Michel Foucault
DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH
The Birth o f the Prison
Translated from the French
by Alan Sheridan
V I N T A G E B O O K S
A D I V I S I O N OF R A N D O M H O U S E , I N C . N E W Y O R K
Contents
List of Plates vii
Translator’s Note ix
P ART ONE TO RTU RE
1. The body of the condemned 3
2, The spectacle of the scaffold 32
PA R T TWO PU NIS H M E NT
1. Generalized punishment 73
2. The gentle way in punishment 104
PAR T THREE D I S C I P L I N E
1. Docile bodies 135
The art o fdistributions 141
The control o factivity 149
The organisation o fgeneses 156
The composition o fforces 162
2. The means of correct training 170
Hierarchical observation 170
Normalisingjudgement 177
The examination 184
3. Panopticism 195
PART FO UR P R I S O N
1. Complete and austere institutions 231
2. Illegalities and delinquency 257
3. The carceral 293
Notes 309
Bibliography 326
List of Plates
(between pages 169 and 170)
1 Medal commemorating Louis XIV’s first military revue in i6<58.
2 Handwriting model.
3 Plan of the Panopticon by J. Bentham, 1843.
4 Plan for a penitentiary by N. Harou-Romain, 1840.
5 The Maison centrale at Rennes in 1877,
6 Interior of the penitentiary at Stateville, United States, twentieth
century.
7 Bedtime at the reformatory of Mettray.
8 Lecture on the evils of alcoholism in the auditorium of Fresnes
prison.
9 Steam machine for the ‘celeriferous’ correction of young boys and
girls.
10 Uortkopidie ou Vart de privenir et de corriger dans les enfants Us
difformidsducorps(Orthopaedicsor theartofpreventingandcorrecting
deformities of the body in children) by N. Andry, 1749.
Translator’s Note
Any closer translation of the French title of this book, Surveiller etpunir,has proved unsatisfactory on various counts. To begin with, Foucault
uses the infinitive, which, as here, may have the effect of an ‘impersonal
imperative*. Such anuance is denied us inEnglish. More seriously the verb
‘surveiller has no adequate English equivalent. Our noun ‘surveillance’
has an altogether too restricted and technical use. Jeremy Bentham used
the term ‘inspect* - which Foucault translates as ‘surveiller - but the
range of connotations does not correspond. ‘Supervise* is perhaps closest
of all, but again the word has different associations. ‘Observe’ is rather
too neutral, though Foucault is aware of the aggression involved in any
one-sided observation. In the end Foucault himself suggested Discipline
and Punish, which relates closely to the book’s structure.
Another problemwas posed by the French word *supplice\ which heads
the first part of the book. For the sake of brevity I have entitled this
first part ‘Torture*, but no single English word will cover the full range
of the French. Here ‘supplice refers specifically to the public torture and
execution ofcriminals that provided one of the most popular spectacles of
eighteenth-century France. By extension the word can also refer to any
prolonged torture, mental as well as physical. Depending on the context,
I have translated the word by ‘torture*, ‘public execution* or ‘scaffold*.
The author also refers to another form of torture, 7a question , the extraction
of confessions by interrogation and the systematic application of
pain. Here I have followed the accepted translation, ‘judicial torture*.
References to other works are usually given not in footnotes but in an
abbreviated form in the text itself. These references, in brackets, consist
of the author’s name and a page number; dates of publication are used to
distinguish more than one work by an author, and roman numerals refer
to volume numbers. Full references are to be found in the Bibliography.
PART ONE
Torture
i. The body of the condemned
On 2 March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned ‘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 shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds’;
then, ‘in the said cart, to the Place de Gr£ve, where, on a scaffold
that will be erected there, the flesh will be tom 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 ..3 7 2 - 4 ) .
‘Finally, he was quartered/ recounts the Gazette d*Amsterdam of
1 April 1757. ‘This last operation was very long, because the horses
used were not accustomed to drawing; consequendy, instead of
four, six were needed; and when that did not suffice, they were
forced, in order to cut off the wretch’s thighs, to sever the sinews
and hack at the joints...
‘It is said that, though he was always a great swearer, no blasphemy
escaped his lips; but the excessive pain made him utter
horrible cries, and he often repeated: “ My God, have pity on me!
Jesus, help me!” The spectators were all edified by the solicitude
of the parish priest of St Paul’s who despite his great age did not
spare himself in offering consolation to the patient.1
Bouton, an officer of the watch, left us his account: ‘The sulphur
was lit, but the flame was so poor that only the top skin of the hand
was burnt, and that only slightly. Then the executioner, his sleeves
rolled up, took the steel pincers, which had been especially made
3
Torture
for the occasion, and which were about a foot and a half long, and
pulled first at the calf of the right leg, then at the thigh, and from
there at the two fleshy parts of the right arm; then at the breasts.
Though a strong, sturdy fellow, this executioner found it so difficult
to tear away the pieces of flesh that he set about the same spot two or
three times, twisting the pincers as he did so, and what he took away
formed at each part a wound about the size of a six-pound crown
piece.
‘After these tearings with the pincers, Damiens, who cried out
profusely, though without swearing, raised his head and looked at
himself; the same executioner dipped an iron spoon in the pot containing
the boiling potion, which he poured liberally over each
wound. Then the ropes that were to be harnessed to the horses were
attached with cords to the patient’s body; the horses were then
harnessed and placed alongside the arms and legs, one at each
limb.
‘Monsieur Le Breton, the clerk of the court, went up to the
patient several times and asked him if he had anything to say. He
said he had not; at each torment, he cried out, as the damned in hell
are supposed to cry out, “ Pardon, my God! Pardon, Lord.”
Despite all this pain, he raised his head from time to time and looked
at himself boldly. The cords had been tied so tightly by the men
who pulled the ends that they caused him indescribable pain.
Monsieur le Breton went up to him again and asked him if he had
anything to say; he said no. Several confessors went up to him and
spoke to him at length; he willingly kissed the crucifix that was held
out to him; he opened his lips and repeated: “ Pardon, Lord.”
‘The horses tugged hard, each pulling straight on a limb, each
horse held by an executioner. After a quarter of an hour, the same
ceremony was repeated and finally, after several attempts, the
direction of the horses had to be changed, thus: those at the arms
were made to pull towards the head, those at the thighs towards the
arms, which broke the arms at the joints. This was repeated several
times without success. He raised his head and looked at himself.
Two more horses had to be added to those harnessed to the thighs,
which made six horses in all. Without success.
‘Finally, the executioner, Samson, said to Monsieur Le Breton
that there was no way or hope of succeeding, and told him to ask
4
The body of the condemned
their Lordships if they wished him to have the prisoner cut into
pieces. Monsieur Le Breton, who had come down from the town,
ordered that renewed efforts be made, and this was done; but the
horses gave up and one of those harnessed to the thighs fell to the
ground. The confessors returned and spoke to him again. He said
to them (I heard him): “ Kiss me, gentlemen.” The parish priest of
St Paul's did not dare to, so Monsieur de Marsilly slipped under the
rope holding the left arm and kissed him on the forehead. The
executioners gathered round and Damiens told them not to swear,
to carry out their task and that he did not think ill of them; he
begged them to pray to God for him, and asked the parish priest
of St Paul’s to pray for him at the first mass.
‘After two or three attempts, the executioner Samson and he who
had used the pincers each drew out a knife from his pocket and cut
the body at the thighs instead of severing the legs at the joints; the
four horses gave a tug and carried off the two thighs after them,
namely, that of the right side first, the other following; then the
same was done to the arms, the shoulders, the arm-pits and the four
limbs; the flesh had to be cut almost to the bone, the horses pulling
hard carried off the right arm first and the other afterwards.
‘When the four limbs had been pulled away, the confessors came
to speak to him; but his executioner told them that he was dead,
though the truth was that I saw the man move, his lower jaw moving
from side to side as if he were talking. One of the executioners even
said shortly afterwards that when they had lifted the trunk to throw
it on the stake, he was still alive. The four limbs were untied from
the ropes and thrown on the stake set up in the enclosure in line
with the scaffold, then the trunk and the rest were covered with logs
and faggots, and fire was put to the straw mixed with this wood.
\ .. In accordance with the decree, the whole was reduced to
ashes. The last piece to be found in the embers was still burning at
half-past ten in the evening. The pieces of flesh and the trunk had
taken about four hours to bum. The officers of whom I was one,
as also was my son, and a detachment of archers remained in the
square until nearly eleven o’clock.
‘There were those who made something of the fact that a dog
had lain the day before on the grass where the fire had been, had
been chased away several times, and had always returned. But it is
5
Torture
not difficult to understand that an animal found this place warmer
than elsewhere* (quoted in Zevaes, 201-14).
Eighty years later, Leon Faucher drew up his rules Tor the House
of young prisoners in Paris’:
‘Art. 17. The prisoners* day will begin at six in the morning in
winter and at five in summer. They will work for nine hours a day
throughout the year. Two hours a day will be devoted to instruction.
Work and the day will end at nine o'clock in winter and at
eight in summer.
Art. 18. Rising. At the first drum-roll, the prisoners must rise and
dress in silence, as the supervisor opens the cell doors. At the second
drum-roll, they must be dressed and make their beds. At the third,
they must line up and proceed to the chapel for morning prayer.
There is a five-minute interval between each drum-roll.
Art. 19. The prayers are conducted by the chaplain and followed
by a moral or religious reading. This exercise must not last more
than half an hour.
Art. 20. Work. At a quarter to six in the summer, a quarter to
seven in winter, the prisoners go down into the courtyard where
they must wash their hands and faces, and receive their first ration
of bread. Immediately afterwards, they form into work-teams and
go off to work, which must begin at six in summer and seven in
winter.
Art. 21. Meal. At ten o’clock the prisoners leave their work and
go to the refectory; they wash their hands in their courtyards and
assemble in divisions. After the dinner, there is recreation until
twenty minutes to eleven.
Art. 22. School* At twenty minutes to eleven, at the drum-roll,
the prisoners form into ranks, and proceed in divisions to the
school. The class lasts two hours and consists alternately of reading,
writing, drawing and arithmetic.
Art. 23. At twenty minutes to one, the prisoners leave the
school, in divisions, and return to their courtyards for recreation.
At five minutes to one, at the drum-roll, they form into work-
teams.
Art. 24, At one o’clock they must be back in the workshops: they
work until four o’clock.
6
The body of the condemned
Art. 25, At four o’clock the prisoners leave their workshops and
go into the courtyards where they wash their hands and form into
divisions for the refectory.
Art. 26. Supper and the recreation that follows it last until five
o'clock: the prisoners then return to the workshops.
Art. 27. At seven o’clock in the summer, at eight in winter,
work stops; bread is distributed for the last time in the workshops.
For a quarter of an hour one of the prisoners or supervisors reads a
passage from some instructive or uplifting work. This is followed
by evening prayer.
Art. 28. At half-past seven in summer, half-past eight in winter,
the prisoners must be back in their cells after the washing of hands
and the inspection of clothes in the courtyard; at the first drum-roll,
they must undress, and at the second get into bed. The cell doors
are closed and the supervisors go the rounds in the corridors, to
ensure order and silence’ (Faucher, 274-82).
We have, then, a public execution and a time-table. They do not
punish the same crimes or the same type of delinquent. But they
each define a certain penal style. Less than a century separates them.
It was a time when, in Europe and in the United States, the entire
economy of punishment was redistributed. It was a time of great
‘scandals’ for traditional justice, a time of innumerable projects for
reform. It saw a new theory of law and crime, a new moral or political
justification of the right to punish; old laws were abolished, old
customs died out. ‘Modern’ codes were planned or drawn up:
Russia, 1769; Prussia, 1780; Pennsylvania and Tuscany, 1786;
Austria, 1788; France, 1791, Year IV, 1808 and 1810. It was a new
age for penal justice.
Among so many changes, I shall consider one: the disappearance
of torture as a public spectacle. Today we are rather inclined to ignore
it; perhaps, in its time, it gave rise to too much inflated rhetoric;
perhaps it has been attributed too readily and too emphatically to a
process of ‘humanization’, thus dispensing with the need for further
analysis. And, in any case, how important is such a change, when
compared with the great institutional transformations, the formulation
of explicit, general codes and unified rules of procedure; with
the almost universal adoption of the jury system, the definition of
7
T orture
the essentially corrective character of the penalty and the tendency,
which has become increasingly marked since the nineteenth century,
to adapt punishment to the individual offender? Punishment of a
less immediately physical kind, a certain discretion in the art of
inflicting pain, a combination of more subtle, more subdued sufferings,
deprived of their visible display, should not all this be treated
as a special case, an incidental effect of deeper changes? And yet the
fact remains that a few decades saw the disappearance of the tortured,
dismembered* amputated body, symbolically branded on face
or shoulder, exposed alive or dead to public view. The body as the
major target of penal repression disappeared.
By the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the gloomy festival of punishment was dying out, though
here and there it flickered momentarily into life- In this transformation,
two processes were at work. They did not have quite the same
chronology or the same raison <Titre. The first was the disappearance
of punishment as a spectacle. The ceremonial of punishment tended
to decline; it survived only as a new legal or administrative practice.
The amende honorable was first abolished in France in 1791, then
again in 1830 after a brief revival; the pillory was abolished in
France in 1789 and in England in 1837. The use of prisoners in
public works, cleaning city streets or repairing the highways, was
practised in Austria, Switzerland and certain of the United States,
such as Pennsylvania. These convicts, distinguished by their
‘infamous dress’ and shaven heads, ‘were brought before the public.
The sport of the idle and the vicious, they often become incensed,
and naturally took violent revenge upon the aggressors. To prevent
them from returning injuries which might be inflicted on them,
they were encumbered with iron collars and chains to which bombshells
were attached, to be dragged along while they performed their
degrading service, under the eyes of keepers armed with swords,
blunderbusses and other weapons of destruction' (Roberts Vaux,
Notices^ 21, quoted in Teeters, 1937, 24). This practice was abolished
practically everywhere at the end of the eighteenth or the beginning
of the nineteenth century. The public exhibition of prisoners was
maintained in France in 1831, despite violent criticism - ‘a disgusting
scene*, said Real (cf. Bibliography); it was finally abolished in
April 1848. While the chain-gang, which had dragged convicts
8
The body of the condemned
across the whole of France, as far as Brest and Toulon, was replaced
in 1837 by inconspicuous black-painted cell-carts. Punishment had
gradually ceased to be a spectacle. And whatever theatrical elements
it still retained were now downgraded, as if the functions of the
penal ceremony were gradually ceasing to be understood, as if this
rite that ‘concluded the crime’ was suspected of being in some
undesirable way linked with it. It was as if the punishment was
thought to equal, if not to exceed, in savagery the crime itself, to
accustom the spectators to a ferocity from which one wished to
divert them, to show them the frequency of crime, to make the
executioner resemble a criminal, judges murderers, to reverse roles
at the last moment, to make the tortured criminal an object of pity
or admiration. As early as 1764, Beccaria remarked: ‘The murder
that is depicted as a horrible crime is repeated in cold blood,
remorselessly’ (Beccaria, 101). The public execution is now seen as
a hearth in which violence bursts again into flame.
Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of
the penal process* This has several consequences: it leaves the
domain of more or less everyday perception and enters that of
abstract consciousness; its effectiveness is seen as resulting from its
inevitability, not from its visible intensity; it is the certainty of being
punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that
must discourage crime; the exemplary mechanics of punishment
changes its mechanisms. As a result, justice no longer takes public
responsibility for the violence that is bound up with its practice.
If it too strikes, if it too kills, it is not as a glorification of its strength,
but as an element of itself that it is obliged to tolerate, that it finds
difficult to account for. The apportioning of blame is redistributed:
in punishment-as-spectacle a confused horror spread from the
scaffold; it enveloped both executioner and condemned; and, although
it was always ready to invert the shame inflicted on the
victim into pity or glory, it often turned the legal violence of the
executioner into shame. Now the scandal and the light are to be
distributed differently; it is the conviction itself that marks the
offender with the unequivocally negative sign: the publicity has
shifted to the trial, and to the sentence; the execution itself is like an
additional shame that justice is ashamed to impose on the condemned
man; so it keeps its distance from the act, tending always to
9
T orture
entrust it to others, under the seal of secrecy. It is ugly to be punishable,
but there is no glory in punishing. Hence that double system
of protection that justice has set up between itself and the punishment
it imposes. Those who carry out the penalty tend to
become an autonomous sector; justice is relieved of responsibility
for it by a bureaucratic concealment of the penalty itself. It is
typical that in France the administration of the prisons should for so
long have been the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior,
while responsibility for the bagnes, for penal servitude in the convict
ships and penal settlements, lay with the Ministry of the Navy or
the Ministry of the Colonies. And beyond this distribution of roles
operates a theoretical disavowal: do not imagine that the sentences
that we judges pass are activated by a desire to punish; they are
intended to correct, reclaim, ‘cure’; a technique of improvement
represses, in the penalty, the strict expiation of evil-doing, and
relieves the magistrates of the demeaning task of punishing. In
modern justice and on the part of those who dispense it there is a
shame in punishing, which does not always preclude zeal. This
sense of shame is constantly growing: the psychologists and the
riiinor civil servants of moral orthopaedics proliferate on the wound
it leaves.
The disappearance ofpublic executions marks therefore thedecline
of the spectacle; but it also marks a slackening of the hold on the
body. In 1787, in an address to the Society for Promoting Political
Enquiries, Benjamin Rush remarked: *1can only hope that the time
is not far away when gallows, pillory, scaffold, flogging and wheel
will, in the history of punishment, be regarded as the marks of the
barbarity of centuries and of countries and as proofs of the feeble
influence of reason and religion over the human mind* (Teeters,
x93 5, 30). Indeed, sixty years later, Van Meenen, opening the second
penitentiary congress, in Brussels, recalled the time of his childhood
as of a past age: ‘I have seen the ground strewn with wheels,
gibbets, gallows, pillories; I have seen hideously stretched skeletons
on wheels’ (Annales de la Ckarite, 529-30), Branding had been
abolished in England (1834) and in France (1832); in 1820, England
no longer dared to apply the full punishment reserved for traitors
(Thisdewood was not quartered). Only flogging still remained in a
number of penal systems (Russia, England, Prussia). But, generally
10
The body of the condemned
speaking, punitive practices had become more reticent. One no
longer touched the body, or at least as little as possible, and then
only to reach something other than the body itself. It might be
objected that imprisonment, confinement, forced labour, penal
servitude, prohibition from entering certain areas, deportation which
have occupied so important a place in modern penal systems are
'physical* penalties: unlike fines, for example, they directly
affect the body. But the punishment-body relation is not the same
as it was in the torture during public executions. The body now
serves as an instrument or intermediary: if one intervenes upon it
to imprison it, or to make it work, it is in order to deprive the
individual ofa liberty that is regarded both as a right and as property.
The body, according to this penality, is caught up in a system of
constraints and privations, obligations and prohibitions. Physical
pain, the pain of the body itself, is no longer the constituent element
of the penalty. From being an art of unbearable sensations punishment
has become an economy of suspended rights. If it is still
necessary for the law to reach and manipulate the body of the convict,
it will be at a distance, in the proper way, according to strict
rules, and with a much ‘higher* aim. As a result of this new restraint,
a whole army of technicians took over from the executioner, the
immediate anatomist of pain: warders, doctors, chaplains, psychiatrists,
psychologists, educationalists; by their very presence near the
prisoner, they sing the praises that the law needs: they reassure it
that the body and pain are not the ultimate objects of its punitive
action. Today a doctor must watch over those condemned to death,
right up to the last moment - thus juxtaposing himself as the agent
of welfare, as the alleviator of pain, with the official whose task it is
to end life. This is worth thinking about. When the moment of
execution approaches, the patients are injected with tranquillizers.
A utopia of judicial reticence: take away life, but prevent the patient
from feeling it; deprive the prisoner of all rights, but do not inflict
pain; impose penalties free of all pain. Recourse to psycho-pharmacology
and to various physiological ‘disconnectors’, even if it is
temporary, is a logical consequence of this ‘non-corporal* penality.
The modern rituals of execution attest to this double process: the
disappearance of the spectacle and the elimination of pain. The same
movement has affected the various European legal systems, each at
Torture
its own rate: the same death for all - the execution no longer bears
the specific mark of the crime or the social status of the criminal; a
death that lasts only a moment - no torture must be added to it in
advance, no further actions performed upon the corpse; an execution
that affects life rather than the body. There are no longer any of
those long processes in which death was both retarded by calculated
interruptions and multiplied by a series of successive attacks. There
are no longer any of those combinations of tortures that were
organized for the killing of regicides, or of the kind advocated, at
the beginning of the eighteenth century, by the anonymous author
of Hanging not Punishment Enough (1701), by which the condemned
man would be broken on the wheel, then flogged until he fainted,
then hung up with chains, then finally left to die slowly of hunger.
There are no longer any of those executions in which the condemned
man was dragged along on a hurdle (to prevent his head smashing
against the cobble-stones), in which his belly was opened up, his
entrails quickly ripped out, so that he had time to see them, with his
own eyes, being thrown on the fire; in which he was finally decapitated
and his body quartered.1 The reduction of these ‘thousand
deaths' to strict capital punishment defines a whole new morality
concerning the act of punishing.
As early as 1760, a hanging machine had been tried out in
England (for the execution of Lord Ferrer), It made use of a support,
which opened under the feet of the condemned man, thus avoiding
slow deaths and the altercations that occurred between victim and
executioner. It was improved and finally adopted in 1783, the same
year in which the traditional procession from Newgate to Tyburn
was abolished, and in which the opportunity offered by the rebuilding
of the prison, after the Gordon Riots, was used to set up the
scaffolds in Newgate itself (see Hibbert, 85-6). The celebrated
article 3 of the French Code of 1791 - ‘Every man condemned to
death will have his head cut off* - bears this triple signification: an
equal death for all (‘Crimes of the same kind will be punished by the
same kind of punishment, whatever the rank and state of the guilty
man may be,’ in the words of the motion proposed by Guillotin and
passed on 1 December 1789); one death per condemned man,
obtained by a single blow, without recourse to those ‘long and
consequently cruer methods of execution, such as the gallows,
12
The body of the condemned
denounced by Le Peletier; lastly, punishment for the condemned
man alone, since decapitation, the capital punishment of the nobility,
was the least shaming for the criminal's family (Le Peletier, 720).
The guillotine, first used in March 1792, was the perfect vehicle for
these principles. Death was reduced to a visible, but instantaneous
event. Contact between the law, or those who carry it out, and the
body of the criminal, is reduced to a split second. There is no
physical confrontation; the executioner need be no more than a
meticulous watchmaker. ‘Experience and reason demonstrate that
the method used in the past to cut off the head of a criminal exposed
him to a torture more frightful than the loss of life alone, which is
the express intention of the law; the execution should therefore be
carried out in a single moment and with a single blow; examples
show how difficult it is to achieve this. For the method to work
perfectly, it must necessarily depend on invariable mechanical
means whose force and effect may also be determined. . . It is an
easy enough matter to have such an unfailing machine built; decapitation
will be performed in a moment according to the intention of
the new law. If this apparatus seems necessary, it will cause no
sensation and will be scarcely noticed’ (Saint-Edme, 161). The
guillotine takes life almost without touching the body, just as prison
deprives of liberty or a fine reduces wealth. It is intended to apply
the law not so much to a real body capable of feeling pain as to a
juridical subject, the possessor, among other rights, of the right to
exist. It had to have the abstraction of the law itself.
No doubt something of the old public execution was, for a time,
superimposed in France on the sobriety of the new method. Parricides
- and the regicides who were regarded as such - were led to
the scaffold wearing a black veil; there, until 1832, one of their
hands was cut off. Thereafter, nothing remained but the ornamental
crepe. Thus it was in the case of Fieschi, the would-be assassin of
Louis-Philippe, in November 1836: ‘He will be taken to the place
of execution wearing a shirt, barefoot, his head covered with a black
veil; he will be exhibited upon a scaffold while an usher reads the
sentence to the people, and he will be immediately executed.’ We
should remember Damiens —and note that the last addition to penal
death was a mourning veil. The condemned man was no longer to
be seen. Only the reading of the sentence on the scaffold announced
*3
Torture
the crime - and that crime must be faceless. (The more monstrous a
criminal was, the more he must be deprived of light: he must not see,
or be seen. This was a common enough notion at the time. For the
parricide one should ‘construct an iron cage or dig an impenetrable
dungeon that would serve him as an eternal retreat* - De Molene,
275-7.) The last vestige of the great public execution was its annulment:
a drapery to hide a body. Benoit, triply infamous (his
mother’s murderer, a homosexual, an assassin), was the first of the
parricides not to have a hand cut off: 'As the sentence was being
read, he stood on the scaffold supported by the executioners. It was
a horrible sight; wrapped in a large white shroud, his face covered
with black crepe, the parricide escaped the gaze of the silent crowd,
and beneath these mysterious and gloomy clothes, life was manifested
only by frightful cries, which soon expired under the knife*
(Gazette des tribunaux, 30 August 1832).
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, then, the great
spectacle of physical punishment disappeared; the tortured body
was avoided; the theatrical representation of pain was excluded from
punishment. The age of sobriety in punishment had begun. By
1830-48, public executions, preceded by torture, had almost entirely
disappeared. Of course, this generalization requires some qualification.
To begin with, the changes did not come about at once or as
part of a single process. There were delays. Paradoxically, England
was one of the countries most loath to see the disappearance of the
public execution: perhaps because of the role of model that the
institution of the jury, public hearings and respect of habeas corpus
had given to her criminal law; above all, no doubt, because she did
not wish to diminish the rigour of her penal laws during the great
social disturbances of the years 1780-1820. For a long time Romilly,
Mackintosh and Fowell Buxton failed in their attempts to attenuate
the multiplicity and severity of the penalties laid down by English
law - that ‘horrible butchery', as Rossi described it. Its severity (in
fact, the juries regarded the penalties laid down as excessive and
were consequently more lenient in their application) had even
increased: in 1760, Blackstone had listed 160 capital crimes in
English legislation, while by 1819 there were 223. One should also
take into account the advances and retreats that the process as a
whole underwent between 1760 and 1840; the rapidity of reform
14
The body of the condemned
in certain countries such as Austria, Russia, the United States,
France under the Constituent Assembly, then the retreat at the
time of the counter-revolutions in Europe and the great social fear
of the years 1820-48; more or less temporary changes introduced by
emergency courts or laws; the gap between the laws and the real
practice of the courts (which was by no means a faithful reflection
of the state of legislation). All these factors account for the irregularity
of the transformation that occurred at the turn of the century.
It should be added that, although most of the changes had been
achieved by 1840, although the mechanisms of punishment had by
then assumed their new way of functioning, the process was far
from complete. The reduction in the use of torture was a tendency
that was rooted in the great transformation of the years 1760-1840,
but it did not end there; it can be said that the practice of the public
execution haunted our penal system for a long time and still haunts
it today. In France, the guillotine, that machine for the production
of rapid and discreet deaths, represented a new ethic of legal death.
But the Revolution had immediately endowed it with a great theatrical
ritual. For years it provided a spectacle. It had to be removed to
the Barri£re Saint-Jacques; the open cart was replaced by a closed
carriage; the condemned man was hustled from the vehicle straight
to the scaffold; hasty executions were organized at unexpected times.
In the end, the guillotine had to be placed inside prison walls and
made inaccessible to the public (after the execution of Weidmann
in 1939), by blocking the streets leading to the prison in which the
scaffold was hidden, and in which the execution would take place in
secret (the execution of Buffet and Bontemps at the Sante in 1972).
Witnesses who described the scene could even be prosecuted, thereby
ensuring that the execution should cease to be a spectacle and
remain a strange secret between the law and those it condemns. One
has only to point out so many precautions to realize that capital
punishment remains fundamentally, even today, a spectacle that
must actually be forbidden.
Similarly, the hold on the body did not entirely disappear in the
mid-nineteenth century* Punishment had no doubt ceased to be
centred on torture as a technique of pain; it assumed as its principal
object loss of wealth or rights. But a punishment like forced labour
or even imprisonment - mere loss of liberty - has never functioned
15
Torture
without a certain additional element of punishment that certainly
concerns the body itself: rationing of food, sexual deprivation,
corporal punishment, solitary confinement. Are these the unintentional,
but inevitable, consequence of imprisonment? In fact, in its
most explicit practices, imprisonment has always involved a certain
degree of physical pain. The criticism that was often levelled at the
penitentiary system in the early nineteenth century (imprisonment
is not a sufficient punishment: prisoners are less hungry, less cold,
less deprived in general than many poor people or even workers)
suggests a postulate that was never explicitly denied: it is just that a
condemned man should suffer physically more than other men. It is
difficult to dissociate punishment from additional physical pain.
What would a non-corporal punishment be?
There remains, therefore, a trace of ‘torture* in the modern
mechanisms of criminal justice - a trace that has not been entirely
overcome, but which isenveloped, increasingly, by the non-corporal
nature of the penal system.
The reduction in penal severity in the last 200 years is a phenomenon
with which legal historians are well acquainted. But, for a
long time, it has been regarded in an overall way as a quantitative
phenomenon: less cruelty, less pain, more kindness, more respect,
more ‘humanity*. In fact, these changes are accompanied by a displacement
in the very object of the punitive operation. Is there a
diminution of intensity? Perhaps. There is certainly a change of
objective.
If the penality in its most severe forms no longer addresses itself
to the body, on what does it lay hold? The answer of the theoreticians
- those who, about 1760, opened up a new period that is not
yet at an end - is simple, almost obvious. It seems to be contained
in the question itself: since it is no longer the body, it must be the
soul. The expiation that once rained down upon the body must be
replaced by a punishment that acts in depth on the heart, the
thoughts, the will, the inclinations. Mably formulated the principle
once and for all: ‘Punishment, if I may so put it, should strike the
soul rather than the body* (Mably, 326).
It was an important moment. The old partners of the spectacle
of punishment, the body and the blood, gave way. A new character
16
The body of the condemned
came on the scene, masked. It was the end of a certain kind of
tragedy; comedy began, with shadow play, faceless voices, impalpable
entities. The apparatus of punitive justice must now bite into
this bodiless reality.
Is this any more than a mere theoretical assertion, contradicted
by penal practice? Such a conclusion would be over-hasty. It is true
that, today, to punish is not simply a matter of converting a soul;
but Mably’s principle has not remained a pious wish. Its effects can
be felt throughout modern penality.
To begin with, there is a substitution of objects. By this I do not
mean that one has suddenly set about punishing other crimes. No
doubt the definition of offences, the hierarchy of their seriousness,
the margins of indulgence, what was tolerated in fact and what was
legally permitted - all this has considerably changed over the last
200 years; many crimes have ceased to be so because they were
bound up with a certain exercise of religious authority or a particular
type of economic activity; blasphemy has lost its status as a
crime; smuggling and domestic larceny some of their seriousness.
