Discipline and Punish
by Michel Foucault · Surveiller et punir, Naissance de la prison
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1975
- Form
- History
- Language
- French
- Length
- Medium · 330 pp120 to 300 pages
- Difficulty
- Difficult4 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendDiscipline and Punish, The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan SheridanVintage Books, 1995The standard English translation in the current paperback.
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Foucault opens with the public execution of the regicide Damiens in 1757 and a prison timetable from eighty years later, and asks how punishment changed from spectacle on the body to discipline of the soul. He traces the reformers' proposals, the rise of the timetable, the drill and the examination in schools, hospitals, barracks and factories, and takes Bentham's Panopticon as the model of a power that works by making people visible. The prison, he argues, was born from these disciplines and, though it fails to reform, succeeds in producing delinquency that can be managed.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Discipline and Punish are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
