The monastic origins of discipline: From the rule to the norm?

Abstract

Michel Foucault’s first research on discipline—one of his main concepts for defining the modern account of power—suggests that the Benedictine Rule played a central role in the formation of discipline. This article investigates this hypothesis, which has remained otherwise unexplored, by examining the role that the Benedictine Rule could have played in the formation of Foucault’s concept of discipline and pays particular attention to the disciplinary norm. Could the mechanisms of regulation and standardization of conduct that characterize the monastic rule be conceived as a point of formation of the disciplinary norm? Through such line of analysis, the article aims to provide a new insight into the role of Christianity in Foucault’s reflection on power.