But these displacements are perhaps not the most important fact:
the division between the permitted and the forbidden has preserved
a certain constancy from one century to another. On the other
hand, ‘crime*, the object with which penal practice is concerned, has
profoundly altered: the quality, the nature, in a sense the substance
of which the punishable element is made, rather than its formal
definition. Undercover of the relative stability of the law, a mass of
subtle and rapid changes has occurred. Certainly the ‘crimes' and
‘offences* on which judgement is passed are juridical objects defined
by the code, but judgement is also passed on the passions, instincts,
anomalies, infirmities, maladjustments, effects of environment or
heredity; acts of aggression are punished, so also, through them, is
aggressivity; rape, but at the same time perversions; murders, but
also drives and desires. But, it will be objected, judgement is not
actually being passed on them; if they are referred to at all it is to
explain the actions in question, and to determine to what extent the
the subject’s will was involved in the crime. This is no answer. For
it is these shadows lurking behind the case itself that are judged and
punished. They are judged indirectly as ‘attenuating circumstances’
that introduce into the verdict not only ‘circumstantial’ evidence,
17
Torture
but something quite different, which is not juridically codifiable:
the knowledge of the criminal, one’s estimation of him, what is
known about the relations between him, his past and his crime, and
what might be expected of him in the future. They are also judged
by the interplay of all those notions that have circulated between
medicine and jurisprudence since the nineteenth century (the ‘monsters’
of Georget’s times, Chaumie’s ‘psychical anomalies’, the
‘perverts’ and ‘maladjusted’ of our own experts) and which, behind
the pretext of explaining an action, are ways of defining an individual.
They are punished by means of a punishment that has the
function of making the offender ‘not only desirous, but also capable,
of living within the law and of providing for his own needs’; they
are punished by the internal economy of a penalty which, while
intended to punish the crime, may be altered (shortened or, in
certain cases, extended) according to changes in the prisoner’s
behaviour; and they are punished by the ‘security measures’ that
accompany the penalty (prohibition of entering certain areas, probation,
obligatory medical treatment), and which are intended not
to punish the offence, but to supervise the individual, to neutralize
his dangerous state of mind, to alter his criminal tendencies, and to
continue even when this change has been achieved. The criminal’s
soul is not referred to in the trial merely to explain his crime and
as a factor in the juridical apportioning of responsibility; if it is
brought before the court, with such pomp and circumstance, such
concern to understand and such ‘scientific’ application, it is because
it too, as well as the crime itself, is to be judged and to share in the
punishment. Throughout the penal ritual, from the preliminary
investigation to the sentence and the final effects of the penalty, a
domain has been penetrated by objects that not only duplicate, but
also dissociate the juridically defined and coded objects. Psychiatric
expertise, but also in a more general way criminal anthropology and
the repetitive discourse of criminology, find one of their precise
functions here: by solemnly inscribing offences in the field of objects
susceptible of scientific knowledge, they provide the mechanisms
of legal punishment with a justifiable hold not only on offences, but
on individuals; not only on what they do, but also on what they are,
will be, may be. The additional factor of the offender’s soul, which
the legal system has laid hold of, is only apparently explanatory
18
The body of the condemned
and limitative, and is in fact expansionist. During the 150 or 200
years that Europe has been setting up its new penal systems, the
judges have gradually, by means of a process that goes back very far
indeed, taken to judging something other than crimes, namely, the
‘soul’ of the criminal.
And, by that very fact, they have begun to do something other
than pass judgement. Or, to be more precise, within the very judicial
modality of judgement, other types of assessment have slipped in,
profoundly altering its rules of elaboration. Ever since the Middle
Ages slowly and painfully built up the great procedure of investigation,
to judge was to establish the truth of a crime, it was to determine
its author and to apply a legal punishment. Knowledge of the
offence,,knowledge of the offender, knowledge of the law: these
three conditions made it possible to ground a judgement in truth.
But now a quite different question of truth is inscribed in the course
of the penal judgement. The question is no longer simply: ‘Has the
act been established and is it punishable?' But also: ‘What is this act,
what is this act of violence or this murder? To what level or to what
field of reality does it belong? Is it a phantasy, a psychotic reaction, a
delusional episode, a perverse action?' It is no longer simply: ‘Who
committed it?' But: ‘How can we assign the causal process that
produced it? Where did it originate in the author himself? Instinct,
unconscious, environment, heredity?' It is no longer simply: ‘What
law punishes this offence?' But: ‘What would be the most appropriate
measures to take? How do we see the future development of the
offender? What would be the best way of rehabilitating him?' A
whole set of assessing, diagnostic, prognostic, normative judgements
concerning the criminal have become lodged in the framework
of penal judgement. Another truth has penetrated the truth
that was required by the legal machinery; a truth which, entangled
with the first, has turned the assertion of guilt into a strange
scientifico-juridical complex. A significant fact is the way in which
the question of madness has evolved in penal practice. According
to the 1810 code, madness was dealt with only in terms of article 64.
Now this article states that there is neither crime nor offence if the
offender was of unsound mind at the time of the act. The possibility
of ascertaining madness was, therefore, a quite separate matter from
the definition of an act as a crime; the gravity of the act was not
19
Torture
altered by the fact that its author was insane, nor the punishment
reduced as a consequence; the crime itself disappeared. It was impossible,
therefore, to declare that someone was both guilty and
mad; once the diagnosis of madness had been accepted, it could not
be included in the judgement; it interrupted the procedure and
loosened the hold of the law on the author of the act. Not only the
examination of the criminal suspected of insanity, but the very
effects of this examination had to be external and anterior to the
sentence. But, very soon, the courts of the nineteenth century began
to misunderstand the meaning of article 64. Despite several decisions
of the supreme court of appeal confirming that insanity could not
result either in a light penalty, or even in an acquittal, but required
that the case be dismissed, the ordinary courts continued to bring
the question of insanity to bear on their verdicts. They accepted
that one could be both guilty and mad; less guilty the madder one
was; guilty certainly, but someone to be put away and treated rather
than punished; not only a guilty man, but also dangerous, since
quite obviously sick, etc. From the point of view of the penal code,
the result was a mass ofjuridical absurdities. But this was the starting
point of an evolution that jurisprudence and legislation itself was to
precipitate in the course of the next 150 years: already the reform
of 1832, introducing attenuating circumstances, made it possible to
modify the sentence according to the supposed degrees of an illness
or the forms of a semi-insanity. And the practice of calling on
psychiatric expertise, which is widespread in the assize courts and
sometimes extended to courts of summary jurisdiction, means that
the sentence, even if it is always formulated in terms of legal punishment,
implies, more or less obscurely, judgements of normality,
attributions of causality, assessments of possible changes, anticipations
as to the offender's future. It would be wrong to say that all
these operations give substance to a judgement from the outside;
they are directly integrated in the process of forming the sentence.
Instead of insanity eliminating the crime according to the original
meaning of article 64, every crime and even every offence now
carries within it, as a legitimate suspicion, but also as a right that may
be claimed, the hypothesis of insanity, in any case of anomaly. And
the sentence that condemns or acquits is not simply a judgement of
guilt, a legal decision that lays down punishment; it bears within it
20
The body of the condemned
an assessment of normality and a technical prescription for a possible
normalization. Today the judge - magistrate or juror - certainly does
more than ‘judge*.
And he is not alone in judging. Throughout the penal procedure
and the implementation of the sentence there swarms a whole
series of subsidiary authorities. Small-scale legal systems and
parallel judges have multiplied around the principal judgement:
psychiatric or psychological experts, magistrates concerned with
the implementation of sentences, educationalists, members of the
prison service, all fragment the legal power to punish; it might be
objected that none of them really shares the right to judge; that some,
after sentence is passed, have no other right than to implement the
punishment laid down by the court and, above all, that others - the
experts - intervene before the sentence not to pass judgement, but
to assist the judges in their decision. But as soon as the penalties and
the security measures defined by the court are not absolutely determined,
from the moment they may be modified along the way,
from the moment one leaves to others than the judges of the offence
the task of deciding whether the condemned man ‘deserves' to be
placed in semi-liberty or conditional liberty, whether they may
bring his penal tutelage to an end, one is handing over to them
mechanisms of legal punishment to be used at their discretion:
subsidiary judges they may be, but they are judges all the same.
The whole machinery that has been developing for years around
the implementation of sentences, and their adjustment to individuals,
creates a proliferation of the authorities of judicial decision-making
and extends its powers of decision well beyond the sentence. The
psychiatric experts, for their part, may well refrain from judging.
Let us examine the three questions to which, since the 1958 ruling,
they have to address themselves: Does the convicted person represent
a danger to society? Is he susceptible to penal punishment? Is he
curable or readjustable? These questions have nothing to do with
article 64, nor with the possible insanity of the convicted person at
the moment of the act. They do not concern ‘responsibility'. They
concern nothing but the administration of the penalty, its necessity,
its usefulness, its possible effectiveness; they make it possible to
show, in an almost transparent vocabulary, whether the mental hospital
would be a more suitable place of confinement than the prison,
21
Torture
whether this confinement should be short or long, whether medical
treatment or security measures are called for. What, then, is the role
of the psychiatrist in penal matters? He is not an expert in responsibility,
but an adviser on punishment; it is up to him to say whether
the subject is ‘dangerous’, in what way one should be protected
from him, how one should intervene to alter him, whether it would
be better to try to force him into submission or to treat him. At the
very beginning of its history, psychiatric expertise was called upon
to formulate ‘true* propositions as to the part that the liberty of the
offender had played in the act he had committed; it is now called
upon to suggest a prescription for what might be called his ‘medicojudicial
treatment*.
To sum up, ever since the new penal system - that defined by the
great codes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - has been in
operation, a general process has led judges to judge something
other than crimes; they have been led in their sentences to do something
other than judge; and the power of judging has been transferred,
in part, to other authorities than the judges of the offence.
The whole penal operation has taken on extra-juridical elements and
personnel. It will be said that there is nothing extraordinary in this,
that it is part of the destiny of the law to absorb little by little
elements that are alien to it. But what is odd about modern criminal
justice is that, although it has taken on so many extra-juridical
elements, it has done so not in order to be able to define them
juridically and gradually to integrate them into the actual power to
punish: on the contrary, it has done so in order to make them function
within the penal operation as non-juridical elements; in order
to stop this operation being simply a legal punishment; in order to
exculpate the judge from being purely and simply he who punishes.
‘Of course, we pass sentence, but this sentence is not in direct
relation to the crime. It is quite clear that for us it functions as a way
of treating a criminal. We punish, but this is a way of saying that
we wish to obtain a cure/ Today, criminal justice functions and
justifies itself only by this perpetual reference to something other
than itself, by this unceasing reinscription in non-juridical systems.
Its fate is to be redefined by knowledge.
Beneath the increasing leniency of punishment, then, one may
map a displacement of its point of application; and through this
22
The body of the condemned
displacement, a whole field of recent objects, a whole new system of
truth and a mass of roles hitherto unknown in the exercise ofcriminal
justice. A corpus of knowledge, techniques, ‘scientific’ discourses is
formed and becomes entangled with the practice of the power to
punish.
This book is intended as a correlative history of the modern soul
and of a new power to judge; a genealogy of the present scientificolegal
complex from which the power to punish derives its bases,
justifications and rules, from which it extends its effects and by which
it masks its exorbitant singularity.
But from what point can such a history of the modern soul on
trial be written? If one confined oneself to the evolution of legislation
or of penal procedures, one would run the risk of allowing a
change in the collective sensibility, an increase in humanization or
the development of the human sciences to emerge as a massive,
external, inert and primary fact. By studying only the general social
forms, as Durkheim did (cf. Bibliography), one runs the risk of
positing as the principle of greater leniency in punishment processes
of individualization that are rather one of the effects of the
new tactics of power, among which are to be included the new penal
mechanisms. This study obeys four general rules:
1. Do not concentrate the study of the punitive mechanisms on
their ‘repressive’ effects alone, on their ‘punishment’ aspects alone,
but situate them in a whole series of their possible positive effects,
even if these seem marginal at first sight. As a consequence, regard
punishment as a complex social function.
2. Analyse punitive methods not simply as consequences of
legislation or as indicators of social structures, but as techniques
possessing their own specificity in the more general field of other
ways of exercising power. Regard punishment as a political tactic.
3* Instead of treating the history of penal law and the history of
the human sciences as two separate series whose overlapping appears
to have had on one or the other, or perhaps on both, a disturbing
or useful effect, according to one’s point of view, see whether there
is not some common matrix or whether they do not both derive
from a single process of ‘epistemologico-juridical’ formation; in
short, make the technology of power the very principle both of the
humanization of the penal system and of the knowledge of man.
23
Torture
4. Try to discover whether this entry of the soul on to the sceneof
penal justice, and with it the insertion in legal practice of a whole
corpus of ‘scientific' knowledge, is not the effect of a transformation
of the way in which the body itself is invested by power relations.
In short, try to study the metamorphosis of punitive methods on
the basis of a political technology of the body in which might be
read a common history of power relations and object relations.
Thus, by an analysis of penal leniency as a technique of power,
one might understand both how man, the soul, the normal or
abnormal individual have come to duplicate crime as objects of
penal intervention; and in what way a specific mode of subjection
was able to give birth to man as an object of knowledge for a discourse
with a ‘scientific' status.
But I am not claiming to be the first to have worked in this
direction.1
Rusche and Kirchheimer's great work, Punishment and Social
Structures, provides a number of essential reference points. We must
first rid ourselves of the illusion that penality is above all (if not
exclusively) a means of reducing crime and that, in this role, according
to the social forms, the political systems or beliefs, it may be
severe or lenient, tend towards expiation of obtaining redress, towards
the pursuit of individuals or the attribution of collective
responsibility. We must analyse rather the ‘concrete systems of
punishment', study them as social phenomena that cannot be
accounted for by the juridical structure of society alone, nor by its
fundamental ethical choices; we must situate them in their field of
operation, in which the punishment of crime is not the sole element;
we must show that punitive measures are not simply ‘negative'
mechanisms that make it possible to repress, to prevent, to exclude,
to eliminate; but that they are linked to a whole series of positive
and useful effects which it is their task to support (and, in this sense,
although legal punishment is carried out in order to punish offences,
one might say that the definition of offences and their prosecution
are carried out in turn in order to maintain the punitive mechanisms
and their functions). From this point of view, Rusche and Kirchheimer
relate the different systems of punishment with the systems
of production within which they operate: thus, in a slave economy,
24
The body of the condemned
punitive mechanisms serve to provide an additional labour force and
to constitute a body o f‘civil’ slaves in addition to those provided
by war or trading; with feudalism, at a time when money and production
were still at an early stage of development, we find a sudden
increase in corporal punishments - the body being in most cases the
only property accessible; the penitentiary (the Hopital General, the
Spinhuis or the Rasphuis), forced labour and the prison factory
appear with the development of the mercantile economy. But the
industrial system requires a free market in labour and, in the nineteenth
century, the role of forced labour in the mechanisms of
punishment diminishes accordingly and ‘corrective5detention takes
its place. There are no doubt a number of observations to be made
about such a strict correlation.
But we can surely accept the general proposition that, in our
societies, the systems of punishment are to be situated in a certain
‘political economy’ of the body: even if they do not make use of
violent or bloody punishment, even when they use ‘lenient’ methods
involving confinement or correction, it is always the body that is at
issue - the body and its forces, their utility and their docility, their
distribution and their submission. It is certainly legitimate to write
a history of punishment against the background of moral ideas or
legal structures. But can one write such a history against the background
of a history of bodies, when such systems of punishment
claim to have only the secret souls of criminals as their objective?
Historians long ago began to write the history of the body. They
have studied the body in the field of historical demography or
pathology; they have considered it as the seat of needs and appetites,
as the locus of physiological processes and metabolisms, as a target
for the attacks of germs or viruses; they have shown to what extent
historical processes were involved in what might seem to be the
purely biological base of existence; and what place should be given
in the history of society to biological ‘events’ such as the circulation
of bacilli, or the extension of the life-span (cf. Le Roy-Ladurie).
But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power
relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it,
train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies,
to emit signs. This political investment of the body is bound up,
in accordance with complex reciprocal relations, with its economic
25
Torture
use; it is largely as a force of production that the body is invested
with relations of power and domination; but, on the other hand, its
constitution as labour power is possible only if it is caught up in a
system of subjection (in which need is also a political instrument
meticulously prepared, calculated and used); the body becomes a
useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body.
This subjection is not only obtained by the instruments of violence
or ideology; it can also be direct, physical, pitting force against
force, bearing on material elements, and yet without involving
violence; it may be calculated, organized, technically thought out;
it may be subtle, make use neither of weapons nor of terror and yet
remain of a physical order. That is to say, there may be a ‘knowledge*
of the body that is not exactly the science of its functioning, and a
mastery of its forces that is more than the ability to conquer them:
this knowledge and this mastery constitute what might be called the
political technology of the body. O f course, this technology is
diffuse, rarely formulated in continuous, systematic discourse; it is
often made up of bits and pieces; it implements a disparate set of
tools or methods. In spite of the coherence of its results, it is
generally no more than a multiform instrumentation. Moreover, it
cannot be localized in a particular type of institution or state
apparatus. For they have recourse to it; they use, select or impose
certain of its methods. But, in its mechanisms and its effects, it is
situated at a quite different level. What the apparatuses and institutions
operate is, in a sense, a micro-physics of power, whose field
of validity is situated in a sense between these great functionings
and the bodies themselves with their materiality and their forces.
Now, the study of this micro-physics presupposes that the power
exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a
strategy, that its effects of domination are attributed not to ‘appropriation*,
but to dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques,
functionings; that one should decipher in it a network of relations,
constantly in tension, in activity, rather than a privilege that one
might possess; that one should take as its model a perpetual battle
rather than a contract regulating a transaction or the conquest of a
territory. In short this power is exercised rather than possessed;
it is not the ‘privilege’, acquired or preserved, of the dominant
class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions - an effect that
26
The body of the condemned
is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of those who
are dominated. Furthermore, this power is not exercised simply as
an obligation or a prohibition on those who ‘do not have it’; it
invests them, is transmitted by them and through them; it exerts
pressure upon them, just as they themselves, in their struggle against
it, resist the grip it has on them. This means that these relations go
right down into the depths of society, that they are not localized in
the relations between the state and its citizens or on the frontier
between classes and that they do not merely reproduce, at the level
of individuals, bodies, gestures and behaviour, the general form of
the law or government; that, although there is continuity (they are
indeed articulated on this form through a whole series of complex
mechanisms), there is neither analogy nor homology, but a specificity
of mechanism and modality. Lastly, they are not univocal; they
define innumerable points of confrontation, focuses of instability,
each of which has its own risks of conflict, of struggles, and of an
at least temporary inversion of the power relations. The overthrow
of these 'micro-powers’ does not, then, obey the law of all or
nothing; it is not acquired once and for all by a new control of the
apparatuses nor by a new functioning or a destruction of the institutions;
on the other hand, none of its localized episodes may be
inscribed in history except by the effects that it induces on the entire
network in which it is caught up.
Perhaps, too, we should abandon a whole tradition that allows
us to imagine that knowledge can exist only where the power relations
are suspended and that knowledge can develop only outside its
injunctions, its demands and its interests. Perhaps we should abandon
the belief that power makes mad and that, by the same token,
the renunciation of power is one of the conditions of knowledge.
We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not
simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it
because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one
another; that there is no power relation without the correlative
constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does
not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.
These *power-knowledge relations' are to be analysed, therefore,
not on the basis of a subject of knowledge who is or is not free in
relation to the power system, but, on the contrary, the subject who
27
Torture
knows, the objects to be known and the modalities of knowledge
must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental implications
of power-knowledge and their historical transformations. In
short, it is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces
a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but
power-knowledge, the processes and struggles that traverse it and
of which it is made up, that determines the forms and possible
domains of knowledge.
To analyse the political investment of the body and the microphysics
of power presupposes, therefore, that one abandons —where
power is concerned - the violence-ideology opposition, the metaphor
of property, the model of the contract or of conquest; that where
knowledge is concerned — one abandons the opposition
between what is ‘interested' and what is ‘disinterested*, the model of
knowledge and the primacy of the subject. Borrowing a word from
Petty and his contemporaries, but giving it a different meaning from
the one current in the seventeenth century, one might imagine a
political ‘anatomy'. This would not be the study ofa state in terms of
a ‘body* (with its elements, its resources and its forces), nor would
it be the study of the body and its surroundings in terms of a small
state. One would be concerned with the ‘body politic*, as a set of
material elements and techniques that serve as weapons, relays,
communication routes and supports for the power and knowledge
relations that invest human bodies and subjugate them by turning
them into objects of knowledge.
It is a question of situating the techniques of punishment whether
they seize the body in the ritual of public torture and
execution or whether they are addressed to the soul - in the history
of this body politic; of considering penal practices less as a consequence
of legal theories than as a chapter of political anatomy.
Kantorowitz gives a remarkable analysis of ‘The King’s Body':
a double body according to the juridical theology of the Middle
Ages, since it involves not only the transitory element that is born
and dies,' but another that remains unchanged by time and is maintained
as the physical yet intangible support of the kingdom;
around this duality, which was originally close to the Christological
model, are organized an iconography, a political theory ofmonarchy,
legal mechanisms that distinguish between as well as link the person
28
The body of the condemned
of the king and the demands of the Crown, and a whole ritual that
reaches its height in the coronation, the funeral and the ceremonies
of submission* At the opposite pole one might imagine placing the
body of the condemned man; he, too, has his legal status; he gives
rise to his own ceremonial and he calls forth a whole theoretical
discourse, not in order to ground the ‘surplus power* possessed by
the person of the sovereign, but in order to code the ‘lack of power’
with which those subjected to punishment are marked. In the darkest
region of the political field the condemned man represents the symmetrical,
inverted figure of the king. We should analyse what might
be called, in homage to Kantorowitz, ‘the least body of the condemned
man’.
If the surplus power possessed by the king gives rise to the
duplication of his body, has not the surplus power exercised on the
subjected body of the condemned man given rise to another type of
duplication? That of a ‘non-corporal’, a ‘soul', as Mably called it.
The history of this ‘micro-physics' of the punitive power would then
be a genealogy or an element in a genealogy of the modern ‘soul’.
Rather than seeing this soul as the reactivated remnants of an ideology,
one would see it as the present correlative of a certain technology
of power over the body. It would be wrong to say that the
soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it exists,
it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the
body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those
punished - and, in a more general way, on those one supervises,
trains and corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school,
the colonized, over those who are stuck at a machine and supervised
for the rest of their lives. This is the historical reality of this soul,
which, unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, is not
born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of
methods of punishment, supervision and constraint. This real, noncorporal
soul is not a substance; it is the element in which are
articulated the effects of a certain type of power and the reference
of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which the power
relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and knowledge
extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this realityreference,
various concepts have been constructed and domains of
analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness,
*9
T orture
etc.; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses,
and the moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding:
it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical
reflection or technical intervention, has been substituted
for the soul, the illusion of the theologians. The man described for
us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a
subjection much more profound than himself. A ‘souF inhabits him
and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery
that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and
instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.
That punishment in general and the prison in particular belong
to a political technology of the body is a lesson that I have learnt
not so much from history as from the present. In recent years,
prison revolts have occurred throughout the world. There was certainly
something paradoxical about their aims, their slogans and the
way they took place. They were revolts against an entire state of
physical misery that is over a century old: against cold, suffocation
and overcrowding, against decrepit walls, hunger, physical maltreatment.
But they were also revolts against model prisons, tranquillizers,
isolation, the medical or educational services. Were they
revolts whose aims were merely material? Or contradictory revolts:
against the obsolete, but also against comfort; against the warders,
but also against the psychiatrists? In fact, all these movements - and
the innumerable discourses that the prison has given rise to since
the early nineteenth century - have been about the body and
material things. What has sustained these discourses, these memories
and invectives are indeed those minute material details. One
may, if one is so disposed, see them as no more than blind demands
or suspect the existence behind them of alien strategies. In fact, they
were revolts, at the level of the body, against the very body of the
prison. What was at issue was not whether the prison environment
was too harsh or too aseptic, too primitive or too efficient, but its
very materiality as an instrument and vector of power; it is this
whole technology of power over the body that the technology of
the ‘soul’ - that of the educationalists, psychologists and psychiatrists
- fails either to conceal or to compensate, for the simple reason
that it is one of its tools. I would like to write the history of this
3°
The body of the condemned
prison, with all the political investments of the body that it gathers
together in its closed architecture. Why? Simply because I am
interested in the past? No, if one means by that writing a history of
the past in terms of the present. Yes, if one means writing the
history of the present.3
3*
2. The spectacle of the scaffold
The ordinance of 1670 regulated the general forms of penal practice
up to the Revolution. It laid down the following hierarchy of
penalties: ‘Death, judicial torture pending proof, penal servitude,
flogging, amende honorable, banishment/ A high proportion of
physical punishment. Customs, the nature of the crimes, the status
of the condemned accounted for still more variations. ‘Capital
punishment comprises many kinds of death: some prisoners may be
condemned to be hanged, others to having their hands cut off or
their tongues cut out or pierced and then to be hanged; others, for
more serious crimes, to be broken alive and to die on the wheel,
after having their limbs broken; others to be broken until they die
a natural death, others to be strangled and then broken, others to
be burnt alive, others to be burnt after first being strangled; others
to be drawn by four horses, others to have their heads cut off, and
others to have their heads broken* (Soulatges, 169-71). And Soulatges
adds, almost in passing, that there are also lighter penalties
not mentioned by the ordinance: satisfaction to the injured party,
warning, reprimand, a short period of imprisonment, prohibition
from entering a certain area and, lastly, pecuniary punishments fines
or confiscation.
But we must not be misled. There was a considerable gap between
this arsenal of horrors and everyday penal practice. Public torture
and execution was by no means the most frequent form of punishment.
To us today the proportion of death sentences in the penal
practice of the classical age may seem high: at the Chatelet1 during
the period 1755-85 under 10 per cent of the sentences passed involved
capital punishment: the wheel, the gallows or the stake
(Petrovitch, 226S); the Parlement of Flanders passed thirty-nine
death sentences, out of a total of 260 sentences, between 1721 and
32
The spectacle of the scaffold
1730 (and twenty-six out of 500 between 1781 and 1790 - cf.
Dautricourt). But it must not be forgotten that the courts found
many ways of relaxing the rigours of the penal system, either by
refusing to prosecute offences that were too heavily punished or by
modifying the definition of the crime; sometimes too the royal
power indicated that some particularly severe ordinance was not to
be applied too strictly (which was how Choiseul dealt with the
declaration of 3 August 1744 on vagabonds - Choiseul, 128-9).
In any case, the majority of the sentences involved banishment or
fines: in a court such as that of the Chatelet (which dealt only with
relatively serious offences), banishment represented over half the
sentences passed between 1755 anc* 1785. But many of these noncorporal
penalties were accompanied by additional penalties that
involved a degree of torture: public exhibition, pillory, carcan,
flogging, branding; this was the case for all sentences to the ‘galleys'
or to what was the equivalent for women - reclusion in the hospital;
banishment was often preceded by public exhibition and branding;
fines were sometimes accompanied by flogging. It was not only in
the great solemn executions, but also in this additional form of
punishment, that torture revealed the significant part it played in
penality: every penalty of a certain seriousness had to involve an
element of torture, of supplice. '
What is a supplice? ‘Corporal punishment, painful to a more or
less horrible degree,’ said Jaucourt in his Encyclopedic article and
added: ‘It is an inexplicable phenomenon that the extension of
man’s imagination creates out of the barbarous and the cruel.'
Inexplicable, perhaps, but certainly neither irregular nor primitive.
Torture is a technique; it is not an extreme expression of lawless
rage. To be torture, punishment must obey three principal criteria;
first, it must produce a certain degree of pain, which may be measured
exactly, or at least calculated, compared and hierarchized;
death is a torture in so far as it is not simply a withdrawal of the
right to live, but is the occasion and the culmination of a calculated
gradation of pain: from decapitation (which reduces all pain to a
single gesture, performed in a single moment - the zero degree of
torture), through hanging, the stake and the wheel (all of which
prolong the agony), to quartering, which carries pain almost
to infinity; death-torture is the art of maintaining life in pain, by
33
Torture
subdividing it into a ‘thousand deaths', by achieving before life
ceases ‘the most exquisite agonies' (cf. Ollyffe). Torture rests on a
whole quantitative art of pain. But there is more to it: this production
of pain is regulated. Torture correlates the type ofcorporal effect, the
quality, intensity, duration of pain, with the gravity of the crime,
the person of the criminal, the rank of his victims. There is a legal
code of pain; when it involves torture, punishment does not fall
upon the body indiscriminately or equally; it is calculated according
to detailed rules: the number of lashes of the whip, the positioning
of the branding iron, the duration of the death agony on the stake
or the wheel (the court decides whether the criminal is to be
strangled at once or allowed to die slowly,, and the points at which
this gesture of pity must occur), the type of mutilation to be used
(hand cut off, lips or tongue pierced). All these various elements
multiply the punishments and are combined according to the court
and the crime. ‘The poetry of Dante put into laws,’ was how Rossi
described it; a long course in physico-penal knowledge, in any case.
Furthermore, torture forms part of a ritual. It is an element in the
liturgy of punishment and meets two demands. It must mark the
victim: it is intended, either by the scar it leaves on the body, or by
the spectacle that accompanies it, to brand the victim with infamy;
even if its function is to ‘purge' the crime, torture does not reconcile;
it traces around or, rather, on the very body of the condemned
man signs that must not be effaced; in any case, men will remember
public exhibition, the pillory, torture and pain duly observed. And,
from the point of view of the law that imposes it, public torture and
execution must be spectacular, it must be seen by all almost as its
triumph. The very excess of the violence employed is one of the
elements of its glory: the fact that the guilty man should moan and
cry out under the blows is not a shameful side-effect, it is the very
ceremonial of justice being expressed in all its force. Hence no doubt
those tortures that take place even after death: corpses burnt, ashes
thrown to the winds, bodies dragged on hurdles and exhibited at
the roadside. Justice pursues the body beyond all possible pain.
The term ‘penal torture' does not cover any corporal punishment:
it is a differentiated production of pain, an organized ritual for the
marking of victims and the expression of the power that punishes;
not the expression of a legal system driven to exasperation and,
34
The spectacle of the scaffold
forgetting its principles, losing all restraint. In the ‘excesses’ of
torture, a whole economy of power is invested.
The tortured body is first inscribed in the legal ceremonial that
must produce, open for all to see, the truth of the crime.
In France, as in most European countries, with the notable
exception of England, the entire criminal procedure, right up to the
sentence, remained secret: that is to say, opaque, not only to the
public but also to the accused himself. It took place without him,
or at least without his having any knowledge either of the charges
or of the evidence. In the order of criminal justice, knowledge was
the absolute privilege of the prosecution. The preliminary investigation
was carried out ‘as diligently and secretly as may be’, as the edict
of 1498 put it. According to the ordinance of 1670, which confirmed
and, on certain points, reinforced the severity of the preceding
period, it was impossible for the accused to have access to the documents
of the case, impossible to know the identity of his accusers,
impossible to know the nature of the evidence before objecting to
witnesses, impossible to make use, until the last moments of the
trial, of the documents in proof, impossible to have a lawyer, either
to ensure the proper conduct of the case, or to take part, on the
main issue, in the defence. The magistrate, for his part, had the
right to accept anonymous denunciations, to conceal from the accused
the nature of the action, to question him with a view to
catching him out, to use insinuations. (Up to the eighteenth century,
lengthy arguments took place as to whether, in the course of
‘captious* questioning, it was lawful for the judge to use false
promises, lies, words with double meaning - a whole casuistry of
legal bad faith.) The magistrate constituted, in solitary omnipotence,
a truth by which he invested the accused; and the judges received
this truth ready made, in the form of documents and written statements;
for them, these factors alone were proof; they met the
accused only once in order to question him before passing sentence.
The secret and written form of the procedure reflects the principle
that in criminal matters the establishment of truth was the absolute
right and the exclusive power of the sovereign and his judges.
Ayrault supposed that this procedure (which was more or less
established by the sixteenth century) originated in ‘the fear of the
35
Torture
uproar, shouting and cheering that the people usually indulge in,
the fear that there would be disorder, violence, and outbursts against
the parties, or even against the judges’; the king wished to show in
this that the ‘sovereign power’ from which the right to punish
derived could in no case belong to the ‘multitude’ (cf. Ayrault,
LIII, chapters LXXII and LXIX). Before the justice of the sovereign,
all voices must be still.
