A Study of Foucault’s “Normalizing Society”—The Case of Taiwan’s Ketamine control policy

• Main Authors: Shih-Lung Chen, 陳世隆
• Other Authors: Mau-Sheng Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/93221501400060671084

碩士 === 臺灣大學 === 法律學研究所 === 98 === This thesis consists in two parts: first, by examining the idea of “normalizing society” from Michel Foucault’s 1975-76 Collège de France lectures as compiled in the “Society must be defended,” we may understand the way in which he conceives of “norm,” and furthermore redefine disciplinary power, bio-power and law. Second, based on the theoretical framework of Foucault’s “normalizing society,” I will briefly analyze recent legislative activities in Taiwan related to the third-class drug Ketamine, as well as the knowledge/power dynamic exhibited in relevant drugs control policy. “Normalizing society” is woven out of “disciplinary power” and “bio-power,” and these two forces exhibit their own different operational logics. “Normalization” in the context of disciplinary power actually refers to “normation.” “Normation” presumes the “norm,” and in accord thereto effects corrective and other techniques of transformation in order to differentiate between normal and abnormal individuals. In relation to “bio-power,” however, “normalization” refers to “regulation” of the population via statistical and other predictive technologies. Here there appears a “normal” demographic curve (e.g. birth rate, death rate). That normal distribution which most closely approximates the normal curve is then the “norm.” Normalization acts to pull all the different curves to the nearest “normal” position, in effect maintaining the “norm” of population phenomena. At the same time, Foucault also believed that the law (loi) in modern society is no longer merely an “interdiction-sanction” imperative that speaks for sovereign power, it is furthermore a channel for communicating disciplinary power and bio-power. Indeed, it is for this very reason that he said the law (loi) increasingly operates as a “norm.” Applying “normalizing society” in an analysis of legislative trends in recent Taiwan, we may observe that the Ministry of Justice’s decision not to raise Ketamine to second-class drug status in fact expresses several core facets of bio-power—“cost,” “average,” and “prediction.”