Discipline and Punish
1975
- prison discipline
- punishment
- prisons
- discipline
- contrôle social
- peines
- histoire
- fiction, general
- hv8666 .f6813 1979
- 365
The story
English version of "Surveiller et punir : naissance de la prison"
What it’s like
Dense, unhurried academic prose with a cool, analytical voice that moves through long chains of argument rather than scenes. Its sensory world is institutional and historical: the stone of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century penitentiaries, the geometry of cells arranged around a central watchtower, the drilled bodies of soldiers and schoolchildren, the ledgers and reform pamphlets that stand in for atmosphere. The tone is detached and sardonic, lit by the steady clarity of a lecture hall rather than any emotional glow. It suits a quiet afternoon with a notebook, a slow reread on a train, or a long stretch of sustained attention when you want ideas to carry the weight that story would otherwise bear. Violence appears only as historical record: public execution and torture are described in clinical detail at the opening, then give way to discussion of routine, surveillance and timetables, so the intensity is intellectual and bleak rather than graphic. Its pacing is deliberate and cumulative, circling back to revise earlier claims. It is for readers of history, philosophy and social theory who enjoy dense argument, and for anyone curious how modern institutions came to watch, measure and correct people.
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