Yet, despite the use of secrecy, certain rules had to be obeyed in
establishing the truth. Secrecy itself required that a rigorous model
of penal truth be defined. A whole tradition dating from the Middle
Ages and considerably developed by the great lawyers of the
Renaissance laid down what the nature and the use of evidence
might be. Even in the eighteenth century, it was still common to
meet distinctions like the following: true, direct, or legitimate proof
(that provided by witnesses, for example) and indirect, conjectural,
artificial proof (obtained by argument); or, again, manifest proof,
considerable proof, imperfect or slight (Jousse, 660); or, again,
‘urgent or necessary’ proof that did not allow one to doubt the
truth of the deed (this was ‘full’ proof: thus two irreproachable witnesses
affirming that they saw the accused, carrying an unsheathed
and bloody sword, leave the place where, some time later, the body
of the dead man was found with stab wounds); approximate or semifull
proof, which may be regarded as true as long as the accused does
not destroy it with evidence to the contrary (the evidence of a single
eye-witness or death threats preceding a murder); lastly, distant or
‘adminicule clues, which consisted only of opinion (rumour, the
flight of the suspect, his manner when questioned, etc. - Muyart de
Vouglans, 1757, 345-7)- Now, these distinctions are not simply
theoretical subtleties. They have an operational function. First,
because each of these kinds of evidence, taken in isolation, may have
a particular type of judicial effect: ‘full’ proof may lead to any
sentence; ‘semi-full’ proof may lead to any of the ‘peines afflictives\
or heavy penalties, except death; imperfect and slight clues are
enough for the suspect to have a writ issued against him, to have
the case deferred for further inquiry or to have a fine imposed on
him. Secondly, because they are combined according to precise
arithmetical rules: two ‘semi-full’ proofs may make acomplete proof;
<'adminicules\ providing there are several of them and they concur,
36
The spectacle of the scaffold
may be combined to form a semi-proof; but, however many there
may be of them, they can never, of themselves, constitute a complete
proof. We have, then, a penal arithmetic that is meticulous on many
points, but which still leaves a margin for a good deal ofargument: in
order for a capital sentence to be passed, is a single full proof enough
or must it be accompanied by other slighter clues? Are two approximate
proofs always equivalent to a full proof? Should not three be
required or two plus distant clues? Are there elements that may be
regarded as clues only for certain crimes, in certain circumstances
and in relation to certain persons (thus evidence is disregarded if it
comes from a vagabond; it is reinforced, on the contrary, if it is
provided by ‘a considerable person* or by a master in the case of a
domestic offence). It is an arithmetic modulated by casuistry, whose
function is to define how a legal proof is to be constructed/ On the
one hand, this system of ‘legal proofs’ makes truth in the penal
domain the result of a complex art; it obeys rules known only to
specialists, and, consequently, it reinforces the principle of secrecy.
‘It is not enough that the judge should have the conviction that any
reasonable man may have. . . Nothing is more incorrect than this
way ofjudging, which, in truth, is no other than a more or less wellfounded
opinion.* But, on the other hand, it is a severe constraint
for the magistrate; in the absence of this regularity, ‘every sentence
would be reckless, and in a sense it may be said that it is unjust even
when, in truth, the accused is guilty* (Poullain du Parc, 1 12-13 - see
also Esmein, 260-83 and Mittermaier, 15-19). The day will come
when the singularity of this judicial truth will appear scandalous:
as if the law did not have to obey the rules of common truth, ‘What
would be said of a semi-proof in the sciences capable of demonstration?
What would a geometrical or algebraic semi-proof amount
to?* (Seigneux de Correvon, 63). But it should not be forgotten
that these formal constraints on legal proof were a mode of regulation
internal to absolute power and exclusive of knowledge.
Written, secret, subjected, in order to construct its proofs, to
rigorous rules, the penal investigation was a machine that might
produce the truth in the absence of the accused. And by this very
fact, though the law strictly speaking did not require it, this procedure
was to tend necessarily to the confession. And for two
reasons: first, because the confession constituted so strong a proof
37
T orture
that there was scarcely any need to add others, or to enter the difficult
and dubious combinatory of clues; the confession, provided it
was obtained in the correct manner, almost discharged the prosecution
of the obligation to provide further evidence (in any case, the
most difficult evidence). Secondly, the only way that this procedure
might use all its unequivocal authority, and become a real victory
over the accused, the only way in which the truth might exert all its
power, was for the criminal to accept responsibility for his own
crime and himself sign what had been skilfully and obscurely
constructed by the preliminary investigation. ‘It is not enough’, as
Ayrault, who did not care for these secret procedures, remarked,
‘that wrong-doers be justly punished. They must if possible judge
and condemn themselves’ (Ayrault, i. I, chapter 14). Within the
crime reconstituted by writing, the criminal who confessed came to
play the role of living truth. The confession, an act of the criminal,
responsible and speaking subject, was the complement to the written,
secret preliminary investigation. Hence the importance that all this
procedure of an inquisitorial type accorded to the confession.
Hence, too, the ambiguities of its role. On the one hand, an
attempt was made to introduce it into the general arithmetic of
evidence; it was stressed that it was no more than one proof among
many. It was not the evidentia ret; nor was it the strongest of the
proofs, it was not in itself enough to bring conviction, it had to be
accompanied by additional, circumstantial evidence; for it is a wellknown
fact that the accused sometimes declare themselves to be
guilty ofcrimes that they have not committed; the examining magistrate
had therefore to carry out additional investigations if he
possessed no more than the confession of the accused. But, on the
other hand, the confession had priority over any other kind of
evidence. To a certain extent, it transcended all other evidence; an
element in the calculation of the truth, it was also the act by which
the accused accepted the charge and recognized its truth; it transformed
an investigation carried out without him into a voluntary
affirmation. Through the confession, the accused himself took part
in the ritual of producing penal truth. As medieval law put it, the
confession ‘renders the thing notorious and manifest’. To this first
ambiguity was added a second: as a particularly strong proof,
requiring for a conviction only a few additional clues, thus reducing
38
The spectacle of the scaffold
to the minimum the work of investigation and the mechanics of
demonstration, the confession was therefore highly valued; every
possible coercion would be used to obtain it. But, although it had
to be, in the procedure, the living and oral counterpart of the
written preliminary investigation, although it had to be its reply,
its authentication, as it were, on the part of the accused, it had to be
surrounded by guarantees and formalities. It preserved something
of a transaction: that is why it had to be ‘spontaneous1, why it had
to be formulated before the competent court, why it had to be made
in full consciousness, why it should not concern impossible things,
etc.2Through the confession, the accused committed himself to the
procedure; he signed the truth of the preliminary investigation.
This double ambiguity of the confession (an element of proof and
the counterpart of preliminary investigation; the effect of constraint
and a semi-voluntary transaction) explains the two great means used
by classical criminal law to obtain it: the oath that the accused was
asked to make before his interrogatory (and therefore under threat
of perjury before both human and divine justice; and, at the same
time, a ritual act of commitment); judicial torture (physical violence
to obtain truth, which, in any case, had then to be repeated before
the judges, as a ‘spontaneous’ confession, if it were to constitute
proof). At the end of the eighteenth century, torture was to be
denounced as a survival of the barbarities of another age: the mark
of a savagery that was denounced as ‘Gothic’. It is true that the
practice of torture is of ancient origin: it goes back at least as far
as the Inquisition, of course, and probably to the torture of slaves.
But it did not figure in classical law as a survival or defect. It occupied
a strict place in a complex penal mechanism, in which the
procedure of an inquisitorial type was reinforced with elements of
the accusatory system; in which the written demonstration required
an oral correlative; in which the techniques of proof administered
by the magistrates were mingled with the methods of the ordeal to
which the accused was challenged; in which he was called upon - if
necessary by the most violent persuasion - to play the role of
voluntary partner in the procedure; in which it was a question, in
short, of producing truth by a mechanism consisting of two elements
- that of the investigation carried out in secret by the judicial
authority and that of the act ritually performed by the accused. The
39
Torture
body of the accused, the speaking and, if necessary, suffering body,
assured the interlocking of these two mechanisms; that is why,
until the classical system of punishment was re-examined from top
to bottom, there were so few radical criticisms of torture (the most
famous being Nicolas’s Si la torture est un moyen a verifier les crimes
of 1682). Much more frequent were simple recommendations of
prudence: ‘Judicial torture is a dangerous means of arriving at
knowledge of the truth; that is why judges must not resort to it without
due consideration. Nothing is more equivocal. There are guilty
men who have enough firmness to hide a true crime... and innocent
victims who are made to confess crimes of which they were not
guilty’ (Ferriere, 612).
On this basis one may see the functioning of judicial torture, or
interrogation under torture, as a torture of the truth. To begin with,
judicial torture was not a way of obtaining the truth at all costs; it
was not the unrestrained torture of modern interrogations; it was
certainly cruel, but it was not savage. It was a regulated practice,
obeying a well-defined procedure; the various stages, their duration,
the instruments used, the length of ropes and the heaviness of the
weights used, the number of interventions made by the interrogating
magistrate, all this was, according to the different local practices,
carefully codified. (In 1729, Aguesseau ordered an investigation into
the means and rules of torture used in France. For a summary of the
findings, cf. Joly de Fleury, 322-8.) Torture was a strict judicial
game. And, as such, it was linked to the old tests or trials - ordeals,
judicial duels, judgements of God - that were practised in accusatory
procedures long before the techniques of the Inquisition. Something
of the joust survived, between the judge who ordered the judicial
torture and the suspect who was tortured; the ‘patient’ - this is the
term used to designate the victim - was subjected to a series of trials,
graduated in severity, in which he succeeded if he ‘held out’, or
failed if he confessed. (The first degree of torture was the sight of
the instruments. In the case of children or of persons over the age
of seventy, one did not go beyond this stage.) But the examining
magistrate did not employ torture without himself taking certain
risks (apart, that is, from the danger of causing the suspect’s death);
he had a stake in the game, namely, the evidence that he had already
collected; for the rule was that if the accused ‘held out* and did not
40
The spectacle of the scaffold
confess, the magistrate was forced to drop the charges. The tortured
man had then won. Hence the custom, which had been introduced
for the most serious cases, of imposing judicial torture ‘pending
proof’: in this case the magistrate could continue with his investigation
after the torture had failed; the suspect was not declared
innocent by his resistance; but at least his victory saved him from
being condemned to death. The judge kept all his cards, except the
principal one. Omnia citra mortem. Hence the recommendation
often made to magistrates, in the case of the most serious crimes,
not to subject to judicial torture a suspect against whom the evidence
was sufficiently convincing for, if he managed to resist the torture,
the magistrate would no longer have the right to pass the death
sentence, which he nevertheless deserved; in such a joust, justice
would be the loser: if the evidence was sufficient ‘to condemn such a
guilty person to death’, one should not ‘leave the conviction to
chance and to the outcome of a provisional interrogation that often
leads to nothing; for it is in the interest of public safety to make
examples of grave, horrible and capital crimes’ (Rousseaud de la
Combe, 503).
Beneath an apparently determined, impatient search for truth,
one finds in classical torture the regulated mechanism of an ordeal:
a physical challenge that must' define the truth; if the patient is
guilty, the pains that it imposes are not unjust; but it is also a mark
of exculpation if he is innocent. In the practice of torture, pain,
confrontation and truth were bound together: they worked together
on the patient's body. The search for truth through judicial
torture was certainly a way of obtaining evidence, the most serious
of all - the confession of the guilty person; but it was also the battle,
and this victory of one adversary over the other, that ‘produced'
truth according to a ritual. In torture employed to extract a confession,
there was an element of the investigation; there also was an
element of the duel.
It is as if investigation and punishment had become mixed. And
this is not the least paradoxical thing about it. Judicial torture was
indeed defined as a way of complementing the demonstration when
‘there are not sufficient penalties in the trial5. For it was included
among the penalties; it was a penalty so grave that, in the hierarchy
of punishments, the ordinance of 1760 placed it immediately after
4i
Torture
cteath. How can a penalty be used as a means? one was later to ask.
How can one treat as a punishment what ought to be a method of
demonstration? The reason is to be found in the way in which
criminal justice, in the classical period, operated the production of
truth. The different pieces of evidence did not constitute so many
neutral elements, until such time as they could be gathered together
into a single body of evidence that would bring the final certainty
of guilt. Each piece of evidence aroused a particular degree of
abomination. Guilt did not begin when all the evidence was gathered
together; piece by piece, it was constituted by each of the elements
that made it possible to recognize a guilty person. Thus a semiproof
did not leave the suspect innocent until such time as it was
completed; it made him semi-guilty; slight evidence of a serious
crime marked someone as slightly criminal. In short, penal demonstration
did not obey a dualistic system: true or false; but a
principle of continuous gradation; a degree reached in the demonstration
already formed a degree of guilt and consequently involved
a degree of punishment. The suspect, as such, always deserved a
certain punishment; one could not be the object of suspicion and be
completely innocent. Suspicion implied an element of demonstration
as regards the judge, the mark of a certain degree of guilt as regards
the suspect and a limited form of penalty as regards punishment. A
suspect, who remained a suspect, was not for all that declared innocent,
but was partially punished. When one reached a certain degree
of presumption, one could then legitimately bring into play a
practice that had a dual role: to begin the punishment in pursuance
of the information already collected and to make use of this first
stage of punishment in order to extort the truth that was still missing.
In the eighteenth century, judicial torture functioned in that
strange economy in which the ritual that produced the truth went
side by side with the ritual that imposed the punishment. The body
interrogated in torture constituted the point of application of the
punishment and the locus of extortion of the truth. And just as
presumption was inseparably an element in the investigation and a
fragment of guilt, the regulated pain involved in judicial torture
was a means both of punishment and of investigation.
Now, curiously enough, this interlocking of the two rituals
42
The spectacle of the scaffold
through the body continued, evidence having been confirmed and
sentence passed, in the actual carrying out of the penalty; and the
body of the condemned man was once again an essential element in
the ceremonial of public punishment. It was the task of the guilty
man to bear openly his condemnation and the truth of the crime
that he had committed. His body, displayed, exhibited in procession,
tortured, served as the public support of a procedure that had
hitherto remained in the shade; in him, on him, the sentence had to
be legible for all. This immediate, striking manifestation of the
truth in the public implementation of penalties assumed, in the
eighteenth' century, several aspects.
1. It made the guilty man the herald of his own condemnation.
He was given the task, in a sense, of proclaiming it and thus attesting
to the truth of what he had been charged with: the procession
through the streets, the placard attached to his back, chest or head
as a reminder of the sentence; the halts at various crossroads, the
reading of the sentence, the amende honorable performed at the doors
of churches, in which the condemned man solemnly acknowledged
his crime: ‘Barefoot, wearing a shirt, carrying a torch, kneeling, to
say and to declare that wickedly, horribly, treacherously, he has
committed the most detestable crime, etc/; exhibition at a stake
where his deeds and the sentence were read out; yet another reading
of the sentence at the foot of the scaffold; whether he was to go
simply to the pillory or to the stake and the wheel, the condemned
man published his crime and the justice that had been meted out to
him by bearing them physically on his body.
2. It took up once again the scene of the confession. It duplicated
the forced proclamation of the amende honorable with a
spontaneous, public acknowledgement. It established the public
execution as the moment of truth. These last moments, when the
guilty man no longer has anything to lose, are won for the full light
of truth. After the passing of the sentence, the court could decide
on some new torture to obtain the names of possible accomplices.
It was also recognized that at the very moment he mounted the
scaffold the condemned man could ask for a respite in order to make
new revelations. The public expected this new turn in the course of
truth. Many made use of it in order to gain time, as did Michel
Barbier, found guilty of armed assault: 'He stared impudently at the
43
Torture
scaffold and said that it had certainly not been set up for him, since
he was innocent; he first asked to return to the chamber, where he
beat about the bush for half an hour, still trying to justify himself;
then, when he was sent back to execution, he ascended the scaffold
with a purposeful air, but, when he saw himself undressed and tied
to the cross before being stretched, he asked to go back to the
chamber a second time and there made a full confession of his
crimes and even declared that he was guilty of another murder*
(Hardy, IV, 80). The function of the public torture and execution
was to reveal the truth; and in this respect it continued, in the public
eye, the work of the judicial torture conducted in private. It added
to the conviction the signature of the convicted man. A successful
public execution justified justice, in that it published the truth of the
crime in the very body of the man to be executed. An example of the
good condemned man was Frangois Billiard, a senior postal official,
who murdered his wife in 1772. The executioner wanted to hide
his face to spare him the insults of the crowd: ‘ “This punishment,
which I have merited, has not been inflicted upon me,” he said, “ so
that I should not be seen by the public. „ He was still wearing
mourning dress in honour of his wife. . . He was wearing new
shoes, his hair had been recently curled and powdered, and he had a
countenance so modest and so dignified that those present who
found themselves observing him more closely said that he must be
the most perfect Christian or the greatest of all hypocrites. The
placard that he was wearing on his chest had gone askew, and it was
noticed that he had straightened it himself, no doubt so that people
could read it the more easily’ (Hardy, I, 327). If each of the participants
played his role well, the penal ceremony had the effectiveness
of a long public confession.
3. It pinned the public torture on to the crime itself; it established
from one to the other a series of decipherable relations. It was an
exhibition of the corpse of the condemned man at the scene of his
crime, or at one of the near-by crossroads. The execution was often
carried out at the very place where the crime had been committed as
in the case of the student who, in 1723, had killed several persons
and for whom the presidial court of Nantes decided to set up a
scaffold in front of the inn where he had committed his murders
(Nantes, F.F. 124; cf. Parfouru, XXV). There was the use of
44
The spectacle of the scaffold
‘symbolic* torture in which the forms of the execution referred to
the nature of the crime: the tongues of blasphemers were pierced, the
impure were burnt, the right hand of murderers was cut off; sometimes
the condemned man was made to carry the instrument of his
crime - thus Damiens was made to hold in his guilty right hand the
famous dagger with which he had committed the crime, hand and
dagger being smeared with sulphur and burnt together. As Vico
remarked, this old jurisprudence was ‘an entire poetics'.
There were even some cases of an almost theatrical reproduction
of the crime in the execution of the guilty man —with the same
instruments, the same gestures. Thus justice had the crime reenacted
before the eyes of all, publishing it in its truth and at the
same time annulling it in the death of the guilty man. Even as late
in the eighteenth century as 1772, one finds sentences like the following:
a servant girl at Cambrai, having killed her mistress, was condemned
to be taken to the place of her execution in a cart ‘used to
collect rubbish at the crossroads'; there a gibbet was to be set up
‘at the foot of which will be placed the same chair in which the said
Laleu, her mistress, was sitting at the time of the murder; and having
seated the criminal there, the executioner of the High Court of
Justice will cut off her right hand, throw it in her presence into the
fire, and, immediately afterwards, will strike her four blows with
the cleaver with which she murdered the said Laleu, the first and
second being on the head, the third on the left forearm and the
fourth on the chest; this done, she will be hung and strangled on the
said gibbet until she be dead; and when two hours have elapsed her
dead body will be removed and the head separated from it at the
foot of the said gibbet on the said scaffold, with the same cleaver
she used to murder her mistress, and the same head exhibited
on a pole twenty feet high outside the gates of the said Cambrai,
within reach of the road that leads to Douai, and the rest of the body
put in a sack, and buried near the said pole at a depth of ten feet'
(quoted in Dautricourt, 269-70).
4. Lastly, the slowness of the process of torture and execution,
its sudden dramatic moments, the cries and sufferings of the condemned
man serve as an ultimate proof at the end of the judicial
ritual. Every death agony expresses a certain truth: but, when it
takes place on the scaffold, it does so with more intensity, in that it
45
Torture
is hastened by pain; with more rigour, because it occurs exactly at
the juncture between the judgement of men and the judgement of
God; with more ostentation, because it takes place in public. The
sufferings of the condemned man are an extension of those of the
judicial torture that precedes them; in the judicial torture, however,
the game was not yet over and one could still save one’s life; now
one will die, without any doubt, and it is one's soul that one must
save. The eternal game has already begun: the torture of the execution
anticipates the punishments of the beyond; it shows what they
are; it is the theatre of hell; the cries of the condemned man, his
struggles, his blasphemies, already signify his irremediable destiny.
But the pains here below may also be counted as penitence and so
alleviate the punishments of the beyond: God will not fail to take
such a martyrdom into account, providing it is borne with resignation.
The cruelty of the earthly punishment will be deducted from
the punishment to come: in it is glimpsed the promise of forgiveness.
But, it might be said, are not such terrible sufferings a sign
that God has abandoned the guilty man to the mercy of his fellow
creatures? And, far from securing future absolution, do they not
prefigure imminent damnation; so that, if the condemned man dies
quickly, without a prolonged agony, is it not proof that God wishes
to protect him and to prevent him from falling into despair? There
is, therefore, an ambiguity in this suffering that may signify equally
well the truth of the crime or the error of the judges, the goodness
or the evil of the criminal, the coincidence or the divergence between
the judgement ofmen and that of God. Hence the insatiable curiosity
that drove the spectators to the scaffold to witness the spectacle of
sufferings truly endured; there one could decipher crime and innocence,
the past and the future, the here below and the eternal. It was
a moment of truth that all the spectators questioned: each word, each
cry, the duration of the agony, the resisting body, the life that clung
desperately to it, all this constituted a sign. There was the man who
survived ‘six hours on the wheel, and did not want the executioner,
who consoled and heartened him no doubt as best he could, to leave
him for a moment'; there was the man who died ‘with true Christian
feeling, and who manifested the most sincere repentance’; the man
who ‘expired on the wheel an hour after being put there; it is said
that the spectators of his torture were moved by the outward signs
46
The spectacle of the scaffold
of religion and repentance that he gave’; the man who had shown
the most marked signs of contrition throughout the journey to the
scaffold, but who, when placed alive on the wheel, 'did not cease
to let forth the most horrible cries’; or again the woman who ‘had
preserved her calm up to the moment when the sentence was read,
but whose wits then began to turn; she was quite mad by the time
she was hanged’ (Hardy, I, 13; IV, 42; V, 134).
We have come full circle: from the judicial torture to the execution,
the body has produced and reproduced the truth of the crime
-or rather it constitutes the element which, through a whole set of
rituals and trials, confesses that the crime took place, admits that the
accused did indeed commit it, shows that he bore it inscribed in
himself and on himself, supports the operation of punishment and
manifests its effects in the most striking way. The body, several
times tortured, provides the synthesis of the reality of the deeds and
the truth of the investigation, of the documents of the case and the
statements of the criminal, of the crime and the punishment. It is an
essential element, therefore, in a penal liturgy, in which it must
serve as the partner of a procedure ordered around the formidable
rights of the sovereign, the prosecution and secrecy.
The public execution is to be understood not only as a judicial,
but also as a political ritual. It belongs, even in minor cases, to the
ceremonies by which power is manifested.
An offence, according to the law of the classical age, quite apart
from the damage it may produce, apart even from the rule that it
breaks, offends the rectitude of those who abide by the law: ‘If one
commits something that the law forbids, even if there is neither harm
nor injury to the individual, it is an offence that demands reparation,
because the right of the superior man is violated and because it
offends the dignity of his character’ (Risi, 9). Besides its immediate
victim, the crime attacks the sovereign: it attacks him personally,
since the law represents the will of the sovereign; it attacks him
physically, since the force of the law is the force of the prince.
‘For a law to be in force in this kingdom, it must necessarily have
emanated directly from the sovereign, or at least been confirmed by
the seal of his authority’ (Muyart de Vouglans, xxxiv). The intervention
of the sovereign is not, therefore, an arbitration between
47
Torture
two adversaries; it is much more, even, than an action to enforce
respect for the rights of the individual; it is a direct reply to the
person who has offended him. There can be no doubt that ‘the
exercise of the sovereign power in the punishment of crime is one
of the essential parts of the administration of justice' (Jousse, vii).
Punishment, therefore, cannot be identified with or even measured
by the redress of the injury; in punishment, there must always be a
portion that belongs to the prince, and, even when it is combined
with the redress laid down, it constitutes the most important element
in the penal liquidation of the crime. Now, this portion belonging
to the prince is not in itself simple: on the one hand, it requires
redress for the injury that has been done to his kingdom (as an
element of disorder and as an example given to others, this considerable
injury is out of all proportion to that which has been
committed upon a private individual); but it also requires that the
king take revenge for an affront to his very person.
The right to punish, therefore, is an aspect of the sovereign's
right to make war on his enemies: to punish belongs to 'that
absolute power of life and death which Roman law calls merum
imperium, a right by virtue of which the prince sees that his law is
respected by ordering the punishment of crime’ (Muyart de Vouglans,
xxxiv). But punishment is also a way of exacting retribution
that is both personal and public, since the physico-political force
of the sovereign is in a sense present in the law; 'One sees by the
very definition of the law that it tends not only to prohibit, but also
to avenge contempt for its authority by the punishment of those who
violate its prohibitions' (Muyart de Vouglans, xxxiv). In the execution
of the most ordinary penalty, in the most punctilious respect of
legal forms, reign the active forces of revenge.
The public execution, then, has a juridico-political function. It is
a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted.
It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at its most
spectacular. The public execution, however hasty and everyday,
belongs to a whole series of great rituals in which power is eclipsed
and restored (coronation, entry of the king into a conquered city,
the submission of rebellious subjects); over and above the crime
that has placed the sovereign in contempt, it deploys before all eyes
an invincible force. Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance
48
The spectacle of the scaffold
as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between
the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful
sovereign who displays his strength. Although redress of the private
injury occasioned by the offence must be proportionate, although the
sentence must be equitable, the punishment is carried out in such a
way as to give a spectacle not of measure, but of imbalance and
excess; in this liturgy of punishment, there must be an emphatic
affirmation of power and of its intrinsic superiority. And this superiority
is not simply that of right, but that of the physical strength
of the sovereign beating down upon the body of his adversary and
mastering it: by breaking the law, the offender has touched the very
person of the prince; and it is the prince - or at least those to whom
he has delegated his force - who seizes upon the body of the condemned
man and displays it marked, beaten, broken. The ceremony
of punishment, then, is an exercise of ‘terror’. When the jurists of
the eighteenth century began their polemic with the reformers, they
offered a restrictive, ‘modernist* interpretation of the physical
cruelty of the penalties imposed by the law: if severe penalties are
required, it is because their example must be deeply inscribed in the
hearts of men. Yet, in fact, what had hitherto maintained this
practice of torture was not an economy of example, in the sense in
which it was to be understood*at the time of the ideologues (that the
representation of the penalty should be greater than the interest of
the crime), but a policy of terror: to make everyone aware, through
the body of the criminal, of the unrestrained presence of the sovereign.
The public execution did not re-establish justice; it reactivated
power. In the seventeenth century, and even in the early eighteenth
century, it was not, therefore, with all its theatre of terror, a lingering
hang-over from an earlier age. Its ruthlessness, its spectacle, its
physical violence, its unbalanced play of forces, its meticulous
ceremonial, its entire apparatus were inscribed in the political
functioning of the penal system.
This enables us to understand some of the characteristics of the
liturgy of torture and execution - above all, the importance of a
ritual that was to deploy its pomp in public. Nothing was to be
hidden of this triumph of the law. Its episodes were traditionally the
same and yet the sentences never failed to list them, so important
were they in the penal mechanism: processions, halts at crossroads
49
Torture
and church doors, the public reading of the sentence, kneeling,
declarations of repentance for the offence to God and to the king.
Sometimes questions of precedence and ceremonial were settled by
the court itself: ‘The officers will ride according to the following
order: namely, at the head two police sergeants; then the patient;
after the patient, Bonfort and Le Corre on his left will walk together,
followed by the clerk of the court and in this manner shall go to the
market square at which place the judgement shall be carried out’
(quoted in Corre, 7). Now, this meticulous ceremonial was not only
legal, but quite explicitly military. The justice of the king was
shown to be an armed justice. The sword that punished the guilty
was also the sword that destroyed enemies. A whole military machine
surrounded the scaffold: cavalry of the watch, archers, guardsmen,
soldiers. This was intended, of course, to prevent any escape or
show of force; it was also to prevent any outburst of sympathy or
anger on the part of the people, any attempt to save the condemned
or to have them immediately put to death; but it was also a reminder
that every crime constituted as it were a rebellion against the law
and that the criminal was an enemy of the prince. All these reasons whether
a matter of precaution in particular circumstances or a
functional element in the performance of the ritual - made the public
execution more than an act of justice; it was a manifestation of
force; or rather, it was justice as the physical, material and awesome
force of the sovereign deployed there. The ceremony of the public
torture and execution displayed for all to see the power relation
that gave his force to the law.
As a ritual of armed law, in which the prince showed himself,
indissociably, both as head of justice and head of war, the public
execution had two aspects: one of victory, the other of struggle.
It brought to a solemn end a war, the outcome of which was
decided in advance, between the criminal and the sovereign; it had
to manifest the disproportion of power of the sovereign over those
whom he had reduced to impotence. The dissymmetry, the irreversible
imbalance of forces were an essential element in the public
execution. A body effaced, reduced to dust and thrown to thewinds,
a body destroyed piece by piece by the infinite power of the sovereign
constituted not only the ideal, but the real limit of punishment.
Take the celebrated torture and execution of Massola,, which took
50
The spectacle of the scaffold
place at Avignon and which was one of the first to arouse the
indignation of contemporaries. This was an apparently paradoxical
ceremony, since it took place almost entirely after death, and since
justice did little more than deploy its magnificent theatre, the ritual
praise of its force, on a corpse. The condemned man was blindfolded
and tied to a stake; all around, on the scaffold, were stakes
with iron hooks* ‘The confessor whispered in the patient's ear and,
after he had given him the blessing, the executioner, who had an
iron bludgeon of the kind used in slaughter houses, delivered a blow
with all his might on the temple of the wretch, who fell dead: the
mortis exactor, who had a large knife, then cut his throat, which
spattered him with blood; it was a horrible sight to see; he severed
the sinews near the two heels, and then opened up the belly from
which he drew the heart, liver, spleen and lungs, which he stuck on
an iron hook, and cut and dissected into pieces, which he then stuck
on the other hooks as he cut them, as one does with an animal.
Look who can at such a sight' (Bruneau, 259). In the explicit
reference to the butcher's trade, the infinitesimal destruction of the
body is linked here with spectacle: each piece is placed on display.
The execution was accompanied by a whole ceremonial of
triumph; but it also included, as a dramatic nucleus in its monotonous
progress, a scene of confrontatipn: this was the immediate, direct
action of the executioner on the body of the ‘patient'. It was a coded
action, of course, since custom and, often quite explicitly, the sentence
prescribed its principal episodes. Nevertheless, it did preserve
something of the battle. The executioner not only implemented the
law, he also deployed theforce; hewas the agent ofaviolence applied,
in order to master it, to the violence of the crime. Materially, physically,
hewas the adversaryof this crime: an adversarywho could show
pity or ruthlessness. Damhoudere complained, with many of his
contemporaries, that the executioners exercised ‘every cruelty with
regard to the evil-doing patients, treating them, buffeting and killing
them as if they had a beast in their hands' (Damhoudere, 219). And
for a long time the habit did not die out.3 There was still an element
of challenge and of jousting in the ceremony of public execution.
