“…all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power.” (Foucault 1995:171) “Surveillance thus becomes a decisive economic operator both as an internal part of the production machinery and as a specific mechanism in the disciplinary power.” (Michel Foucault. 1995. The means of correct training. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan, trans. Pp. 175. New York Vintage.)
"...scientists viewed the earth or nature as female, a territory to be explored, exploited, and controlled." (Anne Fausto-Sterling. 1995. Gender, Race, and Nation: The Comparative Anatomy of "Hottentot" Women in Europe, 1815-1817. In Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla, eds. Pp. 22. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.)
In Foucault's discussion of the 'technologies of power', he describes the examination as "combining the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement" (Foucault 1995:186). Through examination the body may be quantified, classified and ultimately normalized. The Visible Human Project from the National Library of Medicine attempts through minute dissection of the human body be able to establish the 'truth' of the body. In this way the every aspect of the body comes under surveillance and can be qualified. The "normalizing judgement" (or "disciplinary gaze") dissects, examines, explores and ultimately controls the the body under surveillance. In the D&G ad, the female body is the territory (or terrain) to be brought under the 'disciplinary gaze'. The 'docile' female body lies prostrate as her body is explored, dissected, analyzed and 'normalized'. This ad (re)produces the relations of power (or 'technologies' of discipline) that act upon (and through) the female body. On one level, this ad symbolizes (or is the literal manifestation) of the 'normalizing' and disciplining gaze (that in the "enterprising individual" must be internalized. We act on our own bodies.--See Woman Eating Steak; Woman Eating Salad for more on this).
