Social Ethics Society Journal of Applied Philosophy

Special Issue, July 2020, pp. 126-151

The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic

Noe M. Santillan, M.Ed.
University of the Philippines – Cebu
nmsantillan@up.edu.ph

Abstract

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, issues and crises arise from the
quarantine and/or lockdown policy prompting the United
Nations to note the Philippines’ “highly militarized response”. In
this regard, this paper discusses Michel Foucault’s Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison citing its “the segmented space”,
“the surveillance”, “the syndic”, and “the supplice” (henceforth,
4S), and at the same time, weighs the pros and cons constituted
from the concrete condition of the citizens. Given the foregoing
discourse, this paper sees the relevance of Foucault’s Discipline
and Punish, maintaining that forty-five years after its publication
it can still expound on the logic and context to place
communities under quarantine and/or lockdown. Wherefore,
the COVID-19 pandemic gives credence to Michel Foucault’s
Discipline and Punish vis-a-vis the philosophical, political, and
social discourse that the society is facing.

Keywords: COVID-19, Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish,

the segmented space, the surveillance, the syndic, and the
supplice

© Noe M. Santillan, M.A.

July 2020
ISSN: 2546-1885
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 127

Introduction

“A 38-year-old woman from Wuhan, China, who arrived in

the Philippines on January 21 had reportedly traveled to Cebu
and Dumaguete City, became the first confirmed case of the
novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in the country," Mitchelle
Palaubsanon of The Freeman reported on 31 January 2020.1
“DOH assures health facilities are equipped and prepared to
receive and care for patients under investigation (PUIs) and
confirmed 2019-nCoV cases,” the Secretary of the Department of
Health (DOH) guaranteed the public against the virus. 2
Consequently, a mandatory quarantine of 14 days was
implemented to passengers from China arriving in Cebu. On 12
March 2020, President Rodrigo Duterte announced quarantine
measures cutting off all forms of domestic transportation to and
from Metro Manila including mass gatherings and closure of
schools for a month. But the president, wittingly or not, called
this precaution a "lockdown". “Duterte's lockdown of Manila is ‘a
mockery’, as millions of commuters to be allowed in”, South
China Morning Post (SCMP) headlined a report on the evening of
13 March 2020.3 SCMP quoted Anthony Leachon, former
president of the Philippine College of Physicians, in his comment
to the many exemptions made during the quarantine and/or
lockdown.

The measure would be “half-baked” and “defeat the

purpose of a lockdown…to be successful it needed to be
“all or nothing”. Truly, it’s a mockery of community
quarantine concept… I think President Rodrigo Duterte
has the intention for a total lockdown but his cabinet

1 Mitchelle Palaubsanon, “Virus reaches Ph”, News in The Freeman, 2020

January 31, 1-2.
2 Ibid.
3 Raissa Robles, “Coronavirus: Duterte’s lockdown of Manila is ‘a mockery’, as

millions of commuters to be allowed in”, South China Morning Post, 2020 March 13.
Available at https://www.scmp.com/week-
asia/politics/article/3075163/coronavirus-dutertes-lockdown-manila-mockery-
millions-commuters
128 Noe M. Santillan

secretaries are not ready [and they] yielded to the

complaints of the public.4

The precaution met complaints as it was not clear yet on

its measures and policies. The public pressured the Inter-Agency
Task Force (IATF) to release specific guidelines. Failing to
present a cohesive plan, clear policies, competent leadership,
and concretion of provisions are among the many things the
public demanded from both the national and local governments.
In a press conference with Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez and
Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, SCMP noted that “it appeared
that not all restrictions were set in stone”, especially on
foreigners entering the country.5 The two secretaries clarified
the precautions as “community quarantine” and not a
“lockdown” as said by the president. 6 "Coronavirus lockdown
strikes fear among Manila's poor; unprecedented move
threatens livelihoods and health of millions of Metro Manila
residents living below the poverty line", Aljazeera headlined on
14 March 2020.7 Aljazeera quoted Dr. Joshua San Pedro, co-
convener of the Coalition for People’s Right to Health.

But authorities have not revealed provisions for

financial assistance and healthcare subsidies, leaving
impoverished neighborhoods like San Roque (in Quezon
City), home to around 6,000 families, in a state of
‘confusion and panic’; it seemed mostly like a military
and police solution rather than a health intervention.
Patients must be monitored, not by oppressive
measures but by encouraging their participation in their
right to health.8

4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Nick Aspinwall, “Coronavirus lockdown strike fear among Manila’s poor”,

Aljazeera News Philippines, 2020 March 14. Available at

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus-lockdown-strikes-fear-
manila-poor-200313133102404.html
8 Ibid.
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 129

Aljazeera reported that on 13 March 2020 "water had

been cut in parts of the community" and noted that “there is a
severe shortage of COVID-19 tests in the Philippines and the
country’s health workers are overburdened... health
department’s budget was cut by 10 billion Philippine pesos
($195.8m).”9 Moreover, overburdened health workers are also
underpaid. In Cebu City, some health workers bike tiredly from
hospital to home with a distance of eight kilometers. At this
point, confusion was clearer than a comprehensive and concrete
plan yet trolling, branding (red-tagging), and shaming silence
queries and criticisms. Hence, social media discourses arise. On
the morning of 20 March 2020, the President addressed the
public.