If the executioner triumphed, if he managed to cut off the head with
a single blow, he ‘showed it to the people, put it down on the ground
and then waved to the public who greatly applauded his skill by
5i
Torture
clapping*. (A scene observed by T. S. Gueulette, at the execution of
Montigny in 1737 - cf. Anchel, 62-9.) Conversely, if he failed, if he
did not succeed in killing the ‘patient* as required, he was liable to
punishment. This was the case of Damiens’s executioner who, being
unable to quarter his patient according to the rules, had to cut him
up with a knife; as a result, Damiens’s hair, which had been promised
to him, was confiscated and the money obtained from the sale
given to the poor. Some years later, an executioner at Avignon
caused excessive pain to three bandits, who were nevertheless
formidable characters, whom he had to hang; the spectators became
angry; they denounced him; in order to punish him and also to
protect him from mob violence, he was put into prison (Duhamel,
25). And, behind this punishment of the unskilful executioner,
stands a tradition, which is still close to us, according to which the
condemned man should be pardoned if the execution happened to
fail. It was a custom clearly established in certain countries: in
Burgundy, for instance (cf. Chassanee, 55). The people often
expected it to be applied, and would sometimes protect a condemned
man who had escaped death in this way. In order to abolish both
custom and expectation, they had to revive the adage, ‘the gibbet
does not lose its prey*, to introduce explicit instructions in capital
sentences, such as ‘hanged by the neck until he be dead*. And jurists
like Serpillon or Blackstone were insisting in the middle of the
eighteenth century that a failure on the part of the executioner did
not mean that the condemned man’s life was spared (Serpillon, III,
1100). In his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Blackstone
remarks: ‘It is clear, that if, upon judgement to be hanged by the
neck till he is dead, the criminal be not thoroughly killed, but
revives, the sheriff must hang him again. For the former hanging
was no execution of the sentence; and, if a false tenderness were to
be indulged in such cases, a multitude of collusions might ensue*
(Blackstone, 199). There was something of the ordeal and something
of God’s judgement that was still indecipherable in the ceremony of
execution. In his confrontation with the condemned man, the executioner
was a little like the king’s champion. Yet he was an unacknowledgeable
and unacknowledged champion: the traditionwas,it seems,
that when the executioner's letters were sealed, they were not placed
on the table, but thrown on the ground. The various prohibitions
5*
The spectacle of the scaffold
surrounding this ‘very necessary* yet ‘unnatural’ office are well
known (Loyseau, 80-81). The executioner may have been, in a
sense, the king’s sword, but he shared the infamy of his adversary.
The sovereign power that enjoined him to kill, and which through
him did kill, was not present in him; it was not identified with his
own ruthlessness. And it never appeared with more spectacular
effect than when it interrupted the executioner’s gesture with a letter
of pardon. The short time that usually elapsed between sentence
and execution (often a few hours) meant that the pardon usually
arrived at the very last moment. But the ceremony, by the very
slowness of its progress, was no doubt arranged to leave room for
this eventuality. (Cf. Hardy, 30 January 1769,1, 125 and 14 December
1779, IV, 229; Anchel, 162-3, te^s story of Antoine Boulleteix,
who was already at the foot of the scaffold when a horseman
arrived carrying the celebrated parchment. Shouts of ‘God save the
King’ arose and Boulleteix was taken to the tavern, while the clerk
of the court made a collection on his behalf.) The condemned
always hoped for a pardon and, in order to drag things out, they
would pretend, even at the foot of the scaffold, that they had further
revelations to make. When the people wanted a pardon they called
for it aloud and tried to postpone the last moment, looking out for
the arrival of the messenger bearing the letter with the green wax
seal and if necessary claiming that he was on his way (this happened
during the execution of those condemned for the uprising against
child abduction on 3 August 1750). The sovereign was present at
the execution not only as the power exacting the vengeance of the
law, but as the power that could suspend both law and vengeance.
He alone must remain master, he alone could wash away the offences
committed on his person; although it is true that he delegated to the
courts the task of exercising his power to dispense justice, he had
not transferred it; he retained it in its entirety and he could suspend
the sentence or increase it at will.
We must regard the public execution, as it was still ritualized in
the eighteenth century, as a political operation. It was logically
inscribed in a system of punishment, in which the sovereign, directly
or indirectly, demanded, decided and carried out punishments, in
so far as it was he who, through the law, had been injured by the
crime. In every offence there was a crimen majestatis and in the least
53
Torture
criminal a potential regicide. And the regicide, in turn, was neither
more nor less, than the total, absolute criminal since, instead of
attacking, like any offender, a particular decision or wish of the
sovereign power, he attacked the very principle and physical person
of the prince. The ideal punishment of the regicide had to constitute
the summum of all possible tortures. It would be an expression of
infinite vengeance: French law, in any case, made provisions for no
fixed penalties for this sort of monstrosity. For the execution of
Ravaillac the form of the ceremony had to be invented, by combining
all the cruellest tortures then practised in France. For Damiens,
an attempt was made to think up still more atrocious tortures.
Suggestions were made, but they were considered to be less perfect*
So the form of Ravaillac’s execution was repeated. And it must be
admitted that it was relatively modest if one thinks how in 1584 the
assassin of William of Orange was abandoned to what seems like an
infinity of vengeance. ‘On the first day, he was taken to the square
where he found a cauldron of boiling water, in which was submerged
the arm with which he had committed the crime. The next day the
arm was cut off, and, since it fell at his feet, he was constantly
kicking it up and down the scaffold; on the third day, red-hot
pincers were applied to his breasts and the front of his arm; on the
fourth day, the pincers were applied similarly on the back of his
arm and on his buttocks; and thus, consecutively, this man was
tortured for eighteen days.' On the last day, he was put to the wheel
and 'maillot? [beaten with a wooden club]. After six hours, he was
still asking for water, which was not given him. ‘Finally the police
magistrate was begged to put an end to him by strangling, so that
his soul should not despair and be lost' (Brantome, II, 191-2).
There can be no doubt that the existence of public tortures and
executions were connected with something quite other than this
internal organization* Rusche and Kirchheimer are right to see it as
the effect of a system of production in which labour power, and
therefore the human body, has neither the utility nor the commercial
value that are conferred on them in an economy of an industrial
type. Moreover, this ‘contempt' for the body is certainly related to
a general attitude to death; and, in such an attitude, one can detect
not only the values proper to Christianity, but a demographical,
54
The spectacle o f the scaffold
in a sense biological, situation: the ravages of disease and hunger,
the periodic massacres of the epidemics, the formidable child mortality
rate, the precariousness of the bio-economic balances - all this
made death familiar and gave rise to rituals intended to integrate it,
to make it acceptable and to give a meaning to its permanent
aggression. But in analysing why the public executions survived for
so long, one must also refer to the historical conjuncture; it must
not be forgotten that the ordinance of 1670 that regulated criminal
justice almost up to the Revolution had even increased in certain
respects the rigour of the old edicts; Pussort, who, among the commissioners
entrusted with the task of drawing up the documents,
represented the intentions of the king, was responsible for this,
despite the views of such magistrates as Lamoignon; the number of
uprisings at the very height of the classical age, the rumbling close
at hand of civil war, the king’s desire to assert his power at the
expense of the parlements go a long way to explain the survival of
so severe a penal system.
In accounting for a penal system involving so much torture, these
are general and in a sense external reasons; they explain not only
;the possibility and the long survival of physical punishments, but
also the weakness and the rather sporadic nature of the opposition
to them. Against this general background we must bring out their
precise function. If torture was so strpngly embedded in legal
practice, it was because it revealed truth and showed the operation
of power. It assured the articulation of the written on the oral, the
Secret on the public, the procedure of investigation on the operation
of the confession; it made it possible to reproduce the crime on the
visible body of the criminal; in the same horror, the crime had to
be manifested and annulled. It also made the body of the condemned
man the place where the vengeance of the sovereign was applied,
the anchoring point for a manifestation of power, an opportunity
of affirming the dissymmetry of forces. We shall see later that the
truth-power relation remains at the heart of all mechanisms of
punishment and that it is still to be found in contemporary penal
practice - but in a quite different form and with very different effects.
The Enlightenment was soon to condemn public torture and execution
as an ‘atrocity’ - a term that was often used to describe it, but
without any critical intention, by jurists themselves. Perhaps the
55
Torture
notion of ‘atrocity* is one of those that best designates the economy
of the public execution in the old penal practice. To begin with,
atrocity is a characteristic of some of the great crimes: it refers to the
number of natural or positive, divine or human laws that they
attack, to the scandalous openness or, on the contrary, to the secret
cunning with which they have been committed, to the rank and
status of those who are their authors and victims, to the disorder
that they presuppose or bring with them, to the horror they
arouse. In so far as it must bring the crime before everyone’s eyes,
in all its severity, the punishment must take responsibility for this
atrocity: it must bring it to light by confessions, statements, inscriptions
that make it public; it must reproduce it in ceremonies that
apply it to the body of the guilty person in the form of humiliation
and pain. Atrocity is that part of the crime that the punishment
turns back as torture in order to display it in the full light of day:
it is a figure inherent in the mechanism that produces the visible
truth of the crime at the very heart of the punishment itself. The
public execution formed part of the procedure that established the
reality of what one punished. Furthermore, the atrocity of a crime
was also the violence of the challenge flung at the sovereign; it was
that which would move him to make a reply whose function was to
go further than this atrocity, to master it, to overcome it by an
excess that annulled it. The atrocity that haunted the public execution
played, therefore, a double role: it was the principle of the
communication between the crime and the punishment, it was also
the exacerbation of the punishment in relation to the crime. It provided
the spectacle with both truth and power; it was the culmination
of the ritual of the investigation and the ceremony in which the
sovereign triumphed. And it joined both together in the tortured
body. The punitive practice of the nineteenth century was to strive
to put as much distance as possible between the ‘serene* search for
truth and the violence that cannot be entirely effaced from punishment.
It set out to mark the heterogeneity that separates the c“ime
that is to be punished and the punishment imposed by the public
power. Between truth and punishment, there should no longer be
any other relation than one of legitimate consequence. The punishing
power should not soil its hands with a crime greater than the
one it wished to punish. It should remain innocent of the penalty
56
The spectacle of the scaffold
that it inflicts. ‘Let us hasten to proscribe such tortures. They were
worthy only of the crowned monsters who governed the Romans'
(Pastoret, on the subject of the punishment of regicides, II, 61). But,
according to the penal practice of the preceding period, the proximity
in the public execution of the sovereign and the crime, the mixture
that was produced in it of ‘demonstration' and punishment,
were not the result of a barbarous confusion; what joined them
together was the mechanism of atrocity and its necessary concatenations.
The atrocity of the expiation organized the ritual destruction
of infamy by omnipotence.
The fact that the crime and the punishment were related and
bound up in the form of atrocity was not the result of some obscurely
accepted law of retaliation. It was the effect, in the rites of
punishment, of a certain mechanism of power: of a power that not
only did not hesitate to exert itself directly on bodies, but was
exalted and strengthened by its visible manifestations; of a power
that asserted itself as an armed power whose functions of maintaining
order were not entirely unconnected with the functions of war;
of a power that presented rules and obligations as personal bonds, a
breach of which constituted an offence and called for vengeance;
of a power for which disobedience was an act of hostility, the first
sign of rebellion, which is not in principle different from civil war;
of a power that had to demonstrate npt why it enforced its laws,
but who were its enemies, and what unleashing of force threatened
them; of a power which, in the absence of continual supervision,
sought a renewal of its effect in the spectacle of its individual manifestations;
of a power that was recharged in the ritual display of its
reality as ‘super-power’.
Of all the reasons why punishment that was not in the least
ashamed of being ‘atrocious' was replaced by punishment that was
to claim the honour of being ‘humane' there is one that must be
analysed at once, for it is internal to the public execution itself: at
once an element of its functioning and the principle of its perpetual
disorder.
In the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was
the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the
performance. An execution that was known to be taking place, but
57
T orture
which did so in secret, would scarcely have had any meaning. The
aim was to make an example, not only by making people aware that
the slightest offence was likely to be punished, but by arousing
feelings of terror by the spectacle of power letting its anger fall upon
the guilty person: ‘In criminal matters, the most difficult point is
the imposition of the penalty: it is the aim and the end of the
procedure, and its only fruit, by example and terror, when it is well
applied to the guilty person* (Bruneau, unnumbered preface to the
first part).
But, in this scene of terror, the role of the people was an ambiguous
one. People were summoned as spectators: they were assembled
to observe public exhibitions and amendes honorables; pillories,
gallows and scaffolds were erected in public squares or by the roadside;
sometimes the corpses of the executed persons were displayed
for several days near the scenes of their crimes. Not only must
people know, they must see with their own eyes. Because they must
be made to be afraid; but also because they must be the witnesses,
the guarantors, of the punishment, and because they must to a
certain extent take part in it. The right to be witnesses was one that
they possessed and claimed; a hidden execution was a privileged
execution, and in such cases it was often suspected that it had not
taken place with all its customary severity. There were protests
when at the last moment the victim was taken away out of sight.
The senior postal official who had been put on public exhibition
for killing his wife was later taken away from the crowd. ‘He was
put into a hired coach; it was thought that if he had not been well
escorted, it would have been difficult to protect him from being
ill-treated by the populace, who yelled and jeered at him* (Hardy, I,
328). When the woman Lescombat was hanged, care was taken to
hide her face; she had ‘a kerchief over her neck and head, which
made the public murmur and say that it was not Lescombat’
(Anchel, 70-71). The people claimed the right to observe the execution
and to see who was being executed. The first time the guillotine
was used the Chronique de Paris reported that people complained
that they could not see anything and chanted, ‘Give us back our
gallows' (Lawrence, 7iff). The people also had a right to take part.
The condemned man, carried in procession, exhibited, humiliated,
with the horror of his crime recalled in innumerable ways, was
The spectacle of the scaffold
offered to the insults, sometimes to the attacks of the spectators.
The vengeance of the people was called upon to become an unobtrusive
part of the vengeance of the sovereign. Not that it was
in any way fundamental, or that the king had to express in his own
way the people’s revenge; it was rather that the people had to bring
its assistance to the king when the king undertook ‘to be avenged
on his enemies’, especially when those enemies were to be found
among the people. It was rather like a ‘scaffold service’ that the
people owed the king’s vengeance. This ‘service’ had been specified
in the old ordinances; the edict of 1347 concerning blasphemers
stipulated that they would be exhibited at the pillory ‘from the hour
of prime, to that of their deaths. And mud and other refuse, though
no stone or anything injurious, could be thrown at their faces. . .
The second time, in case of relapse, it is our will that he be put in the
pillory on a solemn market day, and that his upper lip be split so
that the teeth appear/ No doubt, at the classical period, this form
of participation in the torture was no more than tolerated and
attempts were made to limit it: because of the barbarities that it gave
rise to and the usurpation it involved of the power to punish. But it
belonged too closely to the general economy of the public execution
for it to be eliminated altogether. Even in the eighteenth century,
there were scenes like the one that accompanied the execution of
Montigny in 1737; as the executioner was carrying out the execution,
the local fish-wives walked in procession, holding aloft an
effigy of the condemned man, and then cut off its head (Anchel, 63).
And very often, as they moved slowly in procession through it,
criminals had to be ‘protected’ from the crowd - both as an example
and as a target, a possible threat and a ‘prey’, promised but also
forbidden. In calling on the crowd to manifest its power, the
sovereign tolerated for a moment acts of violence, which he accepted
as a sign of allegiance, but which were strictly limited by the sovereign’s
own privileges.
Now it was on this point that the people, drawn to the spectacle
intended to terrorize it, could express its rejection of the punitive
power and sometimes revolt. Preventing an execution that was
regarded as unjust, snatching a condemned man from the hands of
the executioner, obtaining his pardon by force, possibly pursuing
and assaulting the executioners, in any case abusing the judges and
59
Torture
causing an uproar against the sentence - all this formed part of the
popular practices that invested, traversed and often overturned the
ritual of the public execution. This often happened, of course, in the
case of those condemned for rioting: there were the disturbances
that followed a famous case of child abduction, when the crowd
wanted to prevent the execution of three supposed rioters, who were
to be hanged at the cemetery of Saint-Jean, ‘because there were
fewer entrances and processions to guard';4the terrified executioner
cut down one of the condemned men; the archers let fly their arrows.
It occurred again after the corn riots of 1775; and again in 1786,
when the day-labourers marched on Versailles and set about freeing
their arrested comrades. But apart from these cases, when the process
of agitation had been triggered off previously and for reasons
that did not concern some measure of penal justice, one finds many
examples when the agitation was provoked directly by a verdict
and an execution: small, but innumerable ‘disturbances around the
scaffold'.
In their most elementary forms, these disturbances began with the
shouts of encouragement, sometimes the cheering, that accompanied
the condemned man to his execution. Throughout the long procession,
he was sustained by ‘the compassion of the meek and tenderhearted,
and with the applause, admiration and envy of all the bold
and hardened' (Fielding, 449). If the crowd gathered round the
scaffold, it was not simply to witness the sufferings of the condemned
man or to excite the anger of the executioner: it was also to hear an
individual who had nothing more to lose curse the judges, the laws,
the government and religion. The public execution allowed the
luxury of these momentary saturnalia, when nothing remained to
prohibit or to punish. Under the protection of imminent death, the
criminal could say everything and the crowd cheered. ‘If there were
annals in which the last words of the tortured and executed were
scrupulously recorded, and if one had the courage to read through
them, even if one did no more than question the vile populace that
gathers around the scaffolds out of cruel curiosity, one would be told
that no one who had died on the wheel did not accuse heaven for the
misery that brought him to the crime, reproach his judges for their
barbarity, curse the minister of the altars who accompanies them
and blaspheme against the God whose organ he is' (Boucher
60
The spectacle of the scaffold
d’Argis, 128-9). 1° these executions, which ought to show only the
terrorizing power of the prince, there was a whole aspect of the
carnival, in which rules were inverted, authority mocked and
criminals transformed into heroes. The shame was turned round;
the courage, like the tears and the cries of the condemned, caused
offence only to the law. Fielding notes with regret: ‘To unite the
ideas of death and shame is not so easy as may be imagined . . . I
will appeal to any man who hath seen an execution, or a procession
to an execution; let him tell me. When he hath beheld a poor
wretch, bound in a cart, just on the verge of eternity, all pale and
trembling with his approaching fate, whether the idea of shame
hath ever intruded on his mind? much less will the bold daring
rogue, who glories in his present condition, inspire the beholder
with any such sensation* (Fielding, 450). For the people who are
there and observe, there is always, even in the most extreme vengeance
of the sovereign a pretext for revenge.
This was especially the case if the conviction was regarded as
unjust - or if one saw a man of the people put to death, for a crime
that would have merited, for someone better born or richer, a comparatively
light penalty. It would seem that certain practices of penal
justice were no longer supported in the eighteenth century —and
perhaps for longer - by the lower strata of the population. This
would explain why executions could easily lead to the beginnings
of social disturbances. Since the poorest - it was a magistrate who
made the observation (Dupaty, 1786, 247) - could not be heard in
the courts of law, it was where the law was manifested publicly,
where they were called upon to act as witnesses and almost as coadjutors
of this law, that they could intervene, physically: enter by
force into the punitive mechanism and redistribute its effects; take
up in another sense the violence of the punitive rituals. There was
agitation against the difference in penalties according to social class:
in 1781, the parish priest of Champre had been killed by the lord
of the manor, and an attempt was made to declare the murderer
insane; ‘the peasants, who were extremely attached to their pastor,
were furious and had at first seemed ready to lay violent hands upon
their lord and to set fire to the castle. . . Everyone protested, and
rightly, against the indulgence of the minister who deprived justice
of the means of punishing so abominable a crime* (Hardy, IV, 394).
61
Torture
There was agitation, too, against the excessive sentences passed on
certain common offences that were not regarded as serious (such as
house-breaking); or against punishments for certain offences connected
with social conditions such as petty larceny; the death penalty
for this crime aroused a great deal of discontent, because there were
many domestic servants in a single household and it was difficult
for them, in such a case, to prove their innocence, and also because
they could easily be victims of their employers’ spite and because
the indulgence of certain masters who shut their eyes to such
behaviour made the fate of servants accused, condemned and hanged
even more iniquitous. The execution of such servants often gave
rise to protests (cf. Hardy, I, 319, 367; III, 227-8; IV, 180). There
was a small riot in Paris in 1761 in favour of a servant woman who
had stolen a piece of cloth from her master. Despite the fact that the
woman admitted her guilt, handed back the material and begged for
mercy, the master refused to withdraw his complaint; on the day
of the execution, the local people prevented the hanging, invaded the
merchant’s shop and looted it; in the end, the servant was pardoned,
but a woman, who attempted, unsuccessfully, to stick a needle into
the wicked master, was banished for three years (Anchel, 226).
One remembers the great legal affairs of the eighteenth century,
when enlightened opinion intervened in die persons of the philosophes
and certain magistrates: Calas, Sirven and the Chevalier de La
Barre, for instance. But less attention is given to the popular agitations
caused by punitive practice. Indeed, they seldom spread beyond
a town, or even a district. Yet they did have a real importance.
Sometimes these movements, which originated from below, spread
and attracted the attention of more highly placed persons who,
taking them up, gave them a new dimension (in the years preceding
the Revolution, the affair of Catherine Espinas, falsely convicted of
parricide in 1785, or the case of the three men of Chaumont, condemned
to the wheel, for whom Dupaty, in 1786, wrote his celebrated
memoir, or that of Marie Frangoise Salmon, whom the
parlement of Rouen in 1782 had condemned to the stake, for poisoning,
but who in 1786 had still not been executed). More usually,
those disturbances had maintained around penal justice and its
manifestations, which ought to have been exemplary, a state of
permanent unrest. How often had it proved necessary, in order to
62
The spectacle of the scaffold
ensure order around the scaffolds, to take steps that were 'distressing
to the people’ and ‘humiliating for the authorities’ (Argenson, 241)?
It was evident that the great spectacle of punishment ran the risk
of being rejected by the very people to whom it was addressed. In
fact, the terror of the public execution created centres of illegality:
on execution days, work stopped, the taverns were full, the authorities
were abused, insults or stones were thrown at the executioner,
the guards and the soldiers; attempts were made to seize the condemned
man, either to save him or to kill him more surely; fights
broke out, and there was no better prey for thieves than the curious
throng around the scaffold. (Hardy recounts a number of cases like
the important theft that Ttfas committed in the very house in which
the police magistrate was lodging - IV, 56.) But above all - and this
was why these disadvantages became a political danger - the people
never felt closer to those who paid the penalty than in those rituals
intended to show the horror of the crime and the invincibility of
power; never did the people feel more threatened, like them, by a
legal violence exercised without moderation or restraint. The solidarity
of a whole section of the population with those we would call
petty offenders - vagrants, false beggars, the indigent poor, pickpockets,
receivers and dealers in stolen goods - was constantly
expressed: resistance to police' searches, the pursuit of informers,
attacks on the watch or inspectors provide abundant evidence of
this (cf. Richet, 118-19). And it was the breaking up of this solidarity
that was becoming the aim of penal and police repression. Yet
out of the ceremony of the public execution, out of that uncertain
festival in which violence was instantaneously reversible, it was this
solidarity much more than the sovereign power that was likely to
emerge with redoubled strength. The reformers of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries were not to forget that, in the last resort,
the executions did not, in fact, frighten the people. One of their
first cries was to demand their abolition.
To clarify the political problem posed by the intervention of the
people in the spectacle of the executions, one need only cite two
events. The first took place at Avignon at the end of the seventeenth
century. It contained all the principal elements of the theatre of
horror: the physical confrontation between the executioner and the
condemned man, the reversal of the duel, the executioner pursued
63
Torture
by the people, the condemned man saved by the ensuing riot and
the violent inversion of the penal machinery. A murderer by the
name of Pierre du Fort was to be hanged; several times he ‘had
caught his feet in the steps’ and had not been able to swing freely.
‘Seeing this, the executioner had pulled his jerkin up over his face
and struck him below the knees, on the stomach and on the belly.
When the people saw that the executioner was causing him too
much pain, and even believing that he was killing him down there
with a bayonet . . . moved by compassion for the patient and fury
at the executioner, they threw stones at the scaffold just as the
executioner knocked away the two ladders and threw the patient
down and leaped on to his shoulders and kicked him, while the wife
of the said executioner pulled at his feet from under the gallows.
In doing so, they made blood come from his mouth. But the hail
of stones came thicker - one stone even struck the hanged man on
the head - which forced the executioner to dash to the ladder, which
he descended so rapidly that half-way down he fell from it, and
struck his head on the ground. Then a crowd of people fell upon
him. He got to his feet, bayonet in hand, threatening to kill anyone
who came near him; after falling several times, he finally got to his
feet, only to be beaten by the crowd, rolled in the mud and nearly
drowned in the stream, then dragged by the excited and enraged
crowd to the University and to the Cordeliers Cemetery. His
servant was also beaten and, with bruises on his head and body, was
taken to the hospital where he died some days later. However, some
strangers and unknown people mounted the ladder and cut the rope
while others caught the hanged man from below after he had been
hanging there longer than it took to say a full Miserere. The crowd
then smashed the gallows and broke the executioner’s ladder into
pieces. . . Children carried off the gallows and threw it into the
Rhone.’ The condemned man was then taken to a cemetery ‘so that
he should not be recaptured by the law and from there to the church
of Sainte-Antoine*. The archbishop gave him his pardon, had him
taken to the hospital and asked that particular care be taken of him.
Lastly, adds the writer of the account, ‘we had a new suit, two pairs
of stockings and shoes made for him. We dressed him in new
clothes from head to toe. Our colleagues gave him shirts, breeches
and a wig’ (Duhamel, 5-6; scenes of this kind were still taking
64
The spectacle of the scaffold
place in the nineteenth century - cf. Lawrence, 56 and 195-8).
The other event took place in Paris, a century later. It was in 1775,
shortly after the corn riot. Because of the state of extreme tension
among the people, the authorities wanted the execution to take
place without interruption. Between the scaffold and the public,
kept at a safe distance, two ranks of soldiers stood on guard, one
facing the execution that was about to take place, the other facing
the people in case of riot. Contact was broken: it was a public
execution, but one in which the element of spectacle was neutralized,
or rather reduced to abstract intimidation. Protected by force of
arms, on an empty square, justice quietly did its work. If it showed
the death that it had dealt, it was from high and far: 'The two
gallows, which were eighteen feet high, no doubt by way of an
example, were not set up until three o’clock in the afternoon. From
two o’clock, the Place de Greve and all the surrounding streets had
been filled with detachments of different troops, some on foot, some
on horse; the Swiss and the French guards continued to patrol the
adjacent streets. No one was allowed on to the Greve during the
execution, and all around one could see a double row of soldiers,
bayonets at the ready, standing back to back, so that some looked
outwards and some into the square; the two wretches . .. cried out
all the way that they were innocent and continued to protest in like
manner as they mounted the ladder* (Hardy, III, 67). Whatever the
part played by feelings of humanity for the condemned in the
abandonment of the liturgy of the public executions, there was, in
any case, on the part of the state power, a political fear of the effects
of these ambiguous rituals.
Such an equivocal attitude appeared clearly in what might be
called the ‘gallows speeches’. The rite of execution was so arranged
that the condemned man would himself proclaim his guilt by the
amende honorable that he spoke, by the placard that he displayed
and also by the statements that he was no doubt forced to make.
Furthermore, at the moment of the execution, it seems that he was
given another opportunity to speak, not to proclaim his innocence,
but to acknowledge his crime and the justice of his conviction. The
chronicles relate a good many speeches of this kind. Were they
actually delivered? In a number of cases, certainly. Or were they
65
Torture
fictional speeches that were later circulated by way of example and
exhortation? This, no doubt, was more often the case. What credit
are we to accord, for example, to the account of the death of Marion
Le Goff, who had been a famous bandit leader in Brittany in the
mid-eighteenth century? She is supposed to have cried out from the
scaffold: ‘Fathers and mothers who hear me now, watch over your
children and teach them well; in my childhood I was a liar and goodfor-nothing;
I began by stealing a small six-liard knife. . . Then I
robbed pedlars and cattle dealers; finally, I led a robber band and
that is why I am here. Tell all this to your children and let it be an
example to them’ (Corre, 257). Such a speech is too close, even in its
turn of phrase, to the morality traditionally to be found in the
broadsheets and pamphlets for it not to be apocryphal. But the
existence of the ‘last words of a condemned man’ genre is in itself
significant. The law required that its victim should authenticate in
some sense the tortures that he had undergone. The criminal was
asked to consecrate his own punishment by proclaiming the blackness
of his crimes; he was made to say, as was Jean-Dominique
Langlade, three times a murderer: ‘Listen to my horrible, infamous
and lamentable deed, committed in the city of Avignon, where the
memory of me is execrable, for having inhumanly violated the
sacred rites of friendship’ (Duhamel, 32). In one sense, the broadsheet
and the death song were the sequel to the trial; or rather they
pursued that mechanism by which the public execution transferred
the secret, written truth of the procedure to the body, gesture and
speech of the criminal. Justice required these apocrypha in order to
be grounded in truth. Its decisions were thus surrounded by all
these posthumous ‘proofs’. Sometimes, too, accounts of crimes and
infamous lives were published, simply as propaganda, before any
trial had taken place, in order to force the hand of a court that was
suspected of being too tolerant. In order to discredit smugglers, the
Compagnie des Fermes published ‘bulletins’ recounting their
crimes: in 1768, it distributed broadsheets against a certain Montagne,
the leader of a gang, of whom the writer himself says: ‘Some
thefts have been ascribed to him the truth of which is somewhat
uncertain . .«; Montagne has been depicted as a wild beast, a second
hyena to be hunted down; given the hotheads of the Auvergne, this
idea has caught on’ (cf. Juillard, 24).
66
The spectacle of the scaffold
But the effect, like the use, of this literature was equivocal. The
condemned man found himself transformed into a hero by the sheer
extent ofhis widely advertised crimes, and sometimes the affirmation
of his belated repentance. Against the law, against the rich, the
powerful, the magistrates, the constabulary or the watch, against
taxes and their collectors, he appeared to have waged a struggle
with which one all too easily identified. The proclamation of these
crimes blew up to epic proportions the tiny struggle that passed
unperceived in everyday life. If the condemned man was shown to
be repentant, accepting the verdict, asking both God and man for
forgiveness for his crimes, it was as if he had come through some
process of purification: he died, in his own way, like a saint. But
indomitability was an alternative claim to greatness: by not giving
in under torture, he gave proof of a strength that no power had
succeeded in bending: ‘On the day of the execution - this will seem
scarcely credible - 1 showed no trace of emotion, as I performed my
amende honorable, and when I finally lay down on the cross I showed
no fear’ (the Complainte of J.-D, Langlade, executed at Avignon
12 April 1768). Black hero or reconciled criminal, defender of the
true right or an indomitable force, the criminal of the broadsheets,
pamphlets, almanacs and adventure stories brought with him, beneath
the apparent morality of the example not to be followed, a
whole memory of struggles and confrontations. A convicted criminal
could become after his death a sort of saint, his memory honoured
and his grave respected. (This was the case of Tanguy, executed in
Brittany about 1740. Before being convicted, it is true, he had begun
a long penitence ordered by his confessor. Was this a conflict
between civil justice and religious penitence? Cf. Corre, 21.) The
criminal has been almost entirely transformed into a positive hero.
There were those for whom glory and abomination were not dissociated,
but coexisted in a reversible figure. Perhaps we should see
this literature of crime, which proliferated around a few exemplary
figures,5 neither as a spontaneous form of ‘popular expression*, nor
as a concerted programme of propaganda and moralization from
above; it was a locus in which two investments of penal practice
met - a sort of battleground around the crime, its punishment and
its memory. If these accounts were allowed to be printed and circulated,
it was because they were expected to have the effect of an
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Torture
ideological control - the printing and the distribution of these
almanacs, broadsheets, etc. was in principle subject to strict control.
