relation when slaves are "in chains" (EW3 342), since slaves who can walk around are in fact still caught up in a network of power relations, because they are not machines—there is still a possibility for resistance, which is to say a reversibility of the power relation; they are still subjects of power, not merely objects of control like farm machinery. Foucault is wrong about this specific example, though: enchainment is insufficient to remove power relations because it is insufficient to make it so that there are not several possibilities of action open to the enchained slave. A slave is by definition one who is required to perform certain tasks for a master, and the slave always has the physical possibility of refusing his or her master's orders. It is not the enchained slave who is not caught up in power, but the man chained up in a dungeon (as opposed to a modern penitentiary where one's every move is watched), forgotten, physically restricted but otherwise unmolested.

if someone wants me to do things, and I want other people to do things, these various potential
power relations will play against each other, tending towards some kind of integration, either through the elimination of certain power relations, or compromises in which they attain compatibility. This compatibility is itself strategic: an overall strategy emerges for the purpose of integrating various power relations. The people who are fed up with crime exercise their power on their rulers to do something about it, the rulers exercise power directly by hiring underlings and having them build and staff prisons, by passing laws that direct police and the judiciary, these people follow their orders and exercise power on criminals. The net effect of this is nothing less than the regular and continuing production of a class of delinquents. This might seem bizarre in that it exceeds, and indeed apparently contradicts, the motives of the agents involved, but in fact it is simply the way in which all the power relations have been integrated productively. This can be seen in the way that the production of delinquency in fact serves a number of purposes, such as the purpose of capital in dividing the working class and demonising a certain element as the cause of problems, which in fact ensures the very stable situation which produces this very criminal layer. This network, (relatively) stable though it is, contains any number of power relations in which the intent behind the power relation is not realised: prisoners often do not respond as warders try to get them to, for example. And this is a regular part of prison functioning, providing the occasion for the regular occurrences of brutality and disorder which perform roles in the formation of the kind of individuals who are produced by prisons, in the confirmation of the beliefs of wardens, the public, in innumerable ways, despite that no-one wants this. The system is only, as I say, relatively stable, however, which means that often enough effects are produced which do not abide by the settlement that the system represents. But even within the stability of the system, apparent disorder occurs which is in fact a regular part and effect of the strategies of power, which appears to be resistance, and which is resistance from the perspective of local power relations, but is not from the perspective of the grand strategies of power.

The network of power relations and its strategies are emergent, regularly produced by the agents involved—although the now-familiar concept of emergence was not in Foucault's philosophical vocabulary. Emergent strategies of power loom large in Foucault's case studies of power, Discipline and Punish and The Will to Knowledge. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault claims that what he calls the "carceral system" functions regularly to produce a relatively stable effect, namely the existence of "delinquency"—in short, prisons function to demarcate and perpetuate a criminal class, who themselves play a certain social role. This is of course certainly not the intention of anyone who is involved in the carceral system, not the intention of government, of the guards, of the wardens, of the prisoners, but it is nonetheless the net effect. One of the most interesting and paradoxical parts of Foucault's thesis in Discipline and Punish is that one essential piece of this system is in fact the prison reform movement which condemns the prisons precisely for producing delinquency, since it buttresses the institution of the prison by calling for its improvement, whereas, as Foucault reveals, the prison is itself is as an institutional form inextricably bound-up with delinquency (DP 264–70). The intentions of those whose stated purpose is to eradicate delinquency are part of the logic of power which produces it, as are those of the policemen trying to eradicate crime. This is the aforementioned "tactical polyvalence," which is the condition of the coherent strategy with its contradictory elements, elements which speak against one another while strategically cohering, like prison reformers and prison guards.

There is no knowledge without an apparatus of knowledge-production in which relations of power are invested, but there is also no apparatus invested by power relations which does not itself produce knowledge, discourse by which it understands and explains its own operation, which it uses to further its operation. In the modern prison, knowledges such as criminology and psychology form a condition of the prison's existence, and have the prison as a condition of their existence. Such discourses on the one hand are a necessary part of the prison's functioning, organising data necessary for the control of the prisoners (DP 126), and on the other perform specifically discursive functions, explaining the prison's function in terms of correcting criminal behaviour, thus justifying the prison to society at large, allowing the prison system to understand itself and even acting as a controlling discourse by which criminals come to understand their own behaviour, which then modifies said behaviour in regular ways (cf. DP 102–3).

[Honey]

I like the extension of the metaphor.  It might take a bit for me to make "dungeon" value-neutral, but if I could do it for BIP, I can probably do it for BID.

I, too, much like the extension of the metaphor!

People disagree on the concept (or definition) of 'values' but their disagreement usually lies on the object of the 'value' not on the idea of some (self-defined) concept of the object having value.

Ok I know that begs more explanation because I can barely understand it myself.    Back to the old drawing board, as they say, & here goes.

People agree that there IS such a thing as 'values' however disagree on the object on which to paste this thing they call 'values'.  Throughout history the objects change, are transient, however the 'values' or the idea that this concept exists, doesn't fade away as the objects sometimes do.

A metaphysics based on 'values' becomes, essentially, a contradiction in terms or a logical absurdity even.  Like attempting to define randomness mathematically, the more you try, the less random it becomes.