We are in a critical time... enhanced quarantine for Luzon

because the magnitude of the threat that we are facing
calls for it… severely restricts the freedom of movement
of our countrymen and thus deprives many people of
their ability of earning living for the coming weeks… I
don’t think it is just a quarantine. I think that we are
already in the stage of a lockdown simply because the
contagion continues to take its toll in the countryside…
Better still, just keep your distance from stranger or
friends. Just so na maputol ‘yung contamination from A to
B, B to C. Kay D putulin natin doon. ‘Yun ang maganda (It
is better to cease the contagion…)… So it’s actually the
socially intercourse that is bad at this time. I hope you can
understand us at maintindihan rin ninyo kung ano ang
ginagawa namin (and understand what we are doing). 10

9 Ibid.
10 Genalyn Kabiling, “Duterte admits Luzon already in ‘lockdown’, stresses ‘it
will effectively kill COVID-19’, Manila Bulletin, 2020 March 20. Available at
https://news.mb.com.ph/2020/03/20/duterte-admits-luzon-already-in-lockdown-
stresses-it-will-effectively-kill-covid-19/
130 Noe M. Santillan

However, the President’s appeal did not stop the public

from panicking and clamoring yet some personalities tried to
refute the public's outcry. “To those who are complaining about
the quarantine period and curfews, just remember that your
grandparents were called to war; you are being called to sit on
the couch and watch Netflix…,” media personality James Deakin
posted online.i Upon seeing the workers stuck on the streets,
Instagram influencer Cat Arambulo Antonio added, “God, why
don't you motherf*ckers just stay at home? Stay at home! Don't
you guys get it? Tigas ng ulo (So hardheaded). This is exactly
why they need the military because you f*ckers won't stay at
home. Guys, come on.”ii Such insensitive and anti-poor
comments are devoid of Charles Wright Mill’s Sociological
Imagination and the Church’s Preferential Option for the Poor. A
lot of minimum wage earners in the Philippines, including
university lecturers, cannot receive a salary unless they show up
at the workplace. The country’s miserable public health care
system fuels the paranoia of the poor for survival amidst the
COVID-19 pandemic. It is in this context that when the
mobilization of the military is more visible than the health
workers, the hashtag “solusyong medikal, hindi militar (medical
solution, not militarist)” went trending on social media. Lorielle
Ann Aquino, a medical student, explained it in Rappler's Opinion
on 18 March 2020.

We need information, not force; we need medical and

financial support, not guns… And yet, we are met with
thousands of policemen and soldiers armed with rifles –
many of whom have no PPEs and thermal scanners, are
lenient on the enforcement of social distancing, are
unaware of what their protocol is if ever they encounter
an individual suspected of being infected, and are
unaccompanied by barangay healthcare workers… call
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 131

for adequate economic aid; in any crisis, it is always the

poor that are most severely affected.11

As the public criticizes the government in handling the

problem, the administration’s supporters warn critics not to
politicize the COVID-19 pandemic. But David Runciman, in The
Guardian, wrote on 27 March 2020 that "coronavirus has not
suspended politics – it has revealed the nature of power… the
stripping away of one layer of political life to reveal something
more raw underneath."12 Runciman radicalizes the COVID-19
pandemic: “how will governments exercise the extraordinary
powers we give them? and how will we respond when they
do?”13 The COVID-19 pandemic compels citizens to contemplate
on these socio-political questions. To what extent that the
individuals subordinate their individuality to the “collective”?
“The Philippines’ coronavirus lockdown is becoming a
crackdown; curfew violators, poor and displaced residents,
activists, and alleged ‘fake news’ disseminators are facing arrest
and persecution as they accuse authorities of failing to provide
relief”, Nick Aspinwall wrote in The Diplomat on April 03 2020. 14
The mobility of the masses, i.e., spatial, virtual (social media),
political, economic, is vital between the boundary of living and
dying which in the time of health crisis turns as socio-politico-
economic problems the sovereign has to secure. This paper,
henceforth, uses Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The
Birth of the Prison in dealing with crises citing “the segmented