But if these true stories of everyday history were received so avidly,
if they formed part of the basic reading of the lower classes, it was
because people found in them not only memories, but also precedents;
the interest of ‘curiosity* is also a political interest. Thus these
texts may be read as two-sided discourses, in the facts that they
relate, in the effects they give to these facts and in the glory they
confer on those ‘illustrious* criminals, and no doubt in the very
words they use (one should study the use of such categories as
‘misfortune* or ‘abomination* or such epithets as ‘famous* or
‘lamentable* in accounts such as The History of the Life,Great
Robberies and Tricks of Guilleri and his Companions and of their
Lamentable and Unhappy End,9
Perhaps we should compare this literature with the ‘disturbances
around the scaffold’ in which, through the tortured body of the
criminal, the power that condemned confronted the people that was
the witness, the participant, the possible and indirect victim of this
execution. In the wake of a ceremony that inadequately channelled
the power relations it sought to ritualize, a whole mass of discourses
appeared pursuing the same confrontation; the posthumous proclamation
of the crimes justified justice, but also glorified the criminal.
That was why the reformers of the penal system were soon
demanding suppression of these broadsheets.7 That was why the
people showed so lively an interest in what served more or less as
the minor, everyday epic of illegalities. That was why the broadsheets
lost their importance as the political function of popular
illegality altered.
And they disappeared as a whole new literature of crime developed:
a literature in which crime is glorified, because it is one of the
fine arts, because it can be the work only of exceptional natures,
because it reveals the monstrousness of the strong and powerful,
because villainy is yet another mode of privilege: from the adventure
story to de Quincey, or from the Castle of Otranto to Baudelaire,
there is a whole aesthetic rewriting of crime, which is also the
appropriation of criminality in acceptable forms. In appearance, it is
the discovery of the beauty and greatness of crime; in fact, it is the
affirmation that greatness too has a right to crime and that it even
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The spectacle of the scaffold
becomes the exclusive privilege of those who are really great. The
great murders are not for the pedlars of petty crime. While, from
Gaboriau onwards, the literature of crime follows this first shift: by
his cunning, his tricks, his sharp-wittedness, the criminal represented
in this literature has made himself impervious to suspicion; and the
struggle between two pure minds - the murderer and the detective will
constitute the essential form of the confrontation. We are far
removed indeed from those accounts of the life and misdeeds of the
criminal in which he admitted his crimes, and which recounted in
detail the tortures of his execudon: we have moved from the
exposition of the facts or the confession to the slow process of
discovery; from the execution to the investigation; from the physical
confrontation to the intellectual struggle between criminal and
investigator. It was not only the broadsheets that disappeared with
the birth of a literature of crime; the glory of the rustic malefactor
and his sombre transformation into a hero by the process of torture
and execution went with them. The man of the people was now
too simple to be the protagonist of subtle truths. In this new genre,
there were no more popular heroes or great executions; the criminal
was wicked, of course, but he was also intelligent; and although he
was punished, he did not have to suffer. The literature of crime
transposes to another social class the spectacle that had surrounded
the criminal. Meanwhile the newspapers took over the task of
recounting the grey, unheroic details of everyday crime and punishment.
The split was complete; the people was robbed of its old
pride in its crimes; the great murders had become the quiet game of
the well behaved.
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PART TWO
Punishment
i . Generalized punishment
‘Let penalties be regulated and proportioned to the offences, let the
death sentence be passed only on those convicted of murder, and
let the tortures that revolt humanity be abolished/ Thus, in 1789,
the chancellery summed up the general position of the petitions
addressed to the authorities concerning tortures and executions (cf.
Seligman, and Desjardin, 13-20). Protests against the public executions
proliferated in the second halfof the eighteenth century: among
the philosophers and theoreticians of the law; among lawyers and
parlementaires; in popular petitions and among the legislators of the
assemblies. Another form of punishment was needed: the physical
confrontation between the sovereign and the condemned man must
end; this hand-to-hand fight between the vengeance of the prince and
thecontained anger of the people, through the mediation of thevictim
and the executioner, must be concluded. Very soon the public execution
became intolerable. On the side of power, where it betrayed
tyranny, excess, the thirst for revenge, and ‘the cruel pleasure taken
in punishing* (Petion de Villeneuve, 641), it was revolting. On the
side of the victim who, though reduced to despair, was still expected
to bless ‘heaven and its judges who appeared to have abandoned
him* (Boucher d’Argis, 1781, 125), it was shameful. It was, in any
case, dangerous, in that it provided a support for a confrontation
between the violence of the king and the violence of the people. It
was as if the sovereign power did not see, in this emulation of
atrocity, a challenge that it itself threw down and which might one
day be taken up: accustomed as it was to ‘seeing blood flow*, the
people soon learnt that ‘it could be revenged only with blood*
(Lach&re). In these ceremonies, which were the object of so much
adverse investment, one sees the intersection of the excess of armed
justice and the anger of the threatened people. Joseph de Maistre
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Punishment
was to recognize in this relation one of the fundamental mechanisms
of absolute power: the executioner acts as a cog between the prince
and the people; the death he deals is like that of the serfs who built
St Petersburg over swamp and pestilence: it is a principle of universality;
of the individual will of the despot, it makes a law for all,
and of each of those destroyed bodies, a stone for the State; it hardly
matters that innocents, too, are struck down! In this same dangerous
and ritual violence, the eighteenth-century reformers denounced, on
the contrary, that which exceeded, on both sides, the legitimate
exercise of power: in this violence, according to them, tyranny
confronts rebellion; each calls forth the other. It is a double danger.
Instead of taking revenge, criminal justice should simply punish.
This need for punishment without torture was first formulated
as a cry from the heart or from an outraged nature. In the worst of
murderers, there is one thing, at least, to be respected when one
punishes: his ‘humanity*. The day was to come, in the nineteenth
century, when this ‘man*, discovered in the criminal, would become
the target of penal intervention, the object that it claimed to correct
and transform, the domain of a whole series of *criminological*
sciences and strange ‘penitentiary* practices. But, at the time of the
Enlightenment, it was not as a theme of positive knowledge that
man was opposed to the barbarity of the public executions, but as a
legal limit: the legitimate frontier of the power to, punish. Not that
which must be reached in order to alter him, but that which must
be left intact in order to respect him. Noli me tangere. It marks the
end of the sovereign’s vengeance. The ‘man* that the reformers set
up against the despotism of the scaffold has also become a ‘manmeasure*:
not of things, but of power.
There is, therefore, a problem here: how was this man-measure
opposed to the traditional practice of punishment? How did he
become the great moral justification of the reform movement? Why
this universal horror of torture and such lyrical insistence that
punishment be ‘humane*? Or, which amounts to the same thing,
how are the two elements, which are everywhere present in demands
for a more lenient penal system, ‘measure* and ‘humanity*, to be
articulated upon one another, in a single strategy? These elements
are so necessary and yet so uncertain that it is they, as disturbing as
ever and still associated in the same dubious relation, that one finds
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Generalized punishment
today whenever the problem of an economy of punishment is posed.
It is as if the eighteenth century had opened up the crisis of this
economy and, in order to resolve it, proposed the fundamental law
that punishment must have ‘humanity' as its ‘measure*, without any
definitive meaning being given to this principle, which nevertheless
is regarded as insuperable. We must, therefore, recount the birth
and early days of this enigmatic ‘leniency'.
Homage is paid to the ‘great reformers’ - Beccaria, Servan,
Dupaty, Lacretelle, Duport, Pastoret, Target, Bergasse, the compilers
of the Cakiers, or petitions, and the Constituent Assembly for
having imposed this leniency on a legal machinery and on
‘classical' theoreticians who, at the end of the eighteenth century,
were still rejecting it with well-formulated arguments, (Cf*, in particular,
Muyart de Vouglans’s polemic against Beccaria - Muyart,
1766.)
Yet this reform must be situated in a process that historians have
recently uncovered through the study of legal archives: the relaxation
of penality in the eighteenth century or, to be more precise,
the double movement by which, during this period, crimes seemed
to lose their violence, while punishments, reciprocally, lost some of
their intensity, but at the cost of greater intervention. From the end
of the seventeenth century, in fact, one observes a considerable
diminution in murders and, generally speaking, in physical acts of
aggression; offences against property seem to take over from crimes
of violence; theft and swindling, from murder and assault; the
diffuse, occasional, but frequent delinquency of the poorest classes
was superseded by a limited, but ‘skilled* delinquency; the criminals
of the seventeenth century were ‘harassed men, ill-fed, quick to act,
quick to anger, seasonal criminals’; those of the eighteenth, ‘crafty,
cunning, sly, calculating' criminals on the fringes of society (Chaunu,
1962, 236 and 1966, 107-8). Lastly, the internal organizations of
delinquency altered; the great gangs of malefactors (looters working
in small, armed units, groups of smugglers firing on the agents of the
tax authorities, disbanded soldiers or deserters who roamed the
countryside together) tended to break up; tracked down more
efficiently and forced to work in smaller groups - often no more
than half-a-dozen men - in order to pass undetected, they contented
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Punishment
themselves with more furtive operations, with a more modest
deployment of forces and less risk of bloodshed: ‘The physical
destruction or institutional dislocation of large gangs . . . left the
field free for an anti-property form of delinquency practised by
individuals or very small groups of robbers and pickpockets, seldom
more than four in number’ (Le Roy-Ladurie). A general movement
shifted criminality from the attack of bodies to the more or less
direct seizure of goods; and from a "mass criminality’ to a ‘marginal
criminality’, pardy the preserve of professionals. It was as if there
had been a gradual lowering of level - ‘a defusion of the tensions
that dominate human relations, . . . a better control of violent
impulses’1 - and as if the illegal practices had themselves slackened
their hold on the body and turned to other targets. Crime became
less violent long before punishment became less severe. But this
transformation cannot be separated from several underlying processes.
The first of these, as P. Chaunu observes, was a change in
the operation of economic pressures, a general rise in the standard
of living, a large demographic expansion, an increase in wealth and
property and ‘a consequent need for security’ (Chaunu, 1971, 56).
Furthermore, throughout the eighteenth century, one can observe a
certain increased severity in the law: in England, out of the 223
capital crimes in force at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
156 had been introduced during the preceding hundred years
(Buxton, XXXIX); in France, the legislation on vagabondage had
been revised in the direction of greater severity on several occasions
since the seventeenth century; a tighter, more meticulous implementation
of the law tended to take account of a mass of minor offences
that it once allowed to escape more easily: ‘in the eighteenth century,
the law became slower, heavier, harder on theft, whose relative
frequency had increased, and towards which it now assumed the
bourgeois appearances of a class justice’;2 the growth in France
above all, and especially in Paris, ofa police apparatus that prevented
the development of organized, open criminality, shifted it towards
more discreet forms; to this set of precautions, one should add the
very widespread belief in a constant and dangerous rise in crime.
Whereas the historians of today observe a diminution in the great
gangs of malefactors, Le Trosne saw them roaming the French
countryside like swarms of locusts: ‘It is these voracious insects who
76
Generalized punishment
daily lay waste the subsistence of the cultivators. They are, quite
literally, enemy troops spreading over the surface of the territory,
living as they wish, as in a conquered country, exacting levies under
the name of alms/ They cost the poorest peasants more than taxes:
the richer peasants had to pay anything up to a third of their
incomes (Le Trosne, 1764,4). Most observers maintained that crime
was increasing - they included, of course, those who advocated
sterner measures; they also included those who thought that a law
that was more restrained in its use of violence would be more
effective, less liable to retreat before its own consequences (cf., for
example, Dupaty, 247); and they included the magistrates who
claimed to be swamped by the number of trials: ‘the misery of the
people and the corruption of morals have increased the number of
crimes and convicted criminals' (one of the judges of the Chambre
de la Tournelle in an address to the king, 2 August 1768, quoted
in Farge, 66); in any case, that crime was on the increase was shown
by the real practice of the courts. ‘The revolutionary and imperial
era could already be sensed in the last years of the Ancien Regime.
One is struck, in the trials of 1782-9, by the increase in tension.
There is a new severity towards the poor, a concerted rejection of
evidence, a rise in mutual mistrust, hatred and fear" (Chaunu, 1966,
108).
In fact, the shift from a criminality of blood to a criminality of
fraud forms part of a whole complex mechanism, embracing the
development of production, the increase of wealth, a higher juridical
and moral value placed on property relations, stricter methods of
surveillance, a tighter partitioning of the population, more efficient
techniques of locating and obtaining information: the shift in illegal
practices is correlative with an extension and a refinement of punitive
practices.
Was this a general change of attitude, a ‘change that belongs to
the domain of the spirit and the subconscious’ (the expression is
Mogensen’s)? Perhaps, but more certainly and more immediately
it was an effort to adjust the mechanisms of power that frame th<
everyday lives of individuals; an adaptation and a refinement of the
machinery that assumes responsibility for and places under surveillance
their everyday behaviour, their identity, their activity, their
apparently unimportant gestures; another policy for that multiplicity
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Punishment
of bodies and forces that constitutes a population. What was emerging
no doubt was not so much a new respect for the humanity of
the condemned - torture was still frequent in the execution of even
minor criminals - as a tendency towards a more finely tuned justice,
towards a closer penal mapping of the social body. Following a
circular process, the threshold of the passage to violent crimes rises,
intolerance to economic offences increases, controls become more
thorough, penal interventions at once more premature and more
numerous.
If one compares this process with the critical discourse of the
reformers, a remarkable strategic coincidence emerges. What they
were attacking in traditional justice, before they set out the principles
of a new penality, was certainly the excessive nature of the
punishments; but an excess that was bound up with an irregularity
even more than with an abuse of the power to punish. On 24 March
1790, Thouret opened the debate in the Constituent Assembly on
the new organization of the judicial power. In his view, this power
had become ‘denatured* in France in three ways. By private appropriation:
the offices of judge were sold; they were hereditary; they
had a commercial value and, for that reason, the justice that was
handed out was onerous. By a confusion between two types of
power: that which dispenses justice and formulates a sentence by
applying the law and that which creates the law itself. Lastly, by the
existence of a whole series of privileges that made the implementation
of the law inconsistent: there were courts, procedures, litigants,
even offences that were ‘privileged’ and fell outside common law
(Archives parlementaires, XII, 344)- This was only one of the many
criticisms that had been levied at the legal system for the past fifty
years at least, all of which denounced in this denaturation the
principle of an irregular justice. Penal justice was irregular first of
all by virtue of the multiplicity of courts responsible for assuring it,
without ever forming a single and continuous pyramid (cf. Linguet
or Boucher d’Argis, 1789). Quite apart from the ecclesiastical jurisdictions,
we must take into account the discontinuities, overlappings
and conflicts between the different legal systems: those of the
nobility, which still played an important role in judging petty
offences; those of the king, which were themselves numerous and
badly coordinated (the sovereign courts were often in conflict with
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Generalized punishment
the bailiffs’ courts and above all with the presidial courts, which had
recently been created as intermediary instances); those which, dejure
or defacto, were administered by governmental authorities (such as
the intendantsy or provincial administrators) or police authorities
(such as the provosts and police magistrates); to these should also
be added the right possessed by the king or his representatives to
take decisions on internment or exile quite outside any regular
procedure. By their very plethora these innumerable authorities
cancelled each other out and were incapable of covering the social
body in its entirety. Paradoxically, their overlapping left penal
justice with innumerable loopholes. This incompleteness was a result
of differences of custom and procedure, despite the Ordonnance
Generate of 1670; of internal conflicts of responsibility; of private
interests - political or economic - which each authority found itself
defending; and, lastly, of the interventions of the royal power, which
could prevent, by means of pardons, commuted sentences, the evocation
of a case before the royal council or direct pressure exerted
on magistrates, the regular, austere course of justice.
The criticism of the reformers was directed not so much at the
weakness or cruelty of those in authority, as at a bad economy of
power. There was too much power in the lower jurisdictions, which
could - aided by the ignorance and poverty of those convicted —
ignore appeal procedure and carry out arbitrary sentences without
adequate supervision; there was too much power on the side of the
prosecution, which possessed almost unlimited means of pursuing
its investigations, while the accused opposed it virtually unarmed this
led judges to be sometimes over-severe and sometimes, by way
of reaction, too lenient; there was too much power in the hands of
the judges who were able to content themselves with futile evidence,
providing it was ‘legal’ evidence, and who were allowed too great
a freedom in the choice of penalty; there was too much power in
the hands of the *gens du roi\ or royal magistrates, in relation to the
accused, but also in relation to other magistrates; lastly, there was
too much power exercised by the king, who could suspend courts
of justice, alter their decisions, remove magistrates from office, or
exile them, and replace them by judges acting under royal commission.
The paralysis ofjustice was due not so much to a weakening
as to a badly regulated distribution of power, to its concentration
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Punishment
at a certain number of points and to the conflicts and discontinuities
that resulted.
This dysfunction of power was related to a central excess: what
might be called the monarchical ‘super-power’, which identified the
right to punish with the personal power of the sovereign. This
theoretical identification made the king the fons justinae; but the
practical consequences of this were to be found even in that which
appeared to oppose him and to limit his absolutism. It was because
the king, in order to raise money, had appropriated the right to sell
legal offices, which ‘belonged' to him, that he was confronted by
magistrates who owned their offices and who were not only intractable,
but ignorant, self-interested and frequently compromised. It
was because he was constantly creating new offices that he multiplied
the conflicts of power and authority. It was because he exercised too
close a power over his ‘gens1 and conferred on them almost discretionary
powers that he intensified the conflicts within the magistrature.
It was because he had brought the law into conflict with too
many summary acts of justice (the jurisdictions of the provosts or
police magistrates) or with administrative measures, that he paralysed
normal justice, rendered it sometimes lenient and inconsistent,
but sometimes over-hasty and severe.3
It was not so much, or not only, the privileges of justice, its
arbitrariness, its archaic arrogance, its uncontrolled rights that were
criticized; but rather the mixture of its weaknesses and excesses, its
exaggerations and its loopholes, and above all the very principle of
this mixture, the ‘super-power’ of the monarch. The true objective
of the reform movement, even in its most general formulations, was
not so much to establish a new right to punish based on more
equitable principles, as to set up a new ‘economy’ of the power to
punish, to assure its better distribution, so that it should be neither
too concentrated at certain privileged points, nor too divided between
opposing authorities; so that it should be distributed in
homogeneous circuits capable of operating everywhere, in a continuous
way, down to the finest grain of the social body.4 The
reform of criminal law must be read as a strategy for the rearrangement
of the power to punish, according to modalities that render
it more regular, more effective, more constant and more detailed in
its effects; in short, which increase its effects while diminishing its
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Generalized punishment
economic cost (that is to say, by dissociating it from the system of
property, of buying and selling, of corruption in obtaining not only
offices, but the decisions themselves) and its political cost (by dissociating
it from the arbitrariness of monarchical power). The new
juridical theory.of penality corresponds in fact to a new ‘political
economy* of the power to punish. This explains why the ‘reform’
did not have a single origin. It was not the more enlightened members
of the public, nor the phiiosophes, who regarded themselves as
enemies of despotism and friends of mankind; it was not even the
social groups opposed to the parlementaires who instigated the
reform. Or rather it was not they alone; in this same overall project
of a new distribution of the power to punish, and of a new distribution
of its effects, many different interests came together. The reform
was not prepared outside the legal machinery and against all its
representatives; it was prepared, for the most part, from within, by
a large number of magistrates and on the basis of shared objectives
and the power conflicts that divided them* Certainly the reformers
did not form a majority of the magistrates; but it was a body of
lawyers who outlined its general principles: a power to judge that
would not be affected by the immediate exercise of the prince’s
sovereignty; that would be relieved of any claim to legislate; that
would be detached from property relations; and which, having no
other functions but to judge, would exercise that power to the full.
In short, the power to judge should no longer depend on the
innumerable, discontinuous, sometimes contradictory privileges of
sovereignty, but on the continuously distributed effects of public
power. This general principle defined an overall strategy that
covered many different struggles. Those of philosophers like
Voltaire and of publicists like Brissot or Marat; but also those of
magistrates whose interests were nevertheless very diverse: Le
Trosne, a judge at the presidial court of Orleans, and Lacretelle, the
advocate-general at the parlement; Target, who with the parlements
was opposed to Maupeou’s reform; but also J. N. Moreau, who
supported the royal power against the parlementaires; Servan and
Dupaty, both magistrates, but in conflict with their colleagues, etc.
Throughout the eighteenth century, inside and outside the legal
apparatus, in both everyday penal practice and the criticism of
institutions, one sees the emergence of a new strategy for the
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Punishment
exercise of the power to punish. And 'reform’, in the strict sense, as
it was formulated in the theories of law or as it was outlined in the
various projects, was the political or philosophical resumption of
this strategy, with its primary objectives: to make of the punishment
and repression of illegalities a regular function, coextensive with
society; not to punish less, but to punish better; to punish with an
attenuated severity perhaps, but in order to punish with more
universality and necessity; to insert the power to punish more deeply
into the social body.
The conjuncture that saw the birth of reform is not, therefore,
that of a new sensibility, but that of another policy with regard to
illegalities.
Roughly speaking, one might say that, under the Ancien Regime
each of the different social strata had its margin of tolerated illegality:
the non-application of the rule, the non-observance of the
innumerable edicts or ordinances were a condition of the political
and economic functioning of society. This feature may not have
been peculiar to the Ancien Regime. But illegality was so deeply
rooted and so necessary to the life of each social stratum, that it had
in a sense its own coherence and economy. Sometimes it took on an
absolutely statutory form - as with the privileges accorded certain
individuals and groups - which made it not so much an illegality
as a regular exemption. Sometimes it took the form of a massive
general non-observance, which meant that for decades, sometimes
for centuries, ordinances could be published and constantly renewed
without ever being implemented. Sometimes it was a matter of laws
gradually falling into abeyance, then suddenly being reactivated;
sometimes of silent consent on the part of the authorities, neglect, or
quite simply the actual impossibility of imposing the law and apprehending
offenders. The least-favoured strata of the population did
not have, in principle, any privileges: but they benefited, within the
margins of what was imposed on them by law and custom, from a
space of tolerance, gained by force or obstinacy; and this space was
for them so indispensable a condition of existence that they were
often ready to rise up to defend it; the attempts that were made
periodically to reduce it, by reviving old laws or by improving the
methods of apprehending, provoked popular disturbances, just as
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Generalized punishment
attempts to reduce certain privileges disturbed the nobility, the
clergy and the bourgeoisie.
This necessary illegality, of which every social stratum bore
within itself specific forms, was caught up in a series of paradoxes*
In its lower regions, it was identified with criminality, from which
it was difficult to distinguish it juridically, if not morally: from fiscal
illegality to customs illegality, to smuggling, to looting, to the
armed struggle against the government’s taxation agents, then
against the soldiers themselves and, finally, to rebellion, there was
a continuity, in which it was difficult to mark the frontiers; or, again,
vagabondage (severely punished according to the terms of ordinances
that were never implemented) with the pillage, aggravated
theft, even murder that went with it, provided a welcome environment
to the unemployed, to workers who had left their employers
in irregular circumstances, to domestic servants who had some
reason to flee their masters, to ill-treated apprentices, to deserting
soldiers, to all those who wished to escape the press-gang. So
criminality merged into a wider illegality, to which the lower strata
were attached as to conditions of existence; and, conversely, this
illegality was a perpetual factor in the increase of crime. Hence an
ambiguity in popular attitudes: on the one hand, the criminal especially
when he happened to.be a smuggler or a peasant who had
fled from the exactions of a master - benefited from a spontaneous
wave of sympathy: his acts of violence were seen as descending
directly from old struggles. On the other hand, a man who, under
cover of an illegality accepted by the population, committed crimes
at the expense of this population, the vagrant beggar, for example,
who robbed and murdered, easily became the object of a special hate:
he had redirected upon the least favoured illegality that was integral
to their conditions of existence. Thus there grew up around crimes
a network of glorification and blame; effective help and fear alternated
with regard to this shifting population, which one knew was
very near, but from which one felt that crime could emerge.
Popular illegality enveloped a whole nucleus of criminality that was
both its extreme form and its internal danger.
Between this illegality of the depths and those of the other social
castes, therewas neitheran exact convergence nor aprofound opposition.
Generally speaking, the different illegalities proper to each
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Punishment
group maintained relations with one another that involved not only
rivalry, competition and conflicts of interest, but also mutual help
and complicity: the peasants’ refusal to pay certain state or ecclesiastical
rents was not necessarily disapproved of by the landowners;
the non-application by artisans of manufacturing regulations was
often encouraged by the new entrepreneurs; smuggling - the story
of Mandrin, welcomed by the entire population, received in castles
and protected by parlementaires proves this - was very widely
supported. At most, one had seen in the seventeenth century the
different fiscal refusals coalesce in serious revolts among widely
separated social strata. In short, the reciprocal interplay of illegalities
formed part of the political and economic life of society. Or
rather, a number of transformations (the abeyance into which
Colbert’s regulations had fallen, for example, the non-observance
of customs barriers within the kingdom, the breakdown of guild
practices) had operated in the breach that was being widened every
day by popular illegality; the bourgeoisie had needed these transformations;
and economic growth was due, in part, to them.
Tolerance then became encouragement.
In the second halfof the eighteenth century, the process tended to
be reversed. First, with the general increase in wealth, but also with
the sudden demographic expansion, the principal target of popular
illegality tended to be not so much rights, as goods: pilfering
and theft tended to replace smuggling and the armed struggle
against the tax agents. And, in this respect, the peasants, farmers
and artisans were often its principal victims. Le Trosne was no
doubt exaggerating a real tendency when he described the peasants’
suffering under the exactions of vagabonds, even more than they
had suffered under feudal demands: thieves now attacked them like
a cloud of maleficent insects, devouring crops and depleting the
granaries (Le Trosne, 1764, 4). It might be said that gradually in
the eighteenth century a crisis of popular illegality had occurred;
and neither the movements at the beginning of the Revolution
(around the refusal of seigniorial rights), nor those later movements,
in which the struggle against property rights, political and religious
protests and the refusal of conscription came together, recombined
illegality in its old, welcoming form. Furthermore, although a large
part of the bourgeoisie had accepted, without too much trouble,
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the illegality of rights, it found it difficult to support illegality when
it was a question of its own property rights. Nothing could be more
typical of this than the problem of peasant delinquency at the end
of the eighteenth century and especially after the Revolution
(Berce, 161). The transition to an intensive agriculture exercised,
over the rights to use common lands, over various tolerated practices,
over small accepted illegalities, a more and more restrictive
pressure. Furthermore, as it was acquired in part by the bourgeoisie,
now free of the feudal burdens that once weighed upon it, landed
property became absolute property: all the tolerated ‘rights’ that
the peasantry had acquired or preserved (the abandonment of old
obligations or the consolidation of irregular practices: the right of
free pasture, wood-collecting, etc.) were now rejected by the new
owners who regarded them quite simply as theft (thus leading,
among the people, to a series of chain reactions of an increasingly
illegal, or, if one prefers the term, criminal kind: breaches of close,
the theft or killing of cattle, fires, assaults, murders (cf. Festy
and Agulhon). The illegality of rights, which often meant
the survival of the most deprived, tended, with the new status of
property, to become an illegality of property. It then had to be
punished.
And this illegality, while resented by the bourgeoisie where the
ownership of land was concerned, was intolerable in commercial and
industrial ownership: the development of the ports, the appearance
of great warehouses in which merchandise was stored, the organization
of huge workshops (with considerable quantities of raw
materials, tools and manufactured articles, which belonged to the
entrepreneurs and which were difficult to supervise) also necessitated
a severe repression of illegality. The way in which wealth tended to
be invested, on a much larger scale than ever before, in commodities
and machines presupposed a systematic, armed intolerance of
illegality. The phenomenon was obviously very evident where
economic development was most intense. Colquhoun set out to
give proof, supported by figures, of the urgent need to check the
innumerable illegal practices that had grown up: according to the
estimates of the entrepreneurs and insurance companies, the theft
of produce imported from America and warehoused along the banks
of the Thames had risen, on average, to £250,000 per annum; in
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all, approximately £500,000 worth of goods was stolen each year
in the Port of London itself (and this did not include the arsenals
and warehouses outside the port proper); to this should be added
£700,000 for the town itself. In this situation of permanent pilfering,
three phenomena, says Colquhoun, should be taken into consideration:
first, the complicity and often the active participation of the
clerks, overseers, foremen and workers: ‘Whenever a large number
of workers are gathered together in one place, there are bound to be
a lot of bad characters among them’; second, the existence of a whole
organization of illicit commerce, which began in the workshops or
docks, then passed on to the receivers - wholesale receivers,
specializing in certain kinds of commodity, and retail receivers
whose stalls offered a ‘wretched display of old iron, rags and worn
clothes, whereas at the back of the shop were hidden naval munitions
of great value, copper bolts and nails, pieces of cast iron and precious
metals, produce from the West Indies, furniture and all kinds of
goods bought from the labourers’ - then on to dealers and pedlars
who distributed the stolen goods far into the countryside (Colquhoun,
1797; in chapters VII, VIII and XV, he gives a very detailed
account of this process); third, counterfeiting (it seems that there
were between forty and fifty mints producing counterfeit money
throughout England, in permanent operation). But what facilitated
the work of this huge undertaking, involving both depredation and
competition, was a whole set of tolerances: some amounted almost
to acquired right (the right, for example, to collect bits of iron or
rope around ships or to resell the sugar sweepings); others were of
the nature of a moral acceptance; the pilferers themselves regarded
their work as a kind of smuggling, which ‘they did not regard as a
serious offence’.
It proved necessary, therefore, to control these illicit practices
and introduce new legislation to cover them. The offences had to be
properly defined and more surely punished; out of this mass of
irregularities, sometimes tolerated and sometimes punished with a
severity out of all proportion to the offence, one had to determine
what was an intolerable offence, and the offenders had to be apprehended
and punished. With the new forms of capital accumulation,
new relations of production and the new legal status of property,
all the popular practices that belonged, either in a silent, everyday,
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tolerated form, or in a violent form, to the illegality of rights were
reduced by force to an illegality of property. In that movement
which transformed a society of juridico-political levies into a society
of the appropriation of the means and products of labour, theft
tended to become the first of the great loopholes in legality. Or, to
put it another way, the economy of illegalities was restructured
with the development of capitalist society. The illegality of property
was separated from the illegality of rights. This distinction represents
a class opposition because, on the one hand, the illegality
that was to be most accessible to the lower classes was that of
property - the violent transfer of ownership - and because, on the
other, the bourgeoisie was to reserve to itself the illegality of rights:
the possibility of getting round its own regulations and its own laws,
of ensuring for itself an immense sector of economic circulation by
a skilful manipulation of gaps in the law - gaps that were foreseen
by its silences, or opened up by de facto tolerance. And this great
redistribution of illegalities was even to be expressed through a
specialization of the legal circuits: for illegalities of property - for
theft - there were the ordinary courts and punishments; for the
illegalities of rights - fraud, tax evasion, irregular commercial
operations - special legal institutions applied with transactions,
accommodations, reduced fines, etc. The bourgeoisie reserved to
itself the fruitful domain of the illegality of rights. And at the same
time as this split was taking place, there emerged the need for
a constant policing concerned essentially with this illegality of
property. It became necessary to get rid of the old economy of the
power to punish, based on the principles of the confused and inadequate
multiplicity of authorities, the distribution and concentration
of the power correlative with actual inertia and inevitable
tolerance, punishments that were spectacular in their manifestations
and haphazard in their application. It became necessary to define a
strategy and techniques of punishment in which an economy of
continuity and permanence would replace that of expenditure and
excess. In short, penal reform was born at the point of junction
between the struggle against the super-power of the sovereign and
that against the infra-power of acquired and tolerated illegalities.
