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Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison…
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Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (original 1975; edition 1995)

by Michel Foucault (Author), Alan Sheridan (Translator)

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6,625421,415 (4.13)48
This was an interesting book, but very dry and over my head at times. There were times I feel like you have to know about French history and French prisons to fully get this book. I think I made mistake reading this book first. I wouldn't recommended it unless you have a strong interest for philosophy, criminology, and/or French history. It's obvious Foucault was channeling Marx, Rousseau, and de Sade in this book (he never talks about de Sade, but it reminded me of de Sade's philosophy). I'm still interested in reading more of Foucault. ( )
  Ghost_Boy | Aug 25, 2022 |
English (30)  Spanish (3)  French (2)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  Portuguese (Brazil) (1)  Italian (1)  Danish (1)  Dutch (1)  Korean (1)  Finnish (1)  All languages (42)
Showing 1-25 of 30 (next | show all)
This is simply one of the greatest books on philosophy I've ever read. It changed how i view civilization. ( )
  MylesKesten | Jan 23, 2024 |
This book will make you want to live out in the woods.

Its language is very cold and measured - except, of course, for the graphic description of a man's quartering in the beginning - but it systematically begins to make you feel enclosed upon from the outside in. Foucault succeeds in sounding objective, letting only detailed facts and descriptions persuade you of his point. But, to be honest, although this subject is right up my alley, I can see a lot of people not being convinced by the text's problem at the very end. And, to be even more honest, the problem is probably not something we can solve in our lifetime anyway. S0, why read this book? Because you like learning about scary depressing things that you can't change. Enjoy! ( )
  stargazerfish0 | Jan 13, 2024 |
While I do understand this is a five-star, important work of social theory, I've designated it, in my readerly cosmology, as four-star.

Why? Well, like other of Michel Foucault's books I've read, the prose here often veers into opaque technical territory that I, as a non-specialist in continental philosophy, find difficult to decipher. I know that Mr. Foucault used a number of terms of art to stand for broad abstractions. That said, I also found myself wondering, while reading this, if part of its obscurity lies in its translation.

Which started me wondering: is it time for a standard edition of Michel Foucault's books that might better serve what was once called "the common reader"? I understand enough about Mr. Foucault's philosophy and biography that the idea of a standard edition of his works would have been something he resisted, even scorned. Nonetheless, his thought is too important--especially today--to leave it inaccessible to general readers. So, perhaps a lexicon to accompany such an edition, as well as a robust scholarly apparatus, might make this and the rest of Mr. Foucault's works more generally readable, and therefore more generally comprehensible.

That would obviously be a good thing in a world in which the excesses of power and violence he both describes and predicts have indeed come to pass. Maybe, not to put either to fine or too broad a point on it, we might be able to learn something about ourselves as a genus and as a society.
  Mark_Feltskog | Dec 23, 2023 |
4.5 stars ( )
  Marlobo | Dec 24, 2022 |
This was an interesting book, but very dry and over my head at times. There were times I feel like you have to know about French history and French prisons to fully get this book. I think I made mistake reading this book first. I wouldn't recommended it unless you have a strong interest for philosophy, criminology, and/or French history. It's obvious Foucault was channeling Marx, Rousseau, and de Sade in this book (he never talks about de Sade, but it reminded me of de Sade's philosophy). I'm still interested in reading more of Foucault. ( )
  Ghost_Boy | Aug 25, 2022 |
It's Foucault! It's about power. This time he explores the ideas of power through looking at the hisotry of discipline--usually state but sometimes civil. The relationship of the individual to the society and the government/soverign is explored form the age of toruture on. ( )
  M.J.Perry | Apr 21, 2022 |
12/14/21
  laplantelibrary | Dec 14, 2021 |
I must say that "Discipline and Punish" is a difficult book to review. It is excellent, and it is deep. The book starts with the description of a prisoner being tortured and killed. The final stages of the torture, and the execution used to take place in the public sphere.

We may be squeamish today, but we cannot state that torture has disappeared from the world. It has just disappeared from the public eye.

From there, he moves on to the concept of punishment, and the various theories that prevailed. And, of course, the practices. For me, the most interesting chapters were those that pertained to discipline, the panopticon, and delinquency.

I don't think that 'the birth of the prison' is a good subtitle. This book is much deeper than that.

It revolves around the concept of power (initially with the king), punishment, society's attitudes towards this, discipline and society; and finally, the Panopticon. This concept was centuries ahead of its time.

In many ways, society is living in a Panopticon today. ( )
  RajivC | Apr 11, 2021 |
Happy fun holiday reading...
  irrelephant | Feb 21, 2021 |
Interesting to see how penal/educational/employment systems which seem obvious now developed. Although I think this happened in a more haphazard, unplanned way than what the author proposes. ( )
  Paul_S | Dec 23, 2020 |
I thought I was interested in the history of punishment & imprisonment, but I wasn't.

According to Foucault, this is actually the history of conformism and, as the subject turned to that, I became more interested... but really, no.

This book would be great for anyone GENUINELY interested in punishment & imprisonment & conformity. ( )
  GirlMeetsTractor | Mar 22, 2020 |
Absolutely a necessary read, and so, so good. Foucault is I think really clear in this book, and makes his points about normalization and carcerality so, so well. I was left with a lot of questions, in a really generative way, and I definitely want to push out and read more. I'd say if you're looking to get started with Foucault, start here, because it's so foundational to so much more and is honestly still incredibly relevant for thinking through power and knowledge. ( )
  aijmiller | Feb 5, 2020 |
My first intro to Foucault. I was surprised how accessible this work is considering the mystique behind Foucault. Philosophically, Foucault describes the world we live in from the perspective of power and control. Rather than ask why prisons are such a failure, he asks what their dysfunction accomplishes (as well as who benefits).