11 Lorielle Ann Aquino, “Solusyong medikal, hindi aksyong militar”, Rappler,

2020 March 18. Available at https://www.rappler.com/move-ph/ispeak/255014-

opinion-medical-solutions-not-military-actions-coronavirus
12 David Runciman, “Coronavirus has not suspended politics – it has revealed

the nature of power”, Opinion in The Guardian, 2020 March 27. Available at
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/27/coronavirus-politics-
lockdown-hobbes
13 Ibid.
14 Nick Aspinwall, “The Philippines’ Coronavirus Lockdown Is Becoming a

Crackdown”, Features in The Diplomat, 03 April 2020. Available at

https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/the-philippines-coronavirus-lockdown-is-
becoming-a-crackdown/
132 Noe M. Santillan

space”, “the surveillance”, “the syndic”, and “the supplice” vis-à-

vis the COVID-19 pandemic in Philippine context.

Why Foucault and his Discipline and Punish?

Discipline and Punish explains the penal system and the

social context of punitive procedure and measure; hence, the
subtitle The Birth of the Prison. “At once a work of history and
sociology, philosophy and penology, legal analysis and cultural
criticism”, David Garlandiii describes it.15 Felix Driver, of the
University of Cambridge, says that it “is about a fundamentally
historical transformation in the exercise of power and,… the use
of space”.16 The French friends of Foucault at the Nouveaux
Philosophesiv (New Philosophers) trumpeted Discipline and
Punish as a “winning blow against both bourgeois and Marxist
conceptions of power and discourse”.17 Nonetheless, Discipline
and Punish surveys historical, philosophical, and judicial
procedure handling power relations and its exercise vis-à-vis
people put under penalty and/or, what we call today amid the
COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine where contentions arising from
the “lockdown” reminisce Foucault’s knowledge of individuals
vis-à-vis the juridical subject and the obedient object. Foucault
furnishes knowledge of individuals for the government to
supervise (Foucault uses the term control) and transform
behavior.18 Though Foucault features this idea concerning the
incarcerated criminals, in this paper, it is appropriated in
general to the citizenry placed under community quarantine, i.e.,
the juridical subject as a possessor of rights19 observing
“physical and/or social distancing” yet cognizant of “social

15 David Garland, “Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: An Exposition and

Critique”, Am. B. Found. Res. J. (1986): 847.

16 Felix Driver, “Power, space, and the body: a critical assessment of Foucault’s

Discipline and Punish”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1985, volume
3, pages 425-446.
17 Ibid., 426
18 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. by Alan

Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 125.

19 Ibid., 13.
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 133

solidarity” whom Foucault worded as “caught up in the

fundamental interests of the social pact” 20 unlike the obedient
subject, i.e. “the individual subjected to habits, rules, orders, an
authority that is exercised continually around him and upon
him, and which he must allow to function automatically in
him”.21
In the third part of the book, Foucault, in his concept of
Panopticism, lays the foundation of measures needed in
observing, judging, and correcting illegalities and/or
delinquency allowing control of community from austerity to
normalization. It draws up rules which serve (somehow)
inspiration (directly or indirectly) to the contemporary state
security forces (and of course, to penology) and to the
individuals who recognize the logic of quarantine and/or
lockdown to solace the boredom and/or the paranoia amid the
pandemic. His Discipline and Punish provides paragons of
descriptions and measures — an exemplar of Foucault’s
governmentality and biopolitics useful in comparing with
policies on pandemic between the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. The former combines the terms government and
rationality rendering the art of governing a large population at a
distance yet closely monitoring, controlling, and governing. The
latter, though coined by Rudolf Kjellén, poststructuralists
positing socio-political power over life use the meaning and
method Foucault features forty-five years ago but relevant to
today’s COVID-19 pandemic, especially in placing communities
under quarantine and/or lockdown

The Segmented Space22

In Part Three, i.e. Discipline, Foucault discusses the

Panopticism in which he describes the spatial regnum reduced
into George Orwell’s 1984 where the term and/or concept of
“Big Brother” describes the phenomenon Foucault calls

20 Ibid., 128.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 195.
134 Noe M. Santillan

Panopticism under a restrictive rule closely monitoring citizens.

Foucault defines the segmented space.

It is a segmented, immobile, frozen space. Each

individual is fixed in his place. And, if he moves, he
does so at the risk of his life, contagion or
punishment…23 This enclosed, segmented space,
observed at every point, in which the individuals are
inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest
movements are supervised, in which all events are
recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing
links the center and periphery, in which power is
exercised without division, according to a
continuous hierarchical figure, in which each
individual is constantly located, examined and
distributed among the living beings, the sick and the
dead - all this constitutes a compact model of the
disciplinary mechanism…24

Foucault describes the segmented space in what he calls

as “spatial partitioning” which includes the following:

The Closing of the Town and Its Outlying Districts

“On the appointed day, everyone is ordered to stay

indoors,” Foucault says.25 This word “indoors” is dubitable since
Foucault continues the statement in saying, “it is forbidden to
leave on pain of death.”26 Leaving the house or leaving the town?
Since in the preceding statement he cites "a prohibition to leave
the town on pain of death", one may presuppose that the term
"indoors" implies within the designated segmented space, i.e.,
the town, and not within the house. But he continues in
narrating that a syndic is in charge of locking doors of houses

23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., 197.
25 Ibid., 195.
26 Ibid.
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 135

from the outside and an intendant keeps the key until the
quarantine ends.
In the Philippines' jam-packed communities, staying
inside the house with the family is sweet but sweating. It’s the
hot season in the tropical country when the government
implements quarantine. Even in 4th class municipalities, there
are jam-packed communities. With feverish temperature,
citizens feel heaven under a single shade of a tree but such an
attempt to cool down one's body runs the risk of arrest and
incarceration. While the billionaires of the world are chartering
superyachts and millionaires recreating in their gated
community, the poorest of the poor, whose house bears no
distinction between the living room, dining, and bedroom, are
told to stay indoors.
Though many Filipinos recognize the need to implement
quarantine and/or lockdown, that does not mean they’re not
bothered and/or afraid. Just a week after the implementation of
community quarantine, big grocery stores in Cebu, the richest
province outside Metro Manila, started draining food stocks. And
the supplies continue to slow down despite the increasing
demand from the home-quarantined citizens. Even middle-class
citizens are anxious about food shortages which may cause food
riot. Though there is no ban for the delivery of goods, food
stocks are continuously draining after three weeks of General
Community Quarantine (GCQ) which allows public
transportation but with strict physical and/or social distancing
— a week after the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) was
implemented in Metro Manila which bans public transportation.
Nevertheless, food delivery continues to supply the market
though not in the manner before the coronavirus breaks out.
Despite the discomfort, stress, vulnerability, and paranoia
the COVID-19 brought along with the implementation of
community quarantine and/or lockdown, “isolation, quarantine,
social distancing, and community containment” are significant
136 Noe M. Santillan

strategies interrupting the transmission of coronavirus. 27

Isolation separates the infected from the non-infected. Unlike
today’s fourteen-day quarantine, fourteenth-century Italy
implemented it for forty days. Merriam dictionary cites the
Italian word quaranta, i.e., forty, as the historical and
etymological background of the word quarantine. 28 While some
adopt the term social distancing referring to the proximity of
people from each other, others prefer the word physical
distancing. Community containment varies according to the
extent of the infection — from the barangay level, municipal,
city, and/or regional.

A Prohibition to Leave the Town on Pain of Death

Prohibition to leave the house and/or the town has

different dimensions between the classes. From the context of
previous centuries to today’s quarantine and/or lockdown,
there’s a huge difference between a jam-packed house and/or
community and a gated subdivision with walled houses where
people can have recreation inside and/or at their garden.
Washing hands is sometimes a luxury in a jam-packed
community where there is a scarcity of supply. In this regard,
prisoners do have the luxury the quarantined do not have, i.e.,
recreation. Also, there is an increasing intensity of having
domestic violence which is painful – the "killing me softly"
feeling of the victim, and at times of community quarantine
and/or lockdown, difficult to account in public. As such is a
psycho-penal paranoia of the victim — a physio-psycho-
emotionalv torture sprouting from a power play of
(micro)biopolitics. The heightening need to survive one’s
household drowns the care to protect the oppressed in another.
The COVID-19 pandemic is not as meticulous as the angel of

27 Annelies Wilder-Smith, and David O. Freedman, “Isolation, quarantine, social

distancing and community containment: pivotal role for old-style public health
measures in the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak,” Journal of travel medicine
27, no. 2 (2020): taaa020.
28 Ibid.
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 137

death in Exodus. For the poor, the weak and the vulnerable,
prohibition to leave the house and/or the town is a gradual
painful death. For the haves, staying indoor is heaven but for the
have-nots, it’s hell. The prohibition invites the lovers of Sophia
to analyze the material condition amidst the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Sophia lovers may not recognize until such a time
they are in the situation of the have-nots. The prohibition paves
the way for the people to reflect on the burgeoning social
inequality. As to how this happens, why, and how to transform,
are questions for survival the people should continue wrestling
with.
While there's a clash between individual human rights
and public health protocol, law enforcement like checkpoints
helps to contain the coronavirus. Otherwise, the contagious
coronavirus transmits in a jiffy. Cordoning infected households
and/or communities reduces the risk and delays the
contamination of communities. Though the situation still calls
for a potent health protocol, the Prohibition to Leave the Town
prevents the spread of COVID-19. If this weren’t implemented,
there could have been more difficulty in contact tracing the
coronavirus.