And if penal reform was anything more than the temporary result
of a purely circumstantial encounter, it was because, between this
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super-power and this infra-power, a whole network of relations
was being formed. By placing on the side of the sovereign the
additional burden of a spectacular, unlimited, personal, irregular
and discontinuous power, the form of monarchical sovereignty left
the subjects free to practise a constant illegality; this illegality was
like the correlative of this type of power. So much so that in attacking
the various prerogatives of the sovereign one was also attacking
the functioning of the illegalities. The two objectives were in continuity.
And, according to particular circumstances or tactics, the
reformers laid more stress on one or the other. Le Trosne, the
physiocrat who was a judge at the presidial court of Orleans, may
serve as an example. In 1764, he published a memorandum on vagabondage:
that hot-bed of thieves and murderers ‘who live in the
midst of society without being members of it*, who wage ‘a veritable
war on all citizens', and who are in the midst of us ‘in that state that
one supposes existed before the establishment of civil society*.
Against them, he demanded the most severe penalties (characteristically,
he expressed surprise that one should be more indulgent
towards them than to smugglers); he wanted the police to be reinforced,
the mounted constabulary to hunt them down with the help
of the population that suffered from their depredations; he demanded
that these useless and dangerous people should be ‘acquired by the
state and that they should belong to it as slaves to their masters';
and if necessary one should organize collective round-ups in the
woods to drive them out, and anyone making a capture should be
paid: ‘A reward of ten pounds is given for anyone who kills a wolf.
A vagabond is infinitely more dangerous for society" (Le Trosne,
1764, 8, 50, 54, 61—2). In 1777 in Vues sur la justice criminelle, the
same Le Trosne demanded that the prerogatives of the Crown be
reduced, that the accused be regarded as innocent until proved
guilty, that the judge be a just arbiter between them and society,
that laws be ‘fixed, constant, determined in the most precise way’,
so that subjects know ‘to what they are exposed’ and that magistrates
be nothing more than the ‘organ of the law’ (Le Trosne, 1777,
31, 37, 103-6). For Le Trosne, as for so many others at that time,
the struggle for the delimitation of the power to punish was articulated
directly on the need to subject popular illegality to a stricter
and more constant control. It is understandable that the criticism
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of the public execution should have assumed such importance in
penal reform: for it was the form in which, in the most visible way,
the unlimited power of the sovereign and the ever-active illegality
of the people came together. Humanity in the sentences was the
rule given to a system of punishment that must fix their limits on
both. The ‘man’ that must be respected in the sentence was the
juridical and moral form given to this double delimitation.
But, although it is true that reform, as a penal theory and as a
strategy of the power to punish, took shape at the point of coincidence
of these two objectives, its stability in the future was due to
the fact that, for a long time, priority was given to the second. It was
because the pressure on popular illegalities had become, at the period
of the Revolution, then under the Empire, and finally throughout
the nineteenth century, an essential imperative, that reform was able
to pass from the project stage to that of an institution and set of
practices. That is to say, although the new criminal legislation
appears to be characterized by less severe penalties, a clearer codification,
a marked diminution of the arbitrary, a more generally
accepted consensus concerning the power to punish (in the absence
of a more real division in its exercise), it is sustained in reality by an
upheaval in the traditional economy of illegalities and a rigorous
application of force to maintain their new adjustment. A penal system
must be conceived as a mechanism intended to administer
illegalities differentially, not to eliminate them all.
Shift the object and change the scale. Define new tactics in order
to reach a target that is now more subtle but also more widely spread
in the social body. Find new techniques for adjusting punishment to
it and for adapting its effects. Lay down new principles for regularizing,
refining, universalizing the art of punishing. Homogenize its
application. Reduce its economic and political cost by increasing its
effectiveness and by multiplying its circuits. In short, constitute a
new economy and a new technology of the power to punish: these
are no doubt the essential raisons d'etre of penal reform in the
eighteenth century.
At the level of principles, this new strategy falls easily into the
general theory of the contract. The citizen is presumed to have
accepted once and for all, with the laws of society, the very law by
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which he may be punished. Thus the criminal appears as a juridically
paradoxical being. He has broken the pact, he is therefore the enemy
of society as a whole, but he participates in the punishment that is
practised upon him. The least crime attacks the whole of society;
and the whole of society - including the criminal - is present in the
least punishment. Penal punishment is therefore a generalized
function, coextensive with the function of the social body and with
each of its elements. This gives rise to the problem of the degree of
punishment, the economy of the power to punish.
In effect the offence opposes an individual to the entire social
body; in order to punish him, society has the right to oppose him
in its entirety. It is an unequal struggle: on one side are all the forces,
all the power, all the rights. And this is how it should be, since the
defence of each individual is involved. Thus a formidable right to
punish is established, since the offender becomes the common
enemy. Indeed, he is worse than an enemy, for it is from within
society that he delivers his blows - he is nothing less than a traitor,
a ‘monster’. How could society not have an absolute right over him?
How could it not demand, quite simply, his elimination? And,
although it is true that the principle of punishment must be subscribed
to in the pact, must not each citizen, logically, accept the
extreme penalty for those of them who attack them as a body.
‘Every malefactor, by attacking the social rights, becomes, by his
crimes, a rebel and a traitor to his country; by violating its laws he
ceases to be a member of it; he even makes war upon it. In such a
case the preservation of the state is inconsistent with his own, and
one or the other must perish; in putting the guilty to death we slay
not so much the citizen as the enemy/5The right to punish has been
shifted from the vengeance of the sovereign to the defence of
society. But it now finds itself recombined with elements so strong
that it becomes almost more to be feared. The malefactor has been
saved from a threat that is by its very nature excessive, but he is
exposed to a penalty that seems to be without bounds. It is a return
to a terrible ‘super-power'. It brings with it the need to establish a
principle of moderation for the power of punishment.
‘Who does not shudder with horror when reading in history of so
many terrible and useless torments, invented and coldly applied by
monsters who took upon themselves the name of sage?* (Beccaria,
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87). Or again: ‘The laws summon me to the greatest punishment
of crimes. I go with all the fury that it has inspired in me. But
what is this? They even go beyond it. . . God, who has imprinted
in our hearts an aversion to pain for ourselves and for our fellow
men, are they then those same beings, whom thou hast created so
weak and so sensible, who have invented such barbarous, such
refined tortures?’ (Lacretelle, 129). The principle of moderation in
punishment, even when it is a question of punishing the enemy of
the social body, is articulated first as a discourse of the heart. Or
rather, it leaps forth like a cry from the body, which is revolted at
the sight or at the imagination of too much cruelty. The formulation
of the principle that penality must remain ‘humane* is expressed by
the reformers in the first person. It is as if the sensibility of the
speaker were being expressed directly; as if the body of the philosopher
or theoretician had come, between executioner and victim, to
affirm his own law and to impose it finally on the entire economy
of punishment. Does this lyricism express an inability to find a
rational foundation for a penal arithmetic? Between the contractual
principle that expels the criminal from society and the image of the
monster ‘vomited’ by nature, where is one to find a limit, if not in a
human nature that is manifested - not in the rigour of the law,
not in the ferocity of the delinquent - but in the sensibility
of the reasonable man who makes the law and does not commit
crime?
But this recourse to ‘sensibility’ does not exactly express a
theoretical impossibility. In fact, it bears within it a principle of
calculation. The body, the imagination, pain, the heart to be respected
are not, in effect, those of the criminal that is to be punished,
but those of the men who, having subscribed to the pact, have the
right of exercising against him the power of assembly. The pain that
must exclude any reduction in punishment is that felt by the judges
or spectators with all the hardness of heart that it may bring with it,
all the ferocity induced by familiarity, or on the contrary, illfounded
feelings of pity and indulgence: ‘Thank God for those
gentle, sensitive souls on whom those horrible executions exert a
kind of torture’ (Lacretelle, 131). What has to be arranged and
calculated are the return effects of punishment on the punishing
authority and the power that it claims to exercise.
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Here the principle takes root that one should never apply ‘inhumane*
punishments to a criminal, who, nevertheless, may well be
a traitor and a monster. If the law must now treat in a ‘humane* way
an individual who is ‘outside nature* (whereas the old justice treated
the ‘outlaw* inhumanely), it is not on account of some profound
humanity that the criminal conceals within him, but because of a
necessary regulation of the effects of power. It is this ‘economic*
rationality that must calculate the penalty and prescribe the appropriate
techniques. ‘Humanity* is the respectable name given to this
economy and to its meticulous calculations. ‘Where punishment is
concerned, the minimum is ordered by humanity and counselled by
policy.'6
So, in order to understand this techno-politics of punishment, let
us take the extreme case, the ultimate crime: a deed of such enormity
that it violates all the most respected laws. It is produced in circumstances
so extraordinary, in such profound secrecy, with such lack
of restraint, as if at the very limit of possibility, that it could not
be other than unique, in any case the last of its kind: no one could
ever imitate it; no one could take it as an example, or even feel
scandalized that it should have been committed. It is doomed to
disappear without trace. This fable7of the ‘ultimate crime* is, to the
new penality, what original sin was to the old: the pure form in
which the reason for punishment appears.
Ought such a crime to be punished? According to what calculation?
Of what use could its punishment be in the economy of the
power to punish? It would be useful to the extent that it could make
reparation for ‘the harm done to society* (Pastoret, II, 21). Now,
if one sets aside the strictly material damage - which even when it is
irreparable as in the case of a murder is of little account in relation
to society as a whole - the injury that a crime inflicts upon the
social body is the disorder that it introduces into it: the scandal that
it gives rise to, the example that it gives, the incitement to repeat it
if it is not punished, the possibility of becoming widespread that it
bears within it. In order to be useful, punishment must have as its
objective the consequences of the crime, that is to say, the series of
disorders that it is capable of initiating: ‘The proportion between
the penalty and the quality of the offence is determined by the
influence that the violation of the pact has on the social order’
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(Filangieri, 214). But this influence of a crime is not necessarily in
direct proportion to its horror; a crime that horrifies the conscience
is often of less effect than an offence that everyone tolerates and feels
quite ready to imitate. There is a scarcity of great crimes; on the
other hand, there is the danger that everyday offences may multiply.
So one must not seek a qualitative relation between the crime and
its punishment, an equivalence of horror: ‘Can the cries of a wretch
in torment bring back from the depths of a past that cannot return
an action that has already been committed?' (Beccaria, 87). One
must calculate a penalty in terms not of the crime, but of its possible
repetition. One must take into account not the past offence, but the
future disorder. Things must be so arranged that the malefactor can
have neither any desire to repeat his offence, nor any possibility of
having imitators.8Punishment, then, will be an art of effects; rather
than opposing the enormity of the penalty to the enormity of the
crime, one must adjust to one another the two series that follow
from the crime: its own effects and those of the penalty. A crime
without a dynasty does not call for punishment; any more than,
according to another version of the same fable, a society on the
verge of dissolution and disappearance would have the right to erect
scaffolds. The last crime cannot but remain unpunished.
This was an old view. The function of punishment as example
was to be found long before the eighteenth-century reform. That
punishment looks towards the future, and that at least one of its
major functions is to prevent crime had, for centuries, been one of
the current justifications of the right to punish. But the difference
was that the prevention that was expected as an effect of the punishment
and its spectacle - and therefore of its excess - tended now to
become the principle of its economy and the measure of its just
proportions. One must punish exactly enough to prevent repetition.
There is, then, a shift in the mechanics of example: in a penality
employing public torture and execution, example was the answer
to the crime; it had, by a sort of twin manifestation, to show the
crime and at the same time to show the sovereign power that
mastered it; in a penality calculated according to its own effects,
example must refer back to the crime, but in the most discreet way
possible and with the greatest possible economy indicate the intervention
of power; ideally, too, it should prevent any subsequent
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reappearance of either. The example is no longer a ritual that manifests;
it is a sign that serves as an obstacle. Through this technique of
punitive signs, which tends to reverse the whole temporal field of
penal action, the reformers thought they were giving to the power
to punish an economic, effective instrument that could be made
general throughout the entire social body, capable of coding all its
behaviour and consequently of reducing the whole diffuse domain
of illegalities. The semio-technique with which one tried to arm the
power to punish rested on five or six major rules.
The rule of minimum quantity. A crime is committed because it
procures certain advantages. If one linked, to the idea of crime, the
idea of a slightly greater disadvantage, it would cease to be desirable.
‘For punishment to produce the effect that must be expected of
it, it is enough that the harm that it causes exceed the good that the
criminal has derived from the crime* (Beccaria, 89). A proximity
between penalty and crime can, indeed must, be accepted; but no
longer in its old form, where the public execution had to be equivalent
in intensity to the crime, with an additional factor that
marked the ‘surplus power* of the sovereign carrying out his legitimate
vengeance; it is a quasi-equivalence at the level of interests: a
little more interest in avoiding the penalty than in risking the crime.
The rule of sufficient ideality. If the motive of a crime is the
advantage expected of it, the effectiveness of the penalty is the disadvantage
expected of it. This means that the ‘pain’ at the heart of
punishment is not the actual sensation of pain, but the idea of pain,
displeasure, inconvenience - the ‘pain’ of the idea of ‘pain*. Punishment
has to make use not of the body, but of representation. Or
rather, if it does make use of the body, it is not so much as the subject
of a pain as the object of a representation: the memory of pain
must prevent a repetition of the crime, just as the spectacle, however
artificial it may be, of a physical punishment may prevent the
contagion of a crime. But it is not pain in itself that will be the
instrument of the technique of punishment. Therefore, as long as
possible, and except in cases requiring an effective representation,
one should avoid recourse to the great panoply of the scaffold.
There is an elision of the body as the subject of the punishment, but
not necessarily as an element in a spectacle. The rejection of the
public execution which, at the threshold of the theory, had found
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no more than a lyrical expression, was now offered the possibility
of a rational articulation: what must be maximized is the representation
of the penalty, not its corporal reality.
The rule oflateral effects. The penalty must have its most intense
effects on those who have not committed the crime; to carry the
argument to its limit, if one could be sure that the criminal could not
repeat the crime, it would be enough to make others believe that he
had been punished. There is a centrifugal intensification of effects,
which leads to the paradox that in the calculation of penalties the
least important element is still the criminal (unless he is likely to
repeat the offence). Beccaria illustrated this paradox in the punishment
that he proposed to replace the death sentence - perpetual
slavery. Is this not a physically more cruel punishment than death?
Not at all, he says: because the pain of slavery, for the condemned
man, is divided into as many portions as he has moments left to live;
it is an infinitely divisible penalty, an Eleatic penalty, much less
severe than capital punishment, which is only one step away from
the public execution. On the other hand, for those who see these
slaves, or represent them to themselves, the pains they bear are
concentrated into a single idea; all the moments of slavery are
contracted into a representation that then becomes more terrifying
than the idea of death. It is the economically ideal punishment: it
is minimal for him who undergoes it (and who, reduced to slavery,
cannot repeat his crime) and it is maximal for him who represents it
to himself. ‘Among the penalties, and in the way of applying them
in proportion to the offences, one must choose the means that will
leave the most lasting impression on the minds of the people, and
the least cruel on the body of the criminal* (Beccaria, 87).
The rule ofperfect certainty. With the idea of each crime and the
advantages to be expected of it must be associated the idea of a
particular punishment with the precise inconveniences that result
from it; the link from one to the other must be regarded as necessary
and unbreakable. This general element of certainty that must give
the system of punishment its effectiveness involves a number of
precise measures. The laws that define the crime and lay down the
penalties must be perfectly clear, ‘so that each member of society
may distinguish criminal actions from virtuous actions* (Brissot,
24). These laws must be published, so that everyone has access to
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them; what is needed is not oral traditions and customs, but a written
legislation which can be ‘the stable monument of the social pact’,
printed texts available to all: ‘Only printing can make the public as
a whole and not just a few persons depositories of the sacred code of
the laws’ (Beccaria, 26). The monarch must renounce his right of
pardon so that the force that is present in the idea of punishment
is not attenuated by the hope of intervention: ‘If one allows men to
see that the crime may be pardoned and that punishment is not a
necessary consequence of it, one nourishes in them the hope of
going unpunished. , . The laws must be inexorable, those who
execute them inflexible/9 Above all, no crime committed must
escape the gaze of those whose task it is to dispense justice. Nothing
so weakens the machinery of the law than the hope of going unpunished;
how could one establish in the minds of the public a strict
link between the offence and a penalty if it were affected by a certain
coefficient of improbability? Would it not be necessary to make the
penalty the more to be feared in its violence as it is less to be feared
in its uncertainty? Rather than imitate the old system in this way
and be ‘more severe, one must be more vigilant’.10 Hence the idea
that the machinery of justice must be duplicated by an organ of
surveillance that would work side by side with it, and which would
make it possible either to prevent crimes, or, if committed, to arrest
their authors; police and justice must work together as two complementary
actions of the same process - the police assuring ‘the action
of society on each individual’, justice ‘the rights of individuals
against society* (Duport, Archives parlementaires, XXI, 45). Thus
every crime will come to the light of day and be punished in all
certainty. But it is also necessary that the legal procedures should
not remain secret, that the reasons why a defendant is condemned or
acquitted should be known to all, and each individual must be able
to recognize the reasons for a penalty: ‘Let the magistrate speak his
opinion aloud, let him be obliged to read in his judgement the text
of the law that condemns the defendant. . . Let the procedures that
are buried mysteriously in the obscurity of the records office be
opened to all citizens who are concerned at the fate of the condemned'
(Mably, 348).
The rule ofcommon truth. Beneath this ordinary-seeming principle
is hidden an important transformation. The old system of legal
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proofs, the use of torture, the extraction of confessions, the use of
the public execution, the body and spectacle for the reproduction
of truth had long isolated penal practice from the common forms of
demonstration: semi-proofs produced semi-truths and semi-guilty
persons, words extracted by pain had greater authenticity, presumption
involved a degree of punishment. The heterogeneity of this
system with the ordinary system of proof really constituted a scandal
only when the power to punish needed, for its own economy, a
climate of irrefutable certainty. How can one link absolutely in the
minds of men the idea of crime and the idea of punishment, if the
reality of the punishment does not follow, in all cases, the reality
of the offence? To establish the offence, in all evidence, and according
to' the means valid for all, becomes a task of first importance.
The verification of the crime must obey the general criteria for all
truth. In the arguments it employs, in the proofs it provides, legal
judgement must be homogeneous with judgement in general. There
is, therefore, an abandonment of legal proof, a rejection of torture,
the need for a complete demonstration of the truth, an effacement
of all correlation between degrees of suspicion and degrees of
punishment. Like a mathematical truth, the truth of the crime will
be accepted only when it is completely proven. It follows that, up
to the final demonstration of his crime, the defendant must be
regarded as innocent; and that, in order to carry out this demonstration,
the judge must use not ritual forms, but common instruments,
that reason possessed by everyone, which is also that of philosophers
and scientists: ‘In theory, I regard the magistrate as a philosopher
who sets out to discover an interesting truth. . . His sagacity
will enable him to grasp all the circumstances and all the relations,
bring together or separate whatever needs to be brought together
or separated in order to arrive at a sane judgement’ (Seigneux de
Correvon, 49). The investigation, the exercise of common reason,
lays aside the old inquisitorial model and adopts the much more
subtle model (doubly validated by science and common sense) of
empirical research. The judge will be like a ‘pilot steering between
the rocks’: 'What proofs or what clues will be considered to be
sufficient neither I nor anyone else has dared to determine in general;
since circumstances are subject to infinite variations, since proofs
and clues must be deduced from these circumstances, the clearest
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clues and proofs must necessarily vary in proportion’ (Risi, 53)*
Henceforth, penal practice was to be subject to a common rule of
truth, or rather to a complex rule in which heterogeneous elements
of scientific demonstration, the evidence of the senses and common
sense come together to form the judge’s ‘deep-seated conviction’.
Although penal justice preserves the forms that guarantee its equity,
it may now be opened up to all manner of truths, providing they
are evident, well founded, acceptable to all. The legal ritual in itself
no longer generates a divided truth. It is resituated in the field of
reference of common proofs. With the multiplicity of scientific
discourses, a difficult, infinite relation was then forged that penal
justice is still unable to control. The master of justice is no longer
the master of its truth.
The rule ofoptimal specification. For penal semiotics to cover the
whole field of illegalities that one wishes to eliminate, all offences
must be defined; they must be classified and collected into species
from which none of them can escape. A code is therefore necessary
and this code must be sufficiently precise for each type of offence to
be clearly present in it. The silence of the law must not harbour the
hope of impunity. An exhaustive, explicit code is required, defining
crimes and fixing penalties. (On this theme, cf., among others,
Linguet, 8.) But the same imperative need for a total coincidence
between all possible offences and the effects-signs of punishment
forces one to go further. The idea of the same punishment does not
have the same effect on everyone: the rich do not fear fines nor the
notorious infamy. The injury caused by an offence and its value as
example differ according to the status of the offender; a crime
committed by a noble is more injurious to society than one committed
by a man of the people (Lacretelle, 144). Lastly, since punishment
must prevent a repetition of the offence, it must take into
account the profound nature of the criminal himself, the presumable
degree of his wickedness, the intrinsic quality of his will: ‘Of two
men who have committed the same theft, how much less guilty is he
who scarcely had the necessities of life than he who overflowed with
excess? Of two perjurers, how much more criminal is he on whom
one has striven from his childhood to impress feelings of honour
than he who, abandoned to nature, never received the benefit of
education’ (Marat, 34). One sees the emergence at the same time of
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the need for a parallel classification of crimes and punishments, the
need for an individualization of sentences, in accordance with the
particular characteristics of each criminal. This individualization was
to weigh very heavily throughout the history of modern penal law;
it is rooted precisely here: in terms of the theory of law and according
to the requirements of everyday practice, it is no doubt in
radical opposition to the principle of codification; but from the
standpoint of the economy of the power to punish, and of the
techniques by which one wishes to circulate throughout the social
body precisely calibrated signs of punishment, with neither excesses
nor loopholes, with neither a useless ‘expenditure* of power nor with
timidity, it becomes evident that the codification of the offencespunishments
system and the modulation of the criminal-punishment
dyad go side by side, each requiring the other. Individualization
appears as the ultimate aim of a precisely adapted code.
But this individualization is very different in its nature from the
modulations of punishment to be found in the old jurisprudence.
The old system - and on this point it followed Christian penitentiary
practice - used two series of variables to adjust the punishment,
those of circumstances’ and those of'intention*; elements, that is to
say, that made it possible to qualify the act itself. The modulation
of the penalty belonged to ‘casuistry’ in the broad sense. (On the
non-individualizing character of casuistry, cf. Cariou.) But what
was now beginning to emerge was a modulation that referred to the
defendant himself, to his nature, to his way of life and his attitude of
mind, to his past, to the ‘quality* and not to the intention of his will.
One perceives, but as a place as yet unfilled, the locus in which, in
penal practice, psychological knowledge will take over the role of
casuistic jurisprudence. Of course, at the end of the eighteenth
century, that moment was still far off. The code-individualization
link was sought in the scientific models of the period. Natural
history no doubt offered the most adequate schema: the taxonomy
of species according to an uninterrupted gradation. One sought to
constitute a Linnaeus of crimes and punishments, so that each
particular offence and each punishable individual might come, without
the slightest risk of any arbitrary action, within the provisions
of a general law. ‘A table must be drawn up of all the genera of
crimes to be observed in different countries. According to the
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Punishment
enumeration of crimes, a division into species must be carried out*
The best rule of this division is, it seems to me, to separate the
crimes according to their objects. This division must be such that
each species is quite distinct from another, and that each particular
crime, considered in all its relations may be placed between that
which must precede it and that which must follow it, in the strictest
gradation; lastly, this table must be such that it may be compared
with another table that will be drawn up for penalties, in such a way
that they may correspond exactly to one another’ (Lacretelle, 351—
352). In theory, or rather in dream, the double taxonomy of
punishments and crimes will solve the problem: but how is one to
apply fixed laws to particular individuals?
Far removed from this speculative model, forms of anthropological
individualization were being constituted at the same period in
what was still a very rough and ready way. Let us take first the
notion of the repetition of crime. Not that this was unknown to the
old criminal laws.11 But it was tending to become a description
of the defendant himself capable of altering the sentence passed:
according to the legislation of 1791, recidivists were liable in almost
all cases to a doubling of the penalty; according to the law of Floreal
Year X, they had to be branded with the letter R ; and the penal code
of 1810 inflicted on them either the maximum possible of the normal
penalty, or the penalty immediately above it. Now, through the
repetition of the crime, what one was aiming at was not the author
of an act defined by law, but die delinquent subject himself, a certain
will that manifested his intrinsically criminal character. Gradually,
as criminality, rather than crime, became the object of penal intervention,
the opposition between first offender and recidivist tended
to become more important. And on the basis of this opposition,
reinforcing it on several points, one sees at the same period the
formation of the notion of the ‘crime passioneU - an involuntary,
unpremeditated crime, bound up with extraordinary circumstances,
which, while not offering the same excuse as madness, nevertheless
prevented it from being regarded as an ordinary crime. As early as
1791, Le Peletier remarked that the subtle gradation of penalties
that he had presented to the Constituent Assembly might dissuade
from crime ‘the evil-doer who plans a wicked action in cold blood’,
and who may be restrained by thoughts of the penalty; but, on the
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other hand, it was powerless against crimes due to ‘violent passions
that have no regard to consequences'; this, however, was unimportant,
since such crimes revealed in their authors ‘no reasoned wicked­
ness.’13
Beneath the humanization of the penalties, what one finds are all
those rules that authorize, or rather demand, ‘leniency’, as a calculated
economy of the power to punish. But they also provoke a
shift in the point of application of this power: it is no longer the
body, with the ritual play of excessive pains, spectacular brandings
in the ritual of the public execution; it is the mind or rather a play
of representations and signs circulating discreetly but necessarily
and evidently in the minds of all. It is no longer the body, but the
soul, said Mably. And we see very clearly what he meant by this
term: the correlative of a technique of power. Old ‘anatomies' of
punishment are abandoned. But have we really entered the age of
non-corporal punishment?
At the point of departure, then, one may place the political
project of rooting out illegalities, generalizing the punitive function
and delimiting, in order to control it, the power to punish. From
this there emerge two lines of objectification of crime and of the
criminal. On the one hand, the criminal designated as the enemy of
all, whom it is in the interest of all to track down, falls outside the
pact, disqualifies himself as a citizen and emerges, bearing within
him as it were, a wild fragment of nature; he appears as a villain,
a monster, a madman, perhaps, a sick and, before long, ‘abnormal'
individual. It is as such that, one day, he will belong to a scientific
objectification and to the ‘treatment’ that is correlative to it. On the
other hand, the need to measure, from within, the effects of the
punitive power prescribes tactics of intervention over all criminals,
actual or potential: the organization of a field of prevention, the
calculation of interests, the circulation of representations and signs,
the constitution of a horizon of certainty and proof, the adjustment
of penalties to ever more subtle variables; all this also leads to an
objectification of criminals and crimes. In either case, one sees that
the power relation that underlies the exercise of punishment begins
to be duplicated by an object relation in which are caught up not
only the crime as a fact to be established according to common
IOI
Punishment
norms, but the criminal as an individual to be known according
to specific criteria. One also sees that this object relation is not
superimposed, from the outside, on the punitive practice, as would
be a prohibition laid on the fury of the public execution by the
limits of the sensibility, or as would be a rational or ‘scientific'
interrogation as to what this man that one is punishing really is. The
processes of objectification originate in the very tactics of power and
of the arrangement of its exercise.
However, the two types of objectification that emerge with the
project of penal reform are very different from one another: both in
their chronology and in their effects. The objectification of the
criminal as outside the law, as natural man, is still only a potentiality,
a vanishing trace, in which are entangled the themes of political
criticism and the figures of the imagination. One will have to wait a
long time before homo criminalis becomes a definite object in the
field of knowledge. The other, on the contrary, has had much more
rapid and decisive effects in so far as it was linked more directly
to the reorganization of the power to punish: codification, definition
of offences, the fixing of a scale of penalties, rules of procedure,
definition of the role of magistrates. And also because it made use
of the discourse already constituted by the Ideologues. This discourse
provided, in effect, by means of the theory of interests, representations
and signs, by the series and geneses that it reconstituted, a sort
of general recipe for the exercise of power over men: the ‘mind’ as
a surface of inscription for power, with semiology as its tool; the
submission of bodies through the control of ideas; the analysis of
representations as a principle in a politics of bodies that was much
more effective than the ritual anatomy of torture and execution. The
thought of the Ideologues was not only a theory of the individual
and society; it developed as a technology of subtle, effective,
economic powers, in opposition to the sumptuous expenditure of
the power of the sovereign. Let us hear once more what Servan has
to say: the ideas of crime and punishment must be strongly linked
and ‘follow one another without interruption. . . When you have
thus formed the chain of ideas in the heads of your citizens, you will
then be able to pride yourselves on guiding them and being their
masters. A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains;
but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of
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Generalized punishment
their own ideas; it is at the stable point of reason that he secures the
end of the chain; this link is all the stronger in that we do not know
of what it is made and we believe it to be our own work; despair
and time eat away the bonds of iron and steel, but they are powerless
against the habitual union of ideas, they can only tighten it still
more; and on the soft fibres of the brain is founded the unshakable
base of the soundest of Empires’ (Servan, 35)*
It is this semio-technique of punishments, this ‘ideological
power* which, partly at least, will remain in suspense and will be
superseded by a new political anatomy, in which the body, once
again, but in a new form, will be the principal character. And this
new political anatomy will permit the intersection of the two
divergent lines of objectification that are to be seen emerging in the
eighteenth century: that which rejects the criminal ‘from the other
side’ - from the side of a nature against nature; and that which seeks
to control delinquency by a calculated economy of punishments. A
glance at the new art of punishing clearly reveals the supersession
of the punitive semio-technique by a new politics of the body.
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2. The gentle way in punishment
The art of punishing, then, must rest on a whole technology of
representation. The undertaking can succeed only if it forms part of
a natural mechanics. ‘Like the gravitation of bodies, a secret force
compels us ever towards our well-being. This impulsion is affected
only by the obstacles that laws oppose to it. All the diverse actions
of man are the effects of this interior tendency/ To find the suitable
punishment for a crime is to find the disadvantage whose idea is
such that it robs for ever the idea of a crime of any attraction. It
is an art of conflicting energies, an art of images linked by association,
the forging of stable connections that defy time: it is a matter
of establishing the representation of pairs of opposing values, of
establishing quantitative differences between the opposing forces,
of setting up a complex of obstacle-signs that may subject the
movement of the forces to a power relation. ‘Let the idea of torture
and execution be ever present in the heart of the weak man and
dominate the feeling that drives him to crime’ (Beccaria, 1 19). These
obstacle-signs must constitute the new arsenal of penalties, just asthe
old public executions were organized around a system of retaliatory
marks. But in order to function, they must obey several conditions.