& I really like this quote:

& Cain quoted Foucalt:
It is not the enchained slave who is not caught up in power, but the man chained up in a dungeon (as opposed to a modern penitentiary where one's every move is watched), forgotten, physically restricted but otherwise unmolested.

I really do like the extension of this metaphor!

I think of it in terms of what I have observed in many academic circles (yes circles!) where you have to say things the way THEY say things & only then will they listen.  Nobody inside that circle will listen because you have been identified as someone OUTSIDE the circle, not necessarily because what you are saying may or may not have merit or make sense in some way.  Getting lost in the fog of words where something most definitely is lost & forgetting that these (self-perpetuating) circles exist as a (nearly physical) body of beliefs.  & not as a starting point for exploration.

& sometimes in order for you to get inside that circle, you have to give up trying to say what it is you first came to say.

A dudgeon indeed!

[Manta Obscura]

This metaphor extension is really thought-provoking, Cain.

Your mention of the dungeon made me instantly think of solitary confinement in modern prison systems, which I am guessing is the closest analogy that prison systems have to dungeons. Maybe there would be some value in expanding the BIP metaphor by adding the solitary confinement analogy as well, to show that within the same whole mental system (the prison as a whole unit, or our minds specifically), we run into the social prison systems which are our cells (that can be rearranged), while also encountering the solitary confinement of physical or mental limitations when we push the cell to its limits.

So the Prisoner rearranges their cell and attempts jailbreaks/cellbreaks, but can't leave the prison entirely. Periodically the Prisoner is "thrown into" solitary, as a reminder of the limitations that cannot be breached, despite the Prisoner's ability to alter their cell.

Am I on track, or way off base?

[Template]

I'm still learning BIP.  Not thought on it in a while.

In my mind, I'd embedded the BIP in a desert.  The sandy kind, with nothing but hot and dry in practically every direction a dying man can walk.  The prison campus could, in this case, be the union of all possible (human) reality tunnels.  Everything that one can sense, believe, or imagine.  One's personal cell, assuming it remains unmolested most of the time, could be a better representation of a physical body.

With the desert metaphor, I got the phrase, "Break down every wall.  Die in the desert."

[Sheered Völva]

I suspect that in the minds of many people born from about the 1960s on, say the word "Dungeons" and they will think "and Dragons."

The historical context of "dungeon" implies someone, a single person, in charge of the dungeon.  Historically, prisons were very rare--it cost too much money to house and feed someone.  Usually the convicted were either fined, humiliated in public display--the rack, whippings, etc.--or, in serious offenses, maimed or even executed.  Dungeons were reserved for political/heretical prisoners, generally the elite of prisoners.

As for most of us, dungeon still implies the existance of a "Dungeon Master."  This person, like the historical dungeon master, has complete control.

Prison, on the other hand, includes the idea of escapes (which virtually never happened with dungeons), riots, social interaction, etc.  Prison also has the idea of parole, release, etc., done according to a set of procedures.  When I think dungeon, I think "you're there until the overseer/ruler is killed, changes his mind, or you die."

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Dungeons are harder to break out of, no? Prisons rely upon people to keep people from escaping. The dungeon itself is supposed to be enough to keep the person from escaping.

On the note of a dungeon master, I'd try and extend the metaphor as a bridge. Bear with me, because this will end up coming out kind of awkward.

You are the dungeon master and the prisoner, and the prisoner part of you is in the black iron dungeon, while the dungeon master part of you is a prisoner in the BIP. The dungeon has certain physical limitations -- your experiences in the BID (like your physical limitations) make it difficult to escape (if your chain is too short, you can't make a shank, and if you aren't fed, you probably can't move around much anyway) but the dungeon master part of you, being in the relative freedom of the BIP, is held down by entirely different chains. His time is structured socially. He has to do this or that at whatever time, lunch at noon, laundry duty on tuesday, and he can't stay at the gym grounds after four. But yet, he's the one who determines the level of relative freedom of the prisoner of the BID. His social chains may prevent him from changing his physical chains.

[Sheered Völva]

You are the dungeon master and the prisoner (Partial Quote)

That's a great concept.  For more on this, see the 17-part British series The Prisoner.  (The star and creator, Patrick McGoohan who played Number Six, just passed away.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner

[Cain]

Yes, well congratulations on totally ignoring my explanation and making up your own fucking definitions, you pair of dipshits.

If you're going to riff on my terminlogy and not even bother to try and engage with the ideas I associated with them, start your own threads, and stop filling mine with bullshit.

[Sheered Völva]

Yes, well congratulations on totally ignoring my explanation and making up your own fucking definitions, you pair of dipshits.

If you're going to riff on my terminlogy and not even bother to try and engage with the ideas I associated with them, start your own threads, and stop filling mine with bullshit.

Does that mean we aren't supposed to comment on people's posts other than the first post? If I broke a rule here, I apologize.

[Sheered Völva]

And my reply in #8 was specifically about your original post, Cain.  I was fascinated by what you posted, and responded.

Can I get off time out now?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I like this idea Cain, so if I read you correctly you're saying:

BiD = Physical/Reality limitations
BiP = Social Robot programming limitations

Thus one could break free of the programming... they could escape the BiP, but not the BiD.

Did I grok that or miss something?