There is peace in understanding Foucault even though his outlook can be depressing. ( )
  ryanone | Jan 3, 2018 |
Any reader of Foucault knows that he is outside of the realm of philosophy "proper." Although some of his works are not entirely convincing (though always thought provoking), this one I found to be an excellent analysis of the transformation of the concept of the prison - and makes for a great compliment to his extensive and most intense study "The History of Madness."

One could easily take the writings of Foucault as sociological or historical analyses, place them within an ontic framework and leave his books as simply interesting perspectives on historical issues. The key to realizing the philosophical implications of his work though is unfortunately not entirely explicit within the measure of his oeuvre. It took me some time to find just what it was that made his writings different from other ontic analyses of human nature, and that was in volume 2 of his "History of Sexuality" where he outlines his concept of "problematization." Once one understands this hermeneutical key to his work is when his writings become the controversial and quantifiable philosophical texts that they are.

The popular concepts of his books extend beyond their essential "cult" appeal. These were issues that were left outside of philosophy after the Cartesian and Kantian turns: thus removing them from philosophical discourse and leaving them to the "sciences" which without the above mentioned analytic of problematization are carried forth without any ontological foundation. Whether one agrees with the conclusions of Foucault is and should be a topic of dispute, as is all philosophy. But as such his very accessible writings should be appreciated more for their attempts to build a socialized "other" in ontology which was lacking in most prior theories which were only able to accommodate for the individual.

Overall though for this particular book, it is in my opinion an essential read when it comes to the political discourse of the modern prison in America today. We often loose sight of the fact that the evolution of human society is tightly bound with European history and so castrate ourselves from understanding the development of contentious topics. Although Foucault explicitly states that he is dealing with the development of the penal system in France, it extends beyond nationality and serves as a basis for our own systems. Particularly important to the modern understanding of American penitentiary would be his long discourse on Bentham and his ideal of the Panopticon. Bentham was an incredibly influential thinker in terms of American conservatism and many of his theories effect American politics up to this day. It's a pragmatic/active nihilistic existentialism which has repercussions beyond merely penal codes, but extends into the very nature of American society and adds a new level of discourse when considering the concept of freedom to the average citizen who would for the most part never even consider introspectively analyzing themselves as entangled within the evolving spectrum of carceration. ( )
2 vote PhilSroka | Apr 12, 2016 |
It’s easy to understand why Foucault was such an influential theorist; his explanation of the use of information collection and standardization to work on the body, in places from prisons to hospitals to armies to schools, offers a powerful theoretical apparatus with lots of applications across countries, times, and situations. That said, if you’ve read summaries elsewhere, it’s not clear to me that you need to read this book (cf. Bowling Alone). One very striking thing to me, since I also just finished Matt Taibbi’s The Divide, was how much these two books described the exact same thing: the extension of categorization, surveillance, and manipulation to poor people, who gain “identity” by being classified and recorded. By contrast, rich people gain identity (and even acclaim) by being above the law—that’s not Foucault’s focus, but he mentions it. Thus the modern army and modern capitalism go hand in hand. ( )
2 vote rivkat | May 7, 2014 |
En tung bok av en djupsinning fransman.
  biblokarien | May 5, 2013 |
The few chapters I read for school were interesting. Might come back to read the whole book sometime. ( )
  Wilwarin | Apr 7, 2013 |
Foucault is a historian, at least a his-story-ian. and this is an interesting story. take the soul out of the prisoner, the atrocities of the execution, the discipline and punishment pre 1847 when peasants enjoyed the spectacle of watching a man have his limb's ripped apart for killing another man. this is good writing. ( )
2 vote TakeItOrLeaveIt | Nov 17, 2010 |
A very big book for me. Still many insights, even if I'm no longer in the same place I was when I first read it. Foucault and Ivan Illich (and for that matter Wendell Berry but from a different perspective) should be read by all those who consider the social environment in which we live to be somehow "natural".
3 vote johnredmond | Mar 26, 2010 |
When I finished reading this book, I broke out a tub of Ben and Jerry's Half Baked—chocolate and vanilla frozen yoghurt with brownie and cookie dough chunks seemed the only suitable reward after 300+ pages of Foucault's prose. Whether or not its his writing style or an effect of the translation, Discipline and Punish is a dense and at times frustratingly opaque book. That, coupled with Foucault's fondness for using minuscule, ahistorical details to justify large-scale abstractions, made this a very frustrating book to read. I admired his refusal to accept conventional truths, but his arguments were never wholly convincing to me, his tendency to reify 'power' as a independent entity with agency of its own irritating, and his lack of intersectionality jarring (does society really treat the bodies of men and women in the same way? Of cis- and transgendered, ablebodied and those with disabilities?). To sum up: an important philosophical work, but his historical method sucks. ( )
2 vote siriaeve | Mar 20, 2010 |
un livre fondateur ( )
  banlon1964 | Jul 28, 2008 |
Pity that there is not so much Foucault in Finnish. He really is quite difficult to read in French, at least for the uninitiated, who are prone to take a joke seriously or a profound remark as a joke
  jukke | Nov 7, 2006 |
Amazing ( )
  justine | Sep 16, 2006 |
not the easiest read, I grant you, but indispensible history (both social and as a business) of "corrections" ( )
  beau.p.laurence | Jul 23, 2006 |
Foucault relates developments in prisons and punishment with larger trends in culture and civilization. He argues that ancient regime punishment of the body evolved into punishment of the mind or spirit. He relates these changes to capitalism. ( )
1 vote AlexTheHunn | Nov 22, 2005 |
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