Foucault, Michel ‘s concept to describe a broad scale movement he detected in European history away from spectacular and grotesque forms of punishment towards more subtle modes of coercion that take the individual body as their target. Commencing in the mid- to late eighteenth century, at the start of the era that Foucault would later characterize as the age of biopower, techniques were developed in a number of quarters---particularly the armed services---to harness more fully the potentiality of the human body. These new training techniques were distinguished by the fact that they no longer looked upon the body as an indissociable whole, but instead treated it as an interconnected series of parts that could be thought of as so many components of a machine. By means of a meticulous training of the body, its productive capacity could be enhanced and at the same time its will to resist reduced, the attraction of this outcome to the holders of power is obvious. What Foucault shows is that this new logic of discipline, which first took shape in the preparation of soldiers, found application in virtually every aspect of modern life. Further Reading: M. Foucault Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (1975), translated as Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977).