1. They must be as unarbitrary as possible. It is true that it is
society that defines, in terms of its own interests, what must be
regarded as a crime: it is not therefore natural. But, if punishment
is to present itself to the mind as soon as one thinks of committing a
crime, as immediate a link as possible must be made between the
two: a link of resemblance, analogy, proximity. ‘The penalty must
be made to conform as closely as possible to the nature of the
offence, so that fear of punishment diverts the mind from the road
along which the prospect of an advantageous crime was leading it*
(Beccaria, 119). The ideal punishment would be transparent to the
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The gentle way in punishment
crime that it punishes; thus, for him who contemplates it, it will be
infallibly the sign of the crime that it punishes; and for him who
dreams of the crime, the idea of the offence will be enough to arouse
the sign of the punishment. This is an advantage for the stability of
the link, an advantage for the calculation of the proportions between
crime and punishment and the quantitative reading of interests; it
also has the advantage that, by assuming the form of a natural
sequence, punishment does not appear as the arbitrary effect of a
human power: ‘To derive the offence from the punishment is the
best means of proportioning punishment to crime. If this is the
triumph of justice, it is also the triumph of liberty, for then penalties
no longer proceed from the will of the legislator, but from the nature
of things; one no longer sees man committing violence on man’
(Marat, 33). In analogical punishment, the power that punishes is
hidden.
The reformers proposed a whole panoply of penalties that were
natural by institution and which represented in their form the
content of the crime. Take Vermeil, for example: those who abuse
public liberty will be deprived of their own; those who abuse the
benefits of law and the privileges of public office will be deprived of
their civil rights; speculation and usury will be punished by fines;
theft will be punished by confiscation; ‘vainglory’ by humiliation;
murder by death; fire-raising by the stake. In the case of the poisoner,
‘the executioner will present him with a goblet the contents
of which will be thrown into his face; thus he will be made to feel
the horror of his crime by being offered an image of it; he will then
be thrown into a cauldron of boiling water’ (Vermeil, 68-145;
also Dufriche de Valaze, 349) Mere day-dreaming? Perhaps. But
the principle of a symbolic communication was clearly formulated
by Le Peletier, when in 1791 he presented the new criminal legislation:
‘Exact relations are required between the nature of the offence
and the nature of the punishment’; he who has used violence in his
crime must be subjected to physical pain; he who has been lazy
must be sentenced to hard labour; he who has acted despicably will
be subjected to infamy (Le Peletier, 321-2).
Despite cruelties that are strongly reminiscent of the tortures of
the Ancien Regime, a quite different mechanism is at work in these
analogical penalties. Horror is not opposed to horror in a joust of
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Punishment
power; it is no longer the symmetry of vengeance, but the transparency
of the sign to that which it signifies; what is required is to
establish, in the theatre of punishments, a relation that is immediately
intelligible to the senses and on which a simple calculation may
be based: a sort of reasonable aesthetic of punishment. ‘It is not only
in the fine arts that one must follow nature faithfully; political
institutions, at least those that display wisdom and permanence, are
founded on nature* (Beccaria, 114). The punishment must proceed
from the crime; the law must appear to be a necessity of things, and
power must act while concealing itself beneath the gentle force of
nature.
2. This complex of signs must engage with the mechanics of
forces: reduce the desire that makes the crime attractive; increase
the interest that makes the penalty be feared; reverse the relation of
intensities, so that the representation of the penalty and its disadvantages
is more lively than that of the crime and its pleasures.
There is a whole mechanics, therefore, of interest, of its movement,
of the way that one represents it to oneself and of the liveliness of
this representation. ‘The legislator must be a skilful architect who
knows how to employ all the forces that may contribute to the
solidity of the building and reduce all those that might ruin it*
(Beccaria, 135).
There are several ways of achieving this. ‘Go straight to the
source of eviP (Mably, 246). Smash the mainspring that animates the
representation of the crime. Weaken the interest that brought it to
birth. Behind the offences of the vagabond, there is laziness; that
is what one must fight against. ‘One will not succeed by locking
beggars up in filthy prisons that are more like cesspools'; they will
have to be forced to work. ‘The best way of punishing them is to
employ them’ (Brissot, 258). Against a bad passion, a good habit;
against a force, another force, but it must be the force of sensibility
and passion, not that of armed power. ‘Must one not deduce all
penalties from this principle, which is so simple, so appropriate and
already well known, namely, to choose them in that which is most
subduing for the passion that led to the crime committed?’ (Lacretelle,
361).
Set the force that drove the criminal to the crime against itself.
Divide interest, use it to make the penalty something to be feared.
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The gentle way in punishment
Let the punishment irritate it and stimulate it more than the crime
was able to flatter it. If pride led to the committing of a crime, let
it be hurt, let the punishment disgust it. Shameful punishments are
effective because they are based on the vanity that was at the root
of the crime. Fanatics glory both in their opinions and in the tortures
that they endure for them. Let us, therefore, set against
fanaticism the proud obstinacy that sustains it: ‘Reduce it with
ridicule and shame; if one humiliates the proud vanity of fanatics
before a great crowd of spectators, one may expect happy effects
from this punishment/ It would be quite useless, on the other hand,
to impose physical pain on them. (Beccaria, 113).
Reanimate the useful, virtuous interest that has been so weakened
by the crime. The feeling of respect for property - for wealth, but
also for honour, liberty, life - this the criminal loses when he robs,
calumniates, abducts or kills. So he must be taught this feeling
once again. And one will begin by teaching it to him for his own
benefit; one will show him what it is to lose the freedom to dispose
as one wishes of one’s own wealth, honour, time and body, so that
he may respect it in others (Pastoret, I, 49). The penalty that forms
stable and easily legible signs must also recompose the economy of
interests and the dynamics of passions.
3. Consequently, one must use a temporal modulation. The
penalty transforms, modifies, establishes signs, arranges obstacles.
What use would it be if it had to be permanent? A penalty that had
no end would be contradictory: all the constraints that it imposes on
the convict and of which, having become virtuous once more, he
would never be able to take advantage, would be little better than
torture; and the effort made to reform him would be so much
trouble and expense lost by society. If incorrigibles there be, one
must be determined to eliminate them. But, for all the others,
punishment can function only if it comes to an end. This analysis
was accepted by the Constituent Assembly: the code of 1791 lays
down the death penalty for traitors and murderers; all other penalties
must have an end (the maximum is twenty years).
But above all the role of duration must be integrated into the
economy of the penalty. In its very violence, the public execution
tended to have the following result: the more serious the crime, the
shorter the punishment. Duration certainly intervened in the old
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Punishment
system of penalties; days at the pillory, years of banishment, hours
spent dying on the wheel. But it was a time of ordeal, not of concerted
transformation. Duration must now facilitate the proper
action of the punishment: ‘A prolonged succession of painful privations,
sparing mankind the horror of torture, has much more effect
on the guilty party than a passing moment of pain. . . It constantly
renews in the eyes of the people that witness it the memory of
vengeful laws and revives in all the moments of a salutary terror.'1
Time, operator of punishment.
But the delicate mechanism of the passions must not be constrained
in the same way or with the same insistence when they
begin to improve; the punishment should diminish as it produces its
effects. It may well be fixed, in the sense that it is determined for all,
in the same way, by law, but its internal mechanism must be variable.
In the bill put before the Constituent Assembly, Le Peletier proposed
a system of diminishing penalties: a convict condemned to
the most serious penalty would be subjected to the ‘cachot*(manacles
on hands and feet, darkness, solitude, bread and water) only during
the first stage of his imprisonment; he would be allowed to work
first two then three days a week. After two thirds of his sentence
had been served, he could pass to the *gene%(a cell with light, chain
around the waist, solitary work for five hours a day, but with other
prisoners on the other two days; this work would be paid and would
enable him to improve his daily fare). Lastly, when he approached
the end of his sentence, he could pass to the normal prison regime:
‘He will be allowed every day to meet other prisoners for work in
common. If he prefers, he will be able to work alone. He will pay
for his food from what he earns from his work’ (Le Peletier, 329-30).
4. For the convict, the penalty is a mechanics of signs, interests
and duration. But the guilty person is only one of the targets of
punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all
the potentially guilty. So these obstacle-signs that are gradually
engraved in the representation of the condemned man must therefore
circulate rapidly and widely; they must be accepted and redistributed
by all; they must shape the discourse that each individual
has with others and by which crime is forbidden to all by all - the
true coin that is substituted in people’s minds for the false profits of
crime.
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The gentle way in punishment
For this, everyone must see punishment not only as natural, but
in his own interest; everyone must be able to read in it his own
advantage. There must be no more spectacular, but useless penalties.
There must be no secret penalties either; but punishment must be
regarded as a retribution that the guilty man makes to each of his
fellow citizens, for the crime that has wronged them all - penalties
that are constantly placed before citizens* eyes, and which ‘bring out
the public utility of common and particular movements' (Dufriche
de Valaze, 346). The ideal would be for the convict to appear as a
sort of rentable property: a slave at the service of all Why would
society eliminate a life and a body that it could appropriate? It
would be more useful to make him ‘serve the state in a slavery
that would be more or less extended according to the nature of his
crime*; France has all too many impracticable roads that impede
trade; thieves who also obstruct the free circulation of goods could
be put to rebuilding the highways. Far more telling than death
would be ‘the example of a man who is ever before one’s eyes, whom
one has deprived of liberty and who is forced to spend the rest of
his days repairing the loss that he has caused society* (Boucher
d’Argis, 1781, 139).
In the old system, the body of the condemned man became the
king’s property, on which the sovereign left his mark and brought
down the effects of his power. Now he will be rather the property
of society, the object of a collective and useful appropriation. This
explains why the reformers almost always proposed public works
as one of the best possible penalties; in this, they were supported by
the Cahiers de doleancesi ‘Let those condemned to penalties short of
death be put to the public works of the country for a time proportionate
to their crime/2 Public works meant two things: the collective
interest in the punishment of the condemend man and the
visible, verifiable character of the punishment. Thus the convict
pays twice; by the labour he provides and by the signs that he
produces. At the heart of society, on the public squares or highways,
the convict is a focus of profit and signification. Visibly, he is
serving everyone; but, at the same time, he lets slip into the minds
of all the crime-punishment sign: a secondary, purely moral, but
much more real utility.
5. Hence a whole learned economy of publicity. In physical
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Punishment
torture, the example was based on terror: physical fear, collective
horror, images that must be engraved on the memories of the spectators,
like the brand on the cheek or shoulder of the condemned man.
The example is now based on the lesson, the discourse, the decipherable
sign, the representation of public morality. It is no longer the
terrifying restoration of sovereignty that will sustain the ceremony
of punishment, but the reactivation of the code, the collective reinforcements
of the link between the idea of crime and the idea of
punishment. In the penalty, rather than seeing the presence of the
sovereign, one will read the laws themselves. The laws associated
a particular crime with a particular punishment. As soon as the
crime is committed, the punishment will follow at once, enacting the
discourse of the law and showing that the code, which links ideas,
also links realities. The junction, immediate in the text, must be
immediate in acts. 'Consider those first movements in which the
news of some horrible act spreads through our towns and countryside;
the citizens are like men who see lightning falling about them;
everyone is moved by indignation and horror. . . That is the
moment to punish the crime: do not let it slip by; hasten to prove
it and judge it. Set up scaffolds, stakes, drag out the guilty man to
the public squares, summon the people with great cries; you will
then hear them applaud the proclamation of your judgements, as the
proclamation of peace and liberty; you will see them run to these
terrible spectacles as to the triumph of the laws* (Servan, 3?-6).
Public punishment is the ceremony of immediate recoding.
The law is re-formed: it takes up its place on the side of the crime
that violated it. The criminal, on the other hand, is detached from
society, he leaves it. But not in those ambiguous festivals of the
Ancien Regime in which the people inevitably took part, either in
the crime or in the execution, but in a ceremony of mourning. The
society that has rediscovered its laws has lost the citizen who violated
them. Public punishment must manifest this double affliction:
that a citizen should have been capable of ignoring the law and that
one should have been obliged to separate oneself from a citizen.
‘Associate the scaffold with the most lugubrious and most moving
ceremonies; let this terrible day be a day of mourning for the nation;
let the general sorrow be painted everywhere in bold letters. . . Let
the magistrate, wearing black, funereal crepe, announce the crime
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The gentle way in punishment
and the sad necessity of a legal vengeance to the people. Let the
different scenes of this tragedy strike all the senses, stir all gentle,
honest affections’ (Dufau, 688).
The meaning of this mourning must be clear to all; each element
of its ritual must speak, repeat the crime, recall the law, show the
need for punishment and justify its degree. Posters, placards, signs,
symbols must be distributed, so that everyone may learn their
significations. The publicity of punishment must not have the
physical effect of terror; it must open up a book to be read. Le
Peletier suggested that, once a month, the people should be allowed
to visit convicts, ‘in their mournful cells: they will read, written in
bold letters above the door, the name of the convict, his crime and
his sentence’ (Le Peletier, 329-30). And in the simple, military style
of the imperial ceremonies, Bexon was to imagine some years later a
whole tableau of penal heraldry: ‘The prisoner condemned to death
will be taken to the scaffold in a cart “ hung or painted in black and
red”; if he is a traitor, he will wear a red coat on which will be
inscribed, in front and behind, the word “ traitor”; if he is a parricide,
his head will be covered with a black veil and on his shirt will
be embroidered daggers or whatever instruments of death he used;
if he is a poisoner, his red shirt will be decorated with snakes and
other venomous animals* (Bexon, 24-5 - this project was presented
to the King of Bavaria).
This legible lesson, this ritual recoding, must be repeated as often
as possible; the punishments must be a school rather than a festival;
an ever-open book rather than a ceremony. The duration that makes
the punishment effective for the guilty is also useful for the spectators.
They must be able to consult at each moment the permanent
lexicon of crime and punishment. A secret punishment is a punishment
half wasted. Children should be allowed to come to the places
where the penalty is being carried out; there they will attend their
classes in civics. And grown men will periodically relearn the laws.
Let us conceive of places of punishment as a Garden of the Laws
that families would visit on Sundays. ‘I propose that, from time to
time, after preparing people’s minds with a reasoned discourse on
the preservation of the social order, on the utility of punishment,
men as well as boys should be taken to the mines and to the work
camps and contemplate the frightful fate of these outlaws. Such
Punishment
pilgrimages would be more useful than the pilgrimages made by the
Turks to Mecca’ (Brissot). And Le Peletier considered that this
visibility of punishment was one of the fundamental principles of the
new penal code: ‘Often, at certain special times, the presence of
the people must bring down shame upon the heads of the guilty; and
the presence of the guiltyperson in the pitiful state towhich his crime
has reduced him must bring useful instruction to the souls of the
people’ (Le Peletier, 322). Long before he was regarded as an object
of science, the criminal was imagined as a source of instruction.
Once one made charitable visits to prisoners to share in their sufferings
(the seventeenth century had invented or revived this practice);
now it was being suggested that children should come and learn how
the benefits of the law are applied to crime - a living lesson in the
museum of order.
6. This will make possible in society an inversion of the traditional
discourse of crime. How can one extinguish the dubious glory
of the criminal? This was a matter of grave concern to the lawmakers
of the eighteenth century. How can one silence the adventures
of the great criminals celebrated in the almanacs, broadsheets
and popular tales? If the recoding of punishment is well done, if the
ceremony of mourning takes place as it should, the crime can no
longer appear as anything but a misfortune and the criminal as an
enemy who must be re-educated into social life. Instead of those
songs of praise that turn the criminal into a hero, only those
obstacle-signs that arrest the desire to commit the crime by the
calculated fear of punishment will circulate in men’s discourse. The
positive mechanics will operate to the full in the language of every
day, which will constantly reinforce it with new accounts. Discourse
will become the vehicle of the law: the constant principle of universal
recoding. The poets of the people will at last join those who
call themselves the ‘missionaries of eternal reason’; they will become
moralists. ‘Filled with these terrible images and salutary ideas, each
citizen will spread them through his family and there, by long
accounts delivered with as much fervour as they are avidly listened
to, his children gathered around him, will open up their young
memories to receive, in imperishable lineaments, the notion of
crime and punishment, the love of law and country, the respect and
trust of the magistrature. Country people, too, will be witnesses of
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The gentle way in punishment
these examples and will sow them around their huts, the taste of
virtue will take root in these coarse souls, while the evil-doer, dismayed
at the public joy, fearful at the sight of so many enemies,
may abandon plans whose outcome will be as prompt as it is
gloomy* (Servan, 37).
This, then, is how one must imagine the punitive city. At the
crossroads, in the gardens, at the side of roads being repaired or
bridges built, in workshops open to all, in the depths of mines that
may be visited, will be hundreds of tiny theatres of punishment.
Each crime will have its law; each criminal his punishment. It will
be a visible punishment, a punishment that tells all, that explains,
justifies itself, convicts: placards, different-coloured caps bearing
inscriptions, posters, symbols, texts read or printed, tirelessly repeat
the code. Scenery, perspectives, optical effects, trompe-Vml sometimes
magnify the scene, making it more fearful than it is, but also
clearer. From where the public is sitting, it is possible to believe in
the existence of certain cruelties which, in fact, do not take place.
But the essential point, in all these real or magnified severities, is
that they should all, according to a strict ecoYiomy, teach a lesson:
that each punishment should be a fable. And that, in counterpoint
with all the direct examples of virtue, one may at each moment
encounter, as a living spectacle, the misfortunes of vice. Around
each of these moral ‘representations’, schoolchildren will gather
with their masters and adults will learn what lessons to teach their
offspring. The great terrifying ritual of the public execution gives
way, day after day, street after street, to this serious theatre, with its
multifarious and persuasive scenes. And popular memory will
reproduce in rumour the austere discourse of the law. But perhaps
it will be necessary, above these innumerable spectacles and narratives,
to place the major sign of punishment for the most terrible
of crimes: the keystone of the penal edifice. In any case, Vermeil had
imagined the scene of absolute punishment that should dominate all
the theatres of everyday punishment: the only case in which one
had to seek to reach an infinity of punishment, something equivalent
in the new penal system to what regicide had been in the old. The
man found guilty of this crime would have his eyes put out; he
would be put into an iron cage, suspended in the air, above a public
square; he would be completely naked; he would be attached to the
IX3
Punishment
bars of the cage by an iron belt around his waist; to the end of his
days, he would be fed on bread and water. ‘Thus he would be
exposed to all the rigours of the seasons, sometimes his head would
be covered with snow, sometimes burnt by a scorching sun. It is
in this energetic torture, presenting rather the extension of a painful
death than that of a painful life, that one would truly recognize a
villain deserving of the horror of nature in its entirety, condemned
to see no longer the heaven that he has outraged and to live no
longer on the earth that he has sullied* (Vermeil, 148-9). Above the
punitive city hangs this iron spider; and the criminal who is to be
thus crucified by the new law is the parricide.
There is a whole new arsenal of picturesque punishments. ‘Avoid
inflicting the same punishments,' said Mably. The idea of a uniform
penalty, modulated only according to the gravity of the crime is
banished. To be more precise: the use of imprisonment as a general
form of punishment is never presented in these projects for specific,
visible and ‘telling’ penalties. Imprisonment is envisaged, but as one
among other penalties; it is the specific punishment for certain
offences, those that infringe the liberty of individuals (such as
abduction) or those that result from an abuse of liberty (disorder,
violence). It is also envisaged as a condition to enable certain
punishments to be carried out (forced labour, for example). But it
does not cover the whole field of penality with its duration as the
sole principle of variation. Or rather, the idea of penal imprisonment
is explicitly criticized by many reformers. Because it is
incapable of corresponding to the specificity of crimes. Because it
has no effect on the public. Because it is useless, even harmful, to
society: it is costly, it maintains convicts in idleness, it multiplies
their vices (cf. Archives parlementaires, XXVI, 712). Because the
execution of such a penalty is difficult to supervise and because there
is a risk of exposing prisoners to the arbitrary will of their guards.
Because the job of depriving a man of his liberty and of supervising
him is an exercise of tyranny. ‘You are demanding that there should
be monsters among you; and if these odious men existed, the legislator
ought perhaps to treat them as murderers’ (Mably, 338). Prison
as the universal penalty is incompatible with this whole technique
of penalty-effect, penalty-representation, penalty-general function,
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The gentle way in punishment
penalty-sign and discourse. It is obscurity, violence and suspicion.
‘It is a place of darkness in which the citizen’s eye cannot count the
victims, in which consequently their number is lost as an example.
. . . Whereas if, without multiplying crimes, one could multiply the
example of punishments, one would succeed at last in rendering
them less necessary; indeed, the obscurity of the prisons becomes
a subject of defiance for the citizens; they easily suppose that great
injustices are committed there. . . There is certainly something
wrong when the law, which is made for the good of the multitude,
instead of arousing its gratitude, continually arouses its discontent*
(Dufriche de Valaze, 344—5).
The idea that imprisonment might as it does today cover the
whole middle ground of punishment, between death and light
penalties, was one that the reformers could not arrive at immediately.
The problem is the following: within a short space of time,
detention became the essential form of punishment. In the penal
code of 1810, between death and fines, it occupies, in a number of
forms, almost the whole field of possible punishments. ‘What is the
system of penality accepted by the new law? It is incarceration in all
its forms. Indeed, compare the four principal penalties that remain
in the penal code. Forced labour is a form of incarceration. The
convict-ship is an open-air prison. Detention, reclusion, imprisonment
for a minor offence are in a sense merely different names for
one and the same punishment* (Remusat, 185). And the Empire
decided at once to translate this imprisonment, envisaged by the
law, into reality, according to a whole penal, administrative, geographical
hierarchy; at the lowest degree, associated with each
justice of the peace, municipal maisons depolice; in each arrondissement,
maisons d*arret; in each departement, a maison de correction;
at the summit, several maisons centrales for convicted criminals or
correctionels serving sentences of over one year; lastly, in a few ports,
convict-ships. A great prison structure was planned, whose different
levels would Correspond exacdy to the levels of the centralized
administration. The scaffold, where the body of the tortured
criminal had been exposed to the ritually manifested force of the
sovereign, the punitive theatre in which the representation of
punishment was permanently available to the social body, was
replaced by a great enclosed, complex and hierarchized structure
Punishment
that was integrated into the very body of the state apparatus. A
quite different materiality, a quite different physics of power, a quite
different way of investing men’s bodies had emerged. During the
Restoration and the July monarchy, there were, apart from a few
exceptional moments, between 40,000 and 43,000 prisoners in
French gaols (approximately one prisoner per 600 inhabitants).
The high wall, no longer the wall that surrounds and protects, no
longer the wall that stands for power and wealth, but the meticulously
sealed wall, uncrossable in either direction, closed in upon the
now mysterious work of punishment, will become, near at hand,
sometimes even at the very centre of the cities of the nineteenth
century, the monotonous figure, at onc^ material and symbolic, of
the power to punish. Already under the Consulate, the Minister of
the Interior had been appointed to investigate the different ‘places
of safety* that were already functioning and which could be used in
different towns. A few years later, sums had been allocated for the
construction, in keeping with the power that they were to represent
and serve, of these new castles of the new civil order. The empire
used them in fact, for another war (cf. Decazes). A less extravagant,
but more obstinate economy continued to build them throughout
the nineteenth century.
In under twenty years, in any case, the principle so clearly
formulated in the Constituent Assembly, of specific, appropriate,
effective penalties, constituting, in each case, a lesson for all, became
the law of detention for every offence of any importance, except
those requiring the death penalty. The theatre of punishment of
which the eighteenth century dreamed and which would have acted
essentially on the minds of the general public was replaced by the
great uniform machinery of the prisons, whose network of immense
buildings was to extend across France and Europe. But twenty years
is perhaps too long a chronology for this conjuring trick. It may
be argued that it occurred almost instantaneously. One has only to
look at the bill for the criminal code presented in the Constituent
Assembly by Le Peletier. The principle stated at the outset is the
need for ‘exact relations between the nature of the offence and the
nature of the punishment": physical pain should be inflicted on those
who commit crimes of violence, hard labour on the idle, shame on
those with degraded souls. But the severe penalties actually
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The gentle way in punishment
proposed are three forms of detention: the ‘cachot, in which the
penaltyof imprisonment is augmented by various measures (solitude,
a deprivation of light, restrictions on food); the gene\ in which these
ancillary measures are attenuated, and lastly imprisonment proper,
which is reduced to simple confinement. The diversity, so solemnly
promised, is reduced in the end to this grey, uniform penalty.
Indeed, at the time, there were deputies who expressed surprise that,
instead of establishing a natural relation between offences and
penalties, a quite different plan had been adopted: ‘So that if I have
betrayed my country, I go to prison; if I have killed my father, I go
to prison; every imaginable offence is punished in the same uniform
way. One might as well see a physician who has the same remedy
for all ills’ (Chabroud, 618).
This prompt substitution was not confined to France. It was to be
found, to a greater or lesser degree, in other countries. When
Catherine II, in the years immediately following the treatise Des
delits et des peines, gave instructions to the commission entrusted
with the task of drawing up a ‘new code of laws’, Beccaria’s lesson
on the specificity and variety of penalties was not forgotten; it was
repeated almost word for word: ‘It is a triumph of civil liberty when
the criminal laws derive each penalty from the particular nature of
each crime. In this way all arbitrariness ceases; the penalty does not
depend on the caprice of the legislator, but on the nature of the
thing; it is not man who does violence to man, but the man’s own
action* (article 67). A few years later, Beccaria’s general principle
served as a foundation for the new Tuscan Code and for the new
code given by Joseph II to Austria; and yet both legislations made
imprisonment - modulated according to its duration and augmented
in certain cases by branding or the use of irons —an almost
uniform penalty: at least thirty years’ detention for an attempt on
the sovereign’s life, for counterfeiting and for murder with robbery;
fifteen to thirty years for voluntary homicide or armed robbery; one
month to five years for simple theft, etc.3
But if this colonization of the penalty by the prison is surprising,
it is because imprisonment was not, as one might imagine, a punishment
that was already securely established in the penal system, just
below the death penalty, and which naturally occupied the place left
vacant by the disappearance of public torture. In fact, imprisonment
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Punishment
-and on this point many countries were in the same situation as
France - had only a limited and marginal position in the system of
penalties. This is shown by the texts themselves. The ordinance of
1670 does not include detention among the peines afflictivesy or
serious penalties. Perpetual or temporary imprisonment was no
doubt included among certain local customs and practices (c£, for
example, Coquille). But contemporary writers maintained that it was
falling into disuse together with other forms of torture: ‘There were
formerly penalties that are no longer practised in France, such as
writing a condemned man’s penalty on his face or forehead and
perpetual imprisonment, just as one no longer condemns a criminal
to be exposed to wild beasts or sent down the mines' (Rousseaud de
la Combe, 3). In fact, it is certain that imprisonment had survived
tenaciously as a punishment for less serious offences, according to
local customs and practices. In this sense, Soulatges spoke of the
iight penalties* that the ordinance of 1670 had not mentioned:
reprimand, admonition, banishment from a certain place, satisfaction
to the injured party and a term of imprisonment. In certain regions,
especially those that had most preserved their legal peculiarities, the
penalty of imprisonment was still widespread, but this had its
difficulties, as in the recently annexed province of Roussillon.
Yet, despite these divergencies, jurists held firmly to the principle
that ‘imprisonment is not to be regarded as a penalty in our civil
law* (Serpillon, 1095 - however, one does find in Serpillon the idea
that the rigour of imprisonment is the beginning of a penalty). Its
role is rather that of holding the person and his body as security:
ad continendos homines, non ad ptmiendos, as the tag has it; in this
sense, the imprisonment of a suspect has a role similar to that of a
debtor. Through imprisonment, one has security for someone, one
does not punish him.4This was the general principle. And although
imprisonment sometimes served as a penalty, even in important
cases, it did so essentially as a substitute: it replaced the galleys for
those —women, children, invalids - who could not serve there: ‘The
sentence of imprisonment for a term or for life is equivalent to being
sent to the galleys.’5In this equivalence, one can see clearly enough
the emergence of a possible connection. But, for this to take place,
the prison had to change its juridical status.
It was also necessary to overcome a second obstacle, which, for
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The gentle way in punishment
France at least, was a considerable one. Imprisonment was especially
disqualified for this role by the fact that it was, in practice, directly
bound up with arbitrary royal decision and the excesses of the
sovereign power. The *maisons de force\ the general hospitals, the
‘king’s orders’ or the orders of the police magistrates, letters under
the king’s private seal obtained by notables or by families, constituted
a whole repressive practice, juxtaposed with ‘regular justice'
and more usually opposed to it. And this extra-judicial imprisonment
came to be rejected by both classical jurists and reformers.
Prisons are made by princes, said a traditionalist like Serpillon, who
sheltered behind the authority of Judge Bouhier: ‘Although, for
reasons of state, princes are sometimes inclined to inflict this penalty,
ordinary justice makes no use of this kind of sentence’ (Serpillon,
1095). Detention was described by the reformers in innumerable
statements as a figure and privileged instrument of despotism: ‘What
is one to say of those secret prisons conjured up by the fatal spirit of
monarchism, reserved in the main either for philosophers, in whose
hands nature has placed her torch and who dared to enlighten their
century, or for those proud independent souls who lack the cowardice
to keep silent on the ills of their country; prisons whose gloomy
doors are opened by mysterious letters and swallow up forever its
unfortunate victims? What is,to be said even of those letters, those
masterpieces of ingenious tyranny, which overthrow the privilege
of every citizen to be heard before he is judged, and which are a
thousand times more dangerous for men than the invention of
Phalaris .. / 6(Brissot, 173).
No doubt these protests, coming from such diverse sources, are
directed not at imprisonment as a legal penalty, but at the ‘illegal*
use of arbitrary, indeterminate detention. Nevertheless, imprisonment
was seen, generally speaking, as branded by the abuses of
power. And many cahiers de doleances rejected it as incompatible
with good justice. Sometimes in the name of classical juridical
principles: ‘Prisons were intended by the law not to punish but to
secure the persons of the offenders . . .* (Desjardin, 477). Sometimes
in the name of the effects of imprisonment, which punishes those
who have not yet been convicted, which communicates and generalizes
the evil that it ought to prevent, and which runs counter to the
principle of the individuality of penalties by punishing a whole
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Punishment
family; it was said that ‘imprisonment is not a penalty. Humanity
rises up against the frightful thought that it is not a punishment to
deprive a citizen of his most precious possession, to plunge him
ignominiously into the den of crime, to snatch him from everything
that is dear to him, to bring him perhaps to ruin and to deprive not
only him but his unfortunate family of all means of subsistence*
(Desjardin, 483). And, on several occasions, the cahiers demanded
the abolition of those ‘houses of internment’: ‘We believe that the
maisons de force must be razed to the ground. . And the decree
of 13 March 1790 ordered the freeing of ‘all persons detained in
castles, religious houses, maisons de force, maisons de police or any
other prisons, by orders under the king's private seal or by orders
of the agents of the executive power'.
How then could detention, so evidently bound up with an
illegality that was denounced even in the power of the prince,
become in so short a time one of the most general forms of legal
punishment?
The explanation most usually given is the formation, during the
classical age, of a number of great models of punitive imprisonment.
Their prestige, which was all the greater in that the most recent
examples came from England and above all from America, appears
to have made it possible to overcome the double obstacle constituted
by the age-old rules of law and the despotic functioning of imprisonment.
Very soon, it seems, these obstacles were swept away
by the punitive marvels thought up by the reformers, and detention
became a serious reality. There can be no doubt about the importance
of these models. But it is precisely these models that, before providing
a solution, themselves pose problems: the problem of their
existence and the problem of their diffusion. How were they able
to come into being and, above all, how did they become so generally
accepted? For it is easy to show that, although they correspond on a
number of points with the general principles of penal reform, they
fail to do so on an even greater number; sometimes they are even
quite incompatible.
The oldest of these models, the one that is generally regarded as
having more or less inspired all the others, was the Rasphuis of
Amsterdam, opened in 1596.8 Originally, it was intended for
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The gentle way in punishment
beggars or young malefactors. Its functioning obeyed three great
principles: the duration of the penalties could, at least within
certain limits, be determined by the administration itself, according
to the prisoner’s conduct (indeed this latitude could be given in the
sentence itself: in 1 597 a prisoner was condemned to twelve years’
imprisonment, which could be reduced to eight, if his behaviour
proved satisfactory). Work was obligatory; it was performed in
common (indeed the individual cell was used only as an additional
punishment; prisoners slept two or three to a bed, in cells containing
between four and twelve persons); and, for the work done, the
prisoners received wages. A strict time-table, a system of prohibitions
and obligations, continual supervision, exhortations, religious
readings, a whole complex of methods ‘to draw towards good* and
‘to turn away from evil’ held the prisoners in its grip from day to
day. One may take the Rasphuis of Amsterdam as a basic figure.
Historically, it forms the link between the theory, so characteristic
of the sixteenth century, of a pedagogical and spiritual transformation
of individuals brought about by continuous exercise, and the
penitentiary techniques conceived inthe second halfofthe eighteenth
century. And it provided the three institutions that were then set up
with the fundamental principles that each was to develop in its own
particular direction.
The maison de force at Ghent organized penal labour above all
around economic imperatives. The reason given was that idleness
was the general cause of most crimes. An investigation - no doubt
one of the first - carried out among those sentenced under the
jurisdiction of Alost, in 1749, showed that malefactors were not
‘artisans or labourers’ (workers think only of the work that feeds
them), but ‘idlers given up to begging*.9Hence the idea of a house
that would in a sense provide a universal pedagogy of work for
those who had proved to be resistant to it. This had four advantages:
it reduced the number of criminal prosecutions, which were costly
to the state (it was estimated that this would save over 100,000
pounds in Flanders); this would make it unnecessary to return
money paid in taxes to the owners of woods ruined by vagabonds;
it would create a mass of new workers, which would help ‘by competition
to bring down the cost of labour’; lastly, it would enable the
true poor to benefit, to the full, from necessary charity (Vilan, 68).
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Punishment
This useful pedagogy would revive for the lazy individual a liking
for work, force him back into a system of interests in which labour
would be more advantageous than laziness, form around him a
small, miniature, simplified, coercive society in which the maxim,
‘he who wants to live must work’, would be clearly revealed. Work
would be compulsory, but so too would be remuneration, which
enables the prisoner to improve his lot during and after detention.
‘The man who does not find his subsistence must be made to desire
to procure it for himself by work; he is offered it by supervision and
discipline; in a sense, he is forced to acquire it; he is then tempted
by the bait of gain; corrected in his morals, accustomed to work,
his anxiety aroused by the little money he has kept for his release/
he has learned a trade ‘that will guarantee a subsistence without
danger* (Vilan, 107). This reconstruction of homo oeconomicus excluded
the use of penalties that were too short - this would prevent
the acquisition of habits and skills of work - or too long - which
would make any apprenticeship useless. ‘The term of six months
is too short to correct criminals, and to bring them to the spirit of
work’; on the other hand, ‘a life sentence throws them into despair;
they become indifferent to the correction of their morals and to the
spirit of work; they become concerned only with plans to escape
and to rebel; and since the judgements that were passed on them
did not deprive them of life, why should one seek to render it
unbearable for them?’ (Vilan, 102-3). The duration of the penalty
has meaning only in relation to possible correction, and to an
economic use of the corrected criminal.
To the principle of work, the English models added, as an
essential addition to correction, isolation. The outlines had been
provided in 1775, by Hanway, who justified it first with negative
reasons: promiscuity in the prison provided bad examples and possibilities
of escape in the short term and of blackmail or complicity in
the long term. The prison would be too much like a factory if one
left the prisoners to work together. The positive reasons followed:
isolation provides a ‘terrible shock’ which, while protecting the
prisoner from bad influences, enables him to go into himself and
rediscover in the depths of his conscience the voice of good; solitary
work would then become not only anapprenticeship, butalsoanexercise
in spiritual conversion; it would rearrange not only the complex
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The gentle way in punishment
of interests proper to homo oeconomicus, but also the imperatives of
the moral subject. The cell, that technique of Christian monachism,
which had survived only in Catholic countries, becomes in this
protestant society the instrument by which one may reconstitute
both homo oeconomicus and the religious conscience. Between the
crime and the return to right and virtue, the prison would constitute
the 'space between two worlds* the place for the individual transformation
that would restore to the state the subject it had lost. Hanway
called this apparatus for modifying individuals a ‘reformatory’ (cf.
Hanway). These were the general principles that Howard and
Blackstone put into operation in 1779 when the independence of the
United States put an end to deportation and when a law was being
drawn up to modify the system of penalties. Imprisonment, with the
purpose of transforming the soul and conduct, made its entry into
the system of civil laws. The preamble of the bill, written by Blackstone
and Howard, describes individual imprisonment in terms of
its triple function as example to be feared, instrument of conversion
and condition for an apprenticeship: subjected ‘to isolated detention,
regular work and the influence of religious instruction’, certain
criminals might not only inspire terror in those who would be
tempted to imitate them, ‘but also to correct themselves and to
acquire the habit of work’ (Preamble of the bill of 1779). Hence the
decision to build two penitentiaries, one for men, one for women,
in which the isolated prisoners would be put 'to the most servile
labours, most compatible with the ignorance, negligence and
obstinacy of the criminals’: walking in a wheel to move a machine,
fixing a winch, polishing marble, beating hemp, rasping logwood,
cutting up rags, rope-making and sewing sacks. In fact, only one
penitentiary was built, at Gloucester, and it corresponded only
partially to the initial plan: total confinement for the most dangerous
criminals; for the others, day work in common and separation at
night.
Then came the Philadelphia model. This was no doubt the most
famous because it was associated in people’s minds with the political
innovations of the American system and also because it was not,
like the others, doomed to immediate failure and abandonment; it
was continuously re-examined and transformed right up to the
great debates of the 1830s on penitentiary reform. In many respects
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Punishment
the Walnut Street Prison, opened in 1790, under the direct influence
of the Quakers, was modelled on those of Ghent and Gloucester.10
There was compulsory work in workshops; the prisoners were kept
constantly occupied; the prison was financed by this work, but the
prisoners were also rewarded individually as a way of reinserting
them morally and materially into the strict world of the economy;
by keeping the prisoners ‘constantly •employed on productive
works, they were able to defray the expenses of the prison, they
were not left idle and they were able to save a little money for the
time when their captivity would cease* (La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,
9). Life was partitioned, therefore, according to an absolutely
strict time-table, under constant supervision; each moment of the
day was devoted to a particular type of activity, and brought with it
its own obligations and prohibitions: ‘All prisoners rise at daybreak,
so that, after making their beds, cleaning and washing themselves
and attending to other needs, they generally begin their work at
sunrise. From that moment, no one may go into the rooms or other
places except to the workshops and places assigned for their work.
__At nightfall, a bell rings to mark the end of their work— They
are given half an hour to arrange their beds, after which they are not
allowed to converse aloud or to make the least noise* (Turnbull, 15-
16). As at Gloucester, solitary confinement was not total; it was used
for certain prisoners who would in former times have incurred the
death penalty, and for those inside the prison who deserved special
punishment: ‘There, without occupation, without anything to distract
him, waiting in uncertainty for the moment when he would be
delivered*, the prisoner spent 'long anxious hours, with nothing but
the reflections that are present to the minds of all guilty persons’
(Teeters, 1935, 49). Lastly, as at Ghent, the length of the imprisonment
could vary with the behaviour of the prisoner: after consulting
the files, the prison inspectors obtained from the authorities - without
much difficulty up to the 1820s - pardons for prisoners who had
shown good behaviour.
Furthermore, Walnut Street had a number of characteristics that
were specific to it, or which at least developed what was potentially
present in the other models. First, the principle of not publicizing
the penalty. Though the sentence and the reasons for it should be
known to all, the penalty should be carried out in secret; the public
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The gentle way in punishment
was to intervene neither as a witness, nor as a guarantor of punishment;
the certainty that, behind the walls, the prisoner was serving
his sentence must suffice as an example: there were to be no more
of those street spectacles which the law of 1786 has given rise to by
imposing on certain prisoners public works to be carried out in
towns and on the highways.11 The punishment and correction that
it must operate are processes that unfold between the prisoner and
those who supervise him. They are processes that effect atransformation
of the individual as a whole - of his body and of his habits by
the daily work that he is forced to perform, of his mind and his will
by the spiritual attentions that are paid to him: ‘Bibles and other
books of religious practice are provided; the clergy of the different
obediences to be found in the town and suburbs perform the services
once a week and any other edifying person may have access to the
prisoners at any time* (Teeters, 1935, 53-4)- But this transformation
is entrusted to the administration itself. Solitude and self-examination
are not enough; nor are purely religious exhortations. Work on
the prisoner’s soul must be carried out as often as possible. The
prison, though an administrative apparatus, will at the same time be
a machine for altering minds. On first entering the prison, the
prisoner will be read the regulations; ‘at the same time, the inspectors
seek to strengthen in him the moral obligations that he now has;
they represent to him the offence that he has committed with regard
to them, the evil that has consequently resulted for the society that
protected him arid the need to make compensation by his example
and his amendment. They then make him promise to do his duty
gladly, to behave decently, promising him or allowing him to hope
that, before the expiration of the term of the sentence, he will be
able to obtain his discharge if he behaves well. . . From time to
time the inspectors make it their duty to converse with the criminals
one after the other, concerning their duties as men and as members
of society’ (Turnbull, 27).
But no doubt the most important thing was that this control and
transformation of behaviour were accompanied - both as a condition
and as a consequence - by the development of a knowledge of the
individuals. When the new prisoner arrived, the Walnut Street
administration received a report concerning his crime, the circumstances
in which it was committed, a summary of the examinations
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of the defendant, notes on his behaviour before and after sentence:
indispensable elements if one wished to ‘decide what steps will have
to be taken to destroy his old habits'.12 And throughout his detention
he would be observed; his conduct would be noted daily and
the inspectors - twelve local worthies appointed in 1795 - who, two
by two, visited the prison each week, would be kept informed of
events, follow the conduct of each prisoner and decide which of
them deserved a shortening of his term. This ever-growing knowledge
of the individuals made it possible to divide them up in the
prison not so much according to their crimes as according to the
dispositions thatthey revealed. The prison becameasort ofpermanent
observatory that made it possible to distribute the varieties of vice
or weakness. From 1797, the prisoners were divided into four classes:
the first for those who were explicitly condemned to solitary confinement
or who had committed serious offences in the prison; the
second for those who were ‘well known as old offenders . .. whose
depraved morality, dangerous character, irregular dispositions, or
disorderly conduct' became apparent during the time they were in
prison; the third for those ‘whose character and circumstances,
before and after conviction, led one to believe that they were not
habitual offenders'; the fourth and last was a special section, a
probationary class for those whose character was still not known,
or who, if they were better known, did not deserve to be put in the
preceding category (Teeters, 1935, 59). A whole corpus of individualizing
knowledge was being organized that took as its field of
reference not so much the crime committed (at least in isolation),
but the potentiality of danger that lies hidden in an individual and
which is manifested in his observed everyday conduct. The prison
functions in this as an apparatus of knowledge.
Between this apparatus of punishment proposed by the Flemish,
English and American models, between these ‘reformatories' and
all the punishments imagined by the reformers, one may establish
the points of convergence and the disparities.
Points of convergence. In the first instance, there is a difference
in the temporal direction of punishment. The ‘reformatories' were
mechanisms directed towards the future; they too were intended not
to efface a crime, but to prevent its repetition. ‘As to the end, or
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final cause of human punishments. This is not by way of atonement
or expiation for the crime committed; for that must be left to the just
determination of the supreme being .. (Blackstone, n). And in
Pennsylvania, Buxton declared, the principles of Montesquieu and
Beccaria should now have the ‘force of axioms’, that ‘the prevention
of crimes is the sole end of punishment" (Bradford, 3). So one
punishes not to efface the crime, but to transform a criminal (actual
or potential); punishment must bring with it a certain corrective
technique. Here, too, Rush is close to the reforming jurists - were
it not, perhaps, for the metaphor he uses when he says: we have
invented machines that facilitate labour; how much more one should
praise the inventor of ‘the most speedy and effectual methods of
restoring the vicious part of mankind to virtue and happiness, and of
extirpating a portion of vice from the world’.13 Lastly, the English
and the American models, like the projects of the legislators and
theoreticians, require methods to individualize the penalty: in its
duration, its nature, its intensity, the way in which it is carried out,
the punishment must be adjusted to the individual character and to
the danger that he bears within him for others. The system of
penalties must be open to individual variables. In their general outline,
the models more or less inspired by the Rasphuis of Amsterdam
were not in contradiction with the proposals of the reformers. It
might even be thought at first glance that they were merely a development
of them - or a sketch - at the level of concrete institutions.
Yet the disparity emerges clearly enough when one defines the
techniques of this individualizing correction. The difference is
to be found in the procedure of access to the individual, the way in
which the punishing power gets control over him, the instruments
that it uses in order to achieve this transformation; it is in the
technology of the penalty, not in its theoretical foundation; in the
relation that it establishes with the body and with the soul, and not
in the way that it is inserted within the legal system.
That was the method of the reformers. Where exactly did the
penalty apply its pressure, gain control of the individual? Representations:
the representations of his interests, the representation of his
advantages and disadvantages, pleasure and displeasure; and, if the
punishment happens to seize the body, to apply techniques to it that
are little short of torture, it is because it is - for the condemned man
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and for the spectators —an object of representation. By what instrument
did one act on the representations? Other representations, or
rather couplings of ideas (crime-punishment, the imagined advantage
of crime-disadvantage perceived in the punishments); these
pairings could function only in the element of publicity: punitive
scenes that established them or reinforced them in the eyes of all, a
discourse that circulated, brought back into currency at each
moment the complex of signs. The role of the criminal in punishment
was to reintroduce, in the face of crime and the criminal code,
the real presence of the signified - that is to say, of the penalty
which, according to the terms of the code, must be infallibly associated
with the offence. By producing this signified abundantly and
visibly, and therefore reactivating the signifying system of the code,
the idea of crime functioning as a sign of punishment, it is with this
coin that the offender pays his debt to society. Individual correction
must, therefore, assure the process of redefining the individual as
subject of law, through the reinforcement of the systems of signs
and representations that they circulate.
The apparatus of corrective penality acts in a quite different way.
The point of application of the penalty is not the representation, but
the body, time, everyday gestures and activities; the soul, too, but
in so far as it is the seat of habits. The body and the soul, as principles
of behaviour, form the element that is now proposed for
punitive intervention. Rather than on an art of representations, this
punitive intervention must rest on a studied manipulation of the
individual: ‘I have no more doubt of every crime having its cure in
moral and physical influence . . so, in order to decide on punishments,
one ‘will require some knowledge of the principles of sensation,
and of the sympathies which occur in the nervous system’
(Rush, 13). As for the instruments used, these are no longer complexes
of representation, reinforced and circulated, but forms of
coercion, schemata of constraint, applied and repeated. Exercises,
not signs: time-tables, compulsory movements, regular activities,
solitary meditation, work in common, silence, application, respect,
good habits. And, ultimately, what one is trying to restore in this
technique of correction is not so much the juridical subject, who is
caught up in the fundamental interests of the social pact, but the
obedient subject, the individual subjected to habits, rules, orders,
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an authority that is exercised continually around him and upon
him, and which he must allow to function automatically in him.
There are two quite distinct ways, therefore, of reacting to the
offence: one may restore the juridical subject of the social pact, or
shape an obedient subject, according to the general and detailed
form of some power.
All this would no doubt amount to little more than a speculative
difference - for in each case it is a question of forming obedient
individuals - if the penality of ‘coercion* did not bring with it
certain crucial consequences. The training of behaviour by a full
time-table, the acquisition of habits, the constraints of the body
imply a very special relation between the individual who is punished
and the individual who punishes him. It is a relation that not only
renders the dimension of the spectacle useless: it excludes it.14 The
agent of punishment must exercise a total power, which no third
party can disturb; the individual to be corrected must be entirely
enveloped in the power that is being exercised over him. Secrecy is
imperative, and so too is autonomy, at least in relation to this
technique of punishment: it must have its own functioning, its own
rules, its own techniques, its own knowledge; it must fix its own
norms, decide its own results. There is a discontinuity, or in any
case a specificity, in relation tb the legal power that declares guilt
and fixes the general limits of punishment. These two consequences
- secrecy and autonomy in the exercise of the power to punish - are
unacceptable for a theory and a policy of penality that has two aims
in view: to get all citizens to participate in the punishment of the
social enemy and to render the exercise of the power to punish
entirely adequate and transparent to the laws that publicly define it.
Secret punishments and punishments not specified in the legal code,
a power to punish exercised in the shadows according to criteria and
with instruments that elude control - this was enough to compromise
the whole strategy of the reform. After the sentence, a power
was constituted that was reminiscent of the power exercised in the
old system. The power that applied the penalties now threatened
to be as arbitrary, as despotic, as the power that once decided them.
In short, the divergence is the following: punitive city or coercive
institution? On the one hand, a functioning of penal power, distributed
throughout the social space; present everywhere as scene,
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spectacle, sign, discourse; legible like an open book; operating by a
permanent recodification of the mind of the citizens; eliminating
crime by those obstacles placed before the idea of crime; acting
invisibly and uselessly on the ‘soft fibres of the brain’, as Servan put
it A power to punish that ran the whole length of the social network
would act at each of its points, and in the end would no longer be
perceived as a power of certain individuals over others, but as an
immediate reaction of all in relation to the individual. On the other
hand, a compact functioning of the power to punish: a meticulous
assumption of responsibility for the body and the time of the convict,
a regulation of his movements and behaviour by a system of
authority and knowledge; a concerted orthopaedy applied to convicts
in order to reclaim them individually; an autonomous administration
of this power that is isolated both from the social body and
from the judicial power in the strict sense. The emergence of the
prison marks the institutionalization of the power to punish, or, to be
more precise: will the power to punish (with the strategic aim adopted
in the late eighteenth century, the reduction of popular illegality)
be better served by concealing itself beneath a general social function,
in the ‘punitive city’, or by investing itself in a coercive
institution, in the enclosed space of the ‘reformatory’?
In any case, it can be said that, in the late eighteenth century, one
is confronted by three ways of organizing the power to punish. The
first is the one that was still functioning and which was based on the
old monarchical law. The other two both refer to a preventive,
utilitarian, corrective conception of a right to punish that belongs
to society as a whole; but they are very different from one another
at the level of the mechanisms they envisage. Broadly speaking, one
might say that, in monarchical law, punishment is a ceremonial of
sovereignty; it uses the ritual marks of the vengeance that it applies
to the body of the condemned man; and it deploys before the eyes
of the spectators an effect of terror as intense as it is discontinuous,
irregular and always above its own laws, the physical presence of the
sovereign and of his power. The reforming jurists, on the other
hand, saw punishment as a procedure for requalifying individuals
as subjects, as juridical subjects; it uses not marks, but signs, coded
sets of representations, which would be given the most rapid
circulation and the most general acceptance possible by citizens
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witnessing the scene of punishment. Lastly, in the project for a
prison institution that was then developing, punishment was seen
as a technique for the coercion of individuals; it operated methods
of training the body - not signs - by the traces it leaves, in the form
of habits, in behaviour; and it presupposed the setting up of a
specific power for the administration of the penalty. We have, then,
the sovereign and his force, the social body and the administrative
apparatus; mark, sign, trace; ceremony, representation, exercise;
the vanquished enemy, the juridical subject in the process of requalification,
the individual subjected to immediate coercion; the
tortured body, the soul with its manipulated representations, the
body subjected to training. We have here the three series of elements
that characterize the three mechanisms that face one another in the
second half of the eighteenth century. They cannot be reduced to
theories of law (though they overlap with such theories), nor can
they be identified with apparatuses or institutions (though they are
based on them), nor can they be derived from moral choices (though
they find their justification in morality). They are modalities according
to which the power to punish is exercised: three technologies of
power..
The problem, then, is the following: how is it that, in the end,
it was the third that was adopted? How did the coercive, corporal,
solitary, secret model of the power to punish replace the representative,
scenic, signifying, public, collective model? Why did the
physical exercise of punishment (which is not torture) replace, with
the prison that is its institutional support, the social play of the signs
of punishment and the prolix festival that circulated them?
PART T H R E E
Discipline
i . Docile bodies
Let us take the ideal figure of the soldier as it was still seen in the
early seventeenth century. To begin with, the soldier was someone
who could be recognized from afar; he bore certain signs: the natural
signs of his strength and his courage, the marks, too, of his pride;
his body was the blazon of his strength and valour; and although it
is true that he had to learn the profession of arms little by little generally
in actual fighting - movements like marching and attitudes
like the bearing of the head belonged for the most part to a bodily
rhetoric of honour; ‘The signs for recognizing those most suited to
this profession are a lively, alert manner, an erect head, a taut
stomachy broad shoulders, long arms, strong fingers, a small belly,
thick thighs, slender legs and dry feet, because a man of such a
figure could not fail to be agile and strong*; when he becomes a pikebearer,
the soldier ‘will have to march in step in order to have as
much grace and gravity as possible, for the pike is an honourable
weapon, worthy to be borne with gravity and boldness* (Montgommery,
6 and 7). By the late eighteenth century, the soldier has
become something that can be made; out of a formless clay, an inapt
body, the machine required can be constructed; posture is gradually
corrected; a calculated constraint runs slowly through each part of
the body, mastering it, making it pliable, ready at all times, turning
silently into the automatism of habit; in short, one has ‘got rid of
the peasant* and given him ‘the air of a soldier* (ordinance of 20
March 1764). Recruits become accustomed to ‘holding their heads
high and erect; to standing upright, without bending the back, to
sticking out the belly, throwing out the chest and throwing back the
shoulders; and, to help them acquire the habit, they are given this
position while standing against a wall in such a way that the heels,
the thighs, the waist and the shoulders touch it, as also do the backs
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of the hands, as one turns the arms outwards, without moving them
away from the body. . . Likewise, they will be taught never to fix
their eyes on the ground, but to look straight at those they pass . . .
to remain motionless until the order is given, without moving the
head, the hands or the feet. . . lastly to march with a bold step, with
knee and ham taut, on the points of the feet, which should face
outwards' (ordinance of 20 March 1764).
The classical age discovered the body as object and target of
power. It is easy enough to find signs of the attention then paid to
the body - to the body that is manipulated, shaped, trained, which
obeys, responds, becomes skilful and increases its forces. The great
book of Man-the-Machine was written simultaneously on two
registers: the anatomico-metaphysical register, of which Descartes
wrote the first pages and which the physicians and philosophers
continued, and the technico-political register, which was constituted
by a whole set of regulations and by empirical and calculated
methods relating to the army, the school and the hospital, for controlling
or correcting the operations of the body. These two registers
are quite distinct, since it was a question, on the one hand, of
submission and use and, on the other, of functioning and explanation:
there was a useful body and an intelligible body. And yet there
are points of overlap from one to the other. La Mettrie’s L'Hommemachine
is both a materialist reduction of the soul and a general
theory of dressage, at the centre of which reigns the notion of
‘docility*, which joins the analysable body to the manipulable body.
A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and
improved. The celebrated automata, on the other hand, were not
only a way of illustrating an organism, they were also political
puppets, small-scale models of power: Frederick II, the meticulous
king of small machines, well-trained regiments and long exercises,
was obsessed with them.
What was so new in these projects of docility that interested the
eighteenth century so much? It was certainly not the first time that
the body had become the object of such imperious and pressing
investments; in every society, the body was in the grip of very
strict powers, which imposed on it constraints, prohibitions or
obligations. However, there were several new things in these techniques.
To begin with, there was the scale of the control: it was a
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question not of treating the body, en masse, ‘wholesale’, as if it were
an indissociable unity, but of working it ‘retail’, individually; of
exercising upon it a subtle coercion, of obtaining holds upon it at the
level of the mechanism itself - movements, gestures, attitudes,
rapidity: an infinitesimal power over the active body. Then there
was the object of the control: it was not or was no longer the signifying
elements of behaviour or the language of the body, but the
economy, the efficiency of movements, their internal organization;
constraint bears upon the forces rather than upon the signs; the only
truly important ceremony is that of exercise. Lastly, there is the
modality: it implies an uninterrupted, constant coercion, supervising
the processes of the activity rather than its result and it is
exercised according to a codification that partitions as closely as
possible time, space, movement. These methods, which made
possible the meticulous control of the operations of the body,
which assured the constant subjection of its forces and imposed
upon them a relation of docility-utility, might be called 'disciplines’.
Many disciplinary methods had long been in existence - in monasteries,
armies, workshops. But in the course of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries the disciplines became general formulas of
domination. They were different from slavery because they were
not based on a relation of appropriation of bodies; indeed, the
elegance of the discipline lay in the fact that it could dispense with
this costly and violent relation by obtaining effects of utility at least
as great. They were different, too, from 'service’, which was a
constant, total, massive, non-analytical, unlimited relation of
domination, established in the form of the individual will of the
master, his ‘caprice’. They were different from vassalage, which was
a highly coded, but distant relation of submission, which bore less
on the operations of the body than on the products of labour and
the ritual marks of allegiance. Again, they were different from
asceticism and from ‘disciplines’ of a monastic type, whose function
was to obtain renunciations rather than increases of utility and
which, although they involved obedience to others, had as their
principal aim an increase of the mastery of each individual over his
own body. The historical moment of the disciplines was the moment
when an art of the human body was born, which was directed not
only at the growth of its skills, nor at the intensification of its
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subjection, but at the formation of a relation that in the mechanism
itself makes it more obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely-
What was then being formed was a policy of coercions
that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements,
its gestures, its behaviour. The human body was entering a machinery
of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it. A
‘political anatomy’, which was also a ‘mechanics of power*, was
being born; it defined how one may have a hold over others’ bodies,
not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may
operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency
that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and
practised bodies, ‘docile* bodies. Discipline increases the forces of
the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same
forces (in political terms of obedience). In short, it dissociates power
from the body; on the one hand, it turns it into an ‘aptitude’, a
‘capacity’, which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses
the course of the energy, the power that might result from it, and
turns it into a relation of strict subjection. If economic exploitation
separates the force and the product of labour, let us say
that disciplinary coercion establishes in the body the constricting
link between an increased aptitude and an increased
domination.
The ‘invention* of this new political anatomy must not be seen
as a sudden discovery. It is rather a multiplicity of often minor
processes, of different origin and scattered location, which overlap,
repeat, or imitate one another, support one another, distinguish
themselves from one another according to their domain of application,
converge and gradually produce the blueprint of a general
method. They were at work in secondary education at a very early
date, later in primary schools; they slowly invested the space of the
hospital; and, in a few decades, they restructured the military
organization. They sometimes circulated very rapidly from one
point to another (between the army and the technical schools or
secondary schools), sometimes slowly and discreetly (the insidious
militarization of the large workshops). On almost every occasion,
they were adopted in response to particular needs: an industrial
innovation, a renewed outbreak of certain epidemic diseases, the
invention of the rifle or the victories of Prussia. This did not prevent
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them being totally inscribed in general and essential transformations,
which we must now try to delineate.
There can be no question here of writing the history of the
different disciplinary institutions, with all their individual differences*
I simply intend to map on a series of examples some of the
essential techniques that most easily spread from one to another.
These were always meticulous, often minute, techniques, but they
had their importance: because they defined a certain mode of
detailed political investment of the body, a 'new micro-physics* of
power; and because, since the seventeenth century, they had constantly
reached out to ever broader domains, as if they tended to
cover the entire social body. Small acts of cunning endowed with a
great power of diffusion, subtle arrangements, apparently innocent,
but profoundly suspicious, mechanisms that obeyed economies too
shameful to be acknowledged, or pursued petty forms of coercion —
it was nevertheless they that brought about the mutation of the
punitive system, at the threshold of the contemporary period. Describing
them will require great attention to detail: beneath every set
of figures, we must seek not a meaning, but a precaution; we must
situate them not only in the inextricability of a functioning, but in
the coherence of a tactic. They are the acts of cunning, not so much
of the greater reason that works even in its sleep and gives meaning
to the insignificant, as of the attentive 'malevolence* that turns
everything to account. Discipline is a political anatomy of detail.
Before we lose patience we would do well to recall the words of
Marshal de Saxe: ‘Although those who concern themselves with
details are regarded as folk of limited intelligence, it seems to me
that this part is essential, because it is the foundation, and it is
impossible to erect any building or establish any method without
understanding its principles. It is not enough to have a liking for
architecture. One must also know stone-cutting* (Saxe, 5). There is
a whole history to be written about such 'stone-cutting’ - a history
of the utilitarian rationalization of detail in moral accountability and
political control. The classical age did not initiate it; rather it
accelerated it, changed its scale, gave it precise instruments, and
perhaps found some echoes for it in the calculation of the infinitely
small or in the description of the most detailed characteristics of
natural beings. In any case, ‘detail* had long been a category of
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theology and asceticism: every detail is important since, in the sight
of God, no immensity is greater than a detail, nor is anything so
small that it was not willed by one of his individual wishes. In this
great tradition of the eminence of detail, all the minutiae of Christian
education, of scholastic or military pedagogy, all forms of
‘training' found their place easily enough. For the disciplined man,
as for the true believer, no detail is unimportant, but not so much
for the meaning that it conceals within it as for the hold it provides
for the power that wishes to seize it. Characteristic is the great hymn
to the ‘little things' and to their eternal importance, sung by JeanBaptiste
de La Salle, in his Traitd sur les obligations des freres des
licoles chretiennes. The mystique of the everyday is joined here with
the discipline of the minute. 'How dangerous it is to neglect little
things. It is a very consoling reflection for a soul like mine, little
disposed to great actions, to think that fidelity to little things may,
by an imperceptible progress, raise us to the most eminent sanctity:
because little things lead to greater * .. Little things; it will be said,
alas, my God, what can we do that is great for you, weak and mortal
creatures that we are. Little things; if great things presented themselves
would we perform them? Would we not think them beyond
our strength? Little things; and if God accepts them and wishes to
receive them as great things? Little things; has one ever felt this?
Does one judge according to experience? Little things; one is certainly
guilty, therefore, if seeing them as such, one refuses them?
Little things; yet it is they that in the end have made great saints!
Yes, little things; but great motives, great feelings, great fervour,
great ardour, and consequently great merits, great treasures, great
rewards' (La Salle, Traite . . ., 238-9). The meticulousness of
the regulations, the fussiness of the inspections, the supervision of
the smallest fragment of life and of the body will soon provide, in the
context of the school, the barracks, the hospital or the workshop,
a laicized content, an economic or technical rationality for this
mystical calculus of the infinitesimal and the infinite. And a History
of Detail in the eighteenth century, presided over by Jean-Baptiste
de La Salle, touching on Leibniz and Buffon, via Frederick II,
covering pedagogy, medicine, military tactics and economics,
should bring us, at the end of the century, to the man who dreamt
of being another Newton, not the Newton of the immensities of
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the heavens and the planetary masses, but a Newton of ‘small
bodies’, small movements, small actions; to the man who replied
to Monge’s remark, ‘there was only one world to discover*: ‘What
do I hear? But the world of details, who has never dreamt of that
other world, what of that world? I have believed in it ever since I
was fifteen. I was concerned with it then, and this memory lives
within me, as an obsession never to be abandoned. . . That other
world is the most important of all that I flatter myself I have discovered:
when I think of it, my heart aches’ (these words are
attributed to Bonaparte in the Introduction to Saint-Hilaire*s
Notions synthetiques et historiques de philosophic