The Killing of All Stray Animals

Punishment is, Foucault says, “the most hidden part of

the penal process.” 29 Like Foucault, President Duterte deems it
inevitable. The president reminds the citizens to stay home
following quarantine and curfew policy; otherwise, those who
defy will be shot.vi Telling so, as in the words of Foucault, the
president must have believed that punishment discourages the
citizens from doing “crime” resulting in public opinion that the
State is no longer accountable for the punishment and/or death
of the one who does “crime”. Defying the State makes one an
“enemy of the State”. Hence, the killing of the “enemies of the
State” by the State is justified. In this regard, Foucault must have

29 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 9.

138 Noe M. Santillan

been naïve in a context where the powerful stands against the

powerless, the haves against the have-nots, the State against the
individual. Punishment is both a “spectacle” and a message
sowing fear to the subjects that they have to subordinate
themselves to the authority; otherwise, they’ll be punished. The
State, however, feels being ill-treated by protesting citizens, e.g.,
Sitio San Roque in Quezon City, who amplify their material
condition amidst quarantine and/or lockdown. vii Cracking down
of critiques protects the State from exposing the ills of society. A
citizen silenced through fear, viii disciplined or docile? Whoever
has criticisms and/or dissenting ideas is seen going astray
prompting the administration’s apologists to subordinate the
rationality to the ruler’s authority. Foucault captures it in his
words, “neutralize the effects of counter-power that spring from
them and which form a resistance to the power that wishes to
dominate it.”30
In the Philippines, people may go astray because of
“infodemic”. The government is not only curbing the coronavirus
but also misinformation and/or fake news. Section 6 (f) of the
Bayanihan to Heal as One Act (Republic Act No. 11469)
particularizes a provision on those “going astray” infected with
the “infodemic”.

Individuals or groups creating, perpetuating, or spreading

false information regarding the COVID-19 crisis on social
media and other platforms, such information having no
valid or beneficial effect on the population, and are clearly
geared to promote chaos, panic, anarchy, fear, or
confusion; and those participating in cyber incidents that
make use or take advantage of the current crisis situation
to prey on the public through scams, phishing, fraudulent
emails, or other similar acts.31

30Ibid., 219.
31 Congress of the Philippines, “Bayanihan to Heal As One Act,” The Official
Gazette of the Philippines. Available at https://www.senate.gov.ph/Bayanihan-to-
Heal-as-One-Act-RA-11469.pdf
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 139

Critics, however, argued that this Act may become an

instrument to weaponize the law against dissent. Consequently,
people become anxious and cautious. “The panopticon is a
marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it
to, produces homogenous effects of power”, Foucault thinks.32
Punishment extorts truth33 as lies may seemingly become true if
they remain unchallenged. Governmentality and biopolitics say
that there should be an efficient way of obtaining information
especially those that can inflict harm to the health of the
government.34 Nevertheless, cooperation is needed in as much
as criticism necessitates newer and better ideas; hence,
“bayanihan (civic unity) to heal as one.”

The Division of the Town Into Distinct Quarters

“At each of the town gates there will be an observation

post; at the end of each street sentinels,” Foucault wrote on
Discipline in parallel with Panopticism.35 The mechanism of
containment compels quarantine and/or lockdown partitioning
towns favorable to self-sustaining communities. For the
minimum wage-earners, provisions do not suffice. Many of the
minimum wage-earners are contractual employees and are
compelled by the inhumane labor condition to show up at the
workplace; otherwise, they do not earn a living. In a metropolis
like Manila and Cebu, millions of workers are living in the
adjacent cities or that which we call in the west as suburban.
With ECQ, there is no public transportation, and employees are
left to the employers’ mercy if they’ll be provided free lodging to
continue working. With lesser clients and/or customers many
business establishments are forced to lay off employees and go
home to the suburban. Without their lands to till, they're

32 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 202.
33 Ibid., 42.
34 Michael V. DelNero, “Invasion, Surveillance, Biopolitics, and
Governmentality: Representations from Tactical Media to Screen," PhD diss., Bowling
Green State University, 2016, 3, 37-44.
35 Ibid., 196.
140 Noe M. Santillan

helpless and pray the pandemic ends before supplies last. Since
experts project draining of finance 36 and food37, in a longer
containment, only fishing villages and farming communities may
survive. And in the case of a viral breakout, district and/or
provincial hospitals may not be able to accommodate and
contain the virus. Home inspections, if there is, and road
checkpoints may render futile without sufficient health workers
and health equipment and health funds. The prompt obedience
of the citizens should be paired with the health sector's prompt
response. The “segmented space” becomes scary without
comprehensive security involving health and economic measure.
The State devises the division for health measure but there is
more than that. If not for social media, the division diminishes
the political participation of the people; in a way, it’s detrimental
to democracy. “This enclosed, segmented space, observed at
every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed
place, in which the slightest movements are supervised…”,
Foucault claims that “this constitutes a compact model of the
disciplinary mechanism.”38
The policy of containment putting provinces and/or cities
under the quarantine period operates effectively in stopping the
spread of the infection from the metropolis to the countryside.
Over two months under community quarantine, municipalities
and component cities maintain a safer zone compared to the
highly urbanized cities which have the highest number of
infections. Prohibiting cross border mobility is a security
measure confining the coronavirus. Such segmentation
intercepts, especially if an infected escapes the confinement
centers. Putting communities under quarantine allows the State

