1/28/2004 slide 34
Punishment
•The changing visual, textual, analytical
discourse of punishment, from public
torture to today’s prison systems
discourse of punishment, from public
torture to today’s prison systems
–Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Foucault
,1975)
•Famous for analysis of Jeremy Benthem’s
“panopticon” (1791)
“On 2 March 1757 Damiens the
regicide condemmed 'to make the amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris',
where he was to be 'taken and
conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds'; then, 'in the said
cart, to the place de Greve, where,
on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and calves with red-hot
pincers, his right hand, holding
the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with sulphur, and,on those places where the flesh will
be torn away, poured molten lead,
boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses and his
limbs and body consumed by
fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds' (Pieces originales . . ., 372-4). “
D&P