36 CNN Philippines Staff, “Duterte eyes selling govt. properties if funds vs.

COVID-19 not enough”, CNN Philippines, 2020 April 09. Available at

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/4/9/duterte-government-properties-
for-sale-.html
37 Ratziel San Juan, “Paralyzing trade over COVID-19 could endanger global

security-UN experts”, Philstar Global, 2020 April 01. Available at

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2020/04/01/2004799/paralyzing-trade-over-
covid-19-could-endanger-global-food-security-un-experts
38 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 197.
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 141

to supervise the population. In so doing, the segmentation

neutralizes the tendency to trigger an outbreak; it is preventive
to the penetration of the pandemic to the populace. Loosening
the procedure of segmenting the confines of the communities
increases the rate of infections. Implementing space
segmentation, the State secures the rest of the country from
suffering the malady the metropolises experience. Foucault sees
“spatial organization as an important part of social, economic,
and political strategies… emphasizes that disciplinary
‘technology’ allocates a special role to spatial organization…
control and division of space (and time) become a vital means
for the discipline and surveillance of individuals.” 39

The Surveillance

According to Alan Sheridan, the translator of Discipline

and Punish: The Birth of the Prison in Vintage version, the
French word surveiller is a closer derivative of discipline though
it does not suffice. Foucault translates Jeremy Bentham’s
‘inspect’ as ‘surveiller’ which carries contradiction and
connotations not corresponding accordingly. ‘Supervise’ is the
closest but associated with many concepts making ‘observe’ as
fitting.40 Though the enemy is the virus, the State conducts
surveillance to the citizens since there is insufficient capacity to
detect the virus but there is enough police and/or military
personnel to oversee the spatial mobility of the citizens. If only
there is enough capacity and measure to monitor the mobility of
the virus, the citizens may move as swift as the virus. In this
regard, the jam-packed communities are severely hit by the
panoptic policing of the people by the State.
“Crimes”, criticisms and the confusion of citizens breed
insecurity to the State trying to cover-up the imminent threat of
a food shortage which may cause food riot as the poor are

39 Felix Driver, “Power, space, and the body: a critical assessment of Foucault’s

Discipline and Punish”, 426.

40 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Translator’s

Note.
142 Noe M. Santillan

anxious about dying in hunger than in contracting with the virus.

The ruling class, in what Louis Althusser calls the Ideological
State Apparatuses, mechanizes its machinery in tracing more the
dissent than the virus. Foucault explains.

… a higher juridical and moral value placed on property

relations, stricter methods of surveillance, a tighter
partitioning of the population, more efficient techniques
of locating and obtaining information: the shift in illegal
practices is correlative with an extension and a
refinement of punitive practices… 41 Hence the idea that
the machinery of justice must be duplicated by an organ
of surveillance that would work side by side with it, and
which would make it possible either to prevent crimes
or, if committed, to arrest their authors; police and
justice must work together as two complementary
actions of the same process - the police assuring 'the
action of society on each individual', justice 'the rights of
individuals against society'.42

State power, in times of pandemic COVID-19, places the

citizens under Big Brother’s watch. The State claims surveillance
curtails the spread of the virus and/or crimes but the citizens
feel it constraints criticisms from constituting contending
power. Fearing the eyes and ears of Big Brother, critical
discourses on the COVID-19 crisis cease.

…an effort to adjust the mechanisms of power that frame

the everyday lives of individuals; an adaptation and a
refinement of the machinery that assumes responsibility
for and places under surveillance their everyday
behaviour, their identity, their activity, their apparently
unimportant gestures; another policy for that

41 Ibid., 77.
42 Ibid., 96.
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 143

multiplicity of bodies and forces that constitutes a

population.43

The State acting ala Big Brother tunes in critics to

“contented citizens”. Criticisms, unlike crimes, are like lights in
the time of perpetual darkness which should lighten up the way
since they are rooted in the citizens’ concrete condition.
Surveillance, in keeping citizens indoor, is not done in gated
communities with walled houses. Not necessary either. As to
how and why, one needs not to surveillance jam-packed
communities but finds a material solution to their material
problem. The State, however, needs to trace where dissent
comes from.
However, Foucault finds logic to the surveillance by the
State as it prevents crimes and allows avenue arresting
criminals.44 Also, it provides certitude for getting the criminals
punished.45 Since the health crisis leads to socio-politico-
economic issues, crimes may concur with the COVID-19
pandemic. Besides, the persons under investigation (PUIs) and
persons under monitoring (PUMs) have to be visible to the eyes
of the State securing the society from the contagion.

The Syndic

In his discussion of the Discipline vis-à-vis Panopticism,

Foucault describes who and/or what the syndic does.

Each street is placed under the authority of a syndic,

who keeps it under surveillance; if he leaves the street,
he will be condemned to death. On the appointed day,
everyone is ordered to stay indoors: it is forbidden to
leave on pain of death. The syndic himself comes to lock
the door of each house from the outside; he takes the
key with him and hands it over to the intendant of the

43 Ibid., 77-78.
44 Ibid., 96.
45 Ibid.
144 Noe M. Santillan

quarter; the intendant keeps it until the end of the

quarantine… Only the intendants, syndics and guards
will move about the streets and also, between the
infected houses, from one corpse to another, the 'crows',
who can be left to die: these are 'people of little
substance who carry the sick, bury the dead, clean and
do many vile and abject offices'… 46 Every day, too, the
syndic goes into the street for which he is responsible;
stops before each house: gets all the inhabitants to
appear at the windows (those who live overlooking the
courtyard will be allocated a window looking onto the
street at which no one but they may show themselves);
he calls each of them by name; informs himself as to the
state of each and every one of them - 'in which respect
the inhabitants will be compelled to speak the truth
under pain of death'; if someone does not appear at the
window, the syndic must ask why: 'In this way, he will
find out easily enough whether dead or sick are being
concealed.'47

In conducting a constant inspection, what Foucault

describes is not far from what is happening in the Philippines in
the time of COVID-19, i.e. policing unpaired with qualified
and/or competent health workers. As to how the intendant
monitors the syndic in fulfilling the task of the latter, it bears
resemblance with today's pressures felt by officials of Local
Government Units (LGUs) from the directives of the national
government which provided special funds to the LGU on the
third week of the quarantine and/or lockdown. The syndic
reports to the intendant and the latter to the magistrate who
appoints a physician in charge. Physicians, not military men;
health measure, not militarist. Foucault notes what the
government today is doing, i.e., constant centralization of the
registration of population and pathology. 48

46 Ibid., 195.
47 Ibid., 196.
48 Ibid.
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 145

Foucault uses the term “purification” in referring to

today's “disinfection” which he suggests five or six days after the
start of the quarantine but up to the writing of this paper, i.e., the
third week of quarantine, few streets, and other public places
are disinfected, or as Foucault says, purified. But Foucault says,
not only the streets and public places but also “purifying the
houses one by one”.49 Doing so may drain the DOH logistics or
the government’s coffers. Otherwise, it was done. Or, when will
it be done?
The syndic, the disciplinarian, becomes the power player
who, as Foucault finds, has a “political dream of the plague”
where only a few can feast lessening the power player. 50 The
syndic, as it monitors the plague, becomes the plague. “The
plague as a form, at once real and imaginary, of disorder had as
its medical and political correlative discipline”, Foucault
flaunts.51
In taking measures against the pandemic, it is
understandable the government mobilizes that which is capable
of doing what Foucault asks in Panopticism, i.e., "a strict spatial
partitioning.”52 The presence of the military and/or the police,
Foucault says, is “to ensure the prompt obedience of the
people…”53 Foucault describes this power, over the lives of
people amid a pandemic, “omnipresent and omniscient... behind
the disciplinary mechanisms” for the separation of the infected
and the segmentation of the entire population. 54

The Supplice

Foucault and Alan Sheridan, the translator, describe

‘supplice’. The former in his discourse of The Spectacle of the
Scaffold in Torture and the latter in his note to the Vintage

49 Ibid., 197.
50 Ibid., 198.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., 195.
53 Ibid., 196.
54 Ibid., 197-198.
146 Noe M. Santillan

version of Discipline and Punish. The first part of the following

description is Sheridan’s.

Here 'supplice' refers specifically to the public torture

and execution of criminals that provided one of the most
popular spectacles of eighteenth-century France. By
extension, the word can also refer to any prolonged
torture, mental as well as physical. Depending on the
context, I have translated the word by ‘torture’, ‘public
execution’ or ‘scaffold’. The author also refers to another
form of torture, ‘Ia question’, the extraction of
confessions by interrogation, and the systematic
application of pain. Here I have followed the accepted
translation, ‘judicial torture’.55

What is a supplice? ‘Corporal punishment, painful to a

more or less horrible degree,’ said Jaucourt in his
Encyclopedie article and added: ‘It is an inexplicable
phenomenon that the extension of man's imagination
creates out of the barbarous and the cruel.’ Inexplicable,
perhaps, but certainly neither irregular nor primitive.
Torture is a technique; it is not an extreme expression of
lawless rage.56

Foucault cites the mounting crime needing penalty that

intimidates the citizens as if the Greek goddess Nemesis haunts
them in their lifetime,57 and he offers three principal criteria for
the punishment considered torture: (1) “must produce a certain
degree of pain”, (2) the “production of pain is regulated”, and (3)
“forms part of a ritual”.
The first criterion posits that pain is measurable,
calculable, comparable, and hierarchical. 58 It considers death
torture except for suicide. Death is, Foucault says, “the

55 Ibid. Translator’s Note.

56 Ibid., 33.
57 Ibid., 77.
58 Ibid., 33.
 The 4S of Foucault Amid the Pandemic 147

culmination of a calculated gradation of pain.” 59 Inflicting pain

through torture can be infinite so long as the victim lives. In this
regard, death is the pinnacle of pain. Foucault calculably
encapsulates the definition of torture as the “quantitative art of
pain.”60
With the second criterion, Foucault maintains that torture
corresponds to the “quality, intensity, and duration of pain” vis-
à-vis the “gravity of the crime” and the social status of the
criminal and its victim.61 While there is torture in Foucault's
description and the contemporary period, the difference is that
torture in the former is governed by rules which Foucault calls
the “legal code of pain” implying that torture is “calculated
according to detailed rules” whereas there’s none in the latter
that is known to the public but it's an open secret that torture
still exists. In the description of Foucault, it was the court who
decides as to how torture is carried out but in recent times it's
the law enforcer, the security forces, the junior officer, the
gentleman from the academy, the repressive Ideological State
Apparatus, as Louis Althusser posits.
The third criterion maintains rituals and ceremonies as
instruments of holding back society from disintegration
reminiscent of the Roman empire crucifying the “enemies of the
State”. Foucault calls this as an “element in the liturgy of
punishment” which must have two marks: a scar on the body of
the tortured, and the “spectacle to brand the victim with infamy”
by the public whom the State wants to remind that it may
happen to anyone of them once they defy the authority. “Torture
does not reconcile, but to ‘purge’ the crime”, Foucault clarifies. 62
It reminds the critics-citizens to “behave”.
Foucault clarifies the intention, i.e., to prosecute offenses. 63
“Torture is a technique; it is not an expression of lawless rage”,
he claims.64 Legislated power expresses in punishment.65

59 Ibid.
60 Ibid., 34.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., 33.
148 Noe M. Santillan

Conclusion

The 4S of Foucault in Discipline and Punish foresee the

so-called “social distancing”, quarantine, and/or lockdown
amidst the COVID-19 pandemic but these should not be devoid of
social solidarity since panic sprouts from State (in)security.
While it seems “tactical” to do “spatial partitioning”, the
“segmented space” may not survive without sufficient health
measure paired with socio-politico-economic relief comparable
to the mounting militarism. Though people experience
displeasure feeling uncomfortable with community quarantine,
such policies relative to the 4S of Foucault generate a positive
effect on the delay, reduction, and containment of the
coronavirus lessening the risk of infecting the outlying districts
of the metropolises like Cebu and Manila. While there is
effectivity of Foucault’s 4S vis-à-vis testing, tracing, isolating, and
treating patients, the crisis constitutes as well the crackdown of
critics, activists, and suspected “communists”. Hence, the
governmentality and biopolitics of Foucault are relevant through
the 4S vis-à-vis the panoptic principle he discusses in the third
part of Part Three in his Discipline and Punish. As part of the
Global South experiencing deficit funds for basic social services,
especially on healthcare, the 4S of Foucault stand relevant to the
Philippines, forty-five years after the original publication of
Discipline and Punish, securing the State and the society from the
malady brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Notes

i See https://www.rappler.com/technology/features/254864-james-deakin-

coronavirus-viral-netflix-post
ii See https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/news/254913-netizens-blast-

cat-arambulo-rant-instagram-vs-stranded-workers-coronavirus
iii When David Garland published his exposition and critique of Discipline and

Punish, he lectured in the Center for Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of

Edinburgh, Scotland.
iv The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French describes the Nouveaux

Philosophes as “an eclectic group of young French philosophers” who in the 1970s
broke up from dominant philosophies like Marxism.
v See https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1253820/dlsu-offers-free-mental-health-

counseling-amid-covid-19-pandemic
vi See https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/04/philippines-
president-duterte-shoot-to-kill-order-pandemic/
vii See https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/4/1/quezon-city-
protesters-arrested-.html
viii See https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/4/5/UE-Dawn-editor-

forced-public-apology-Duterte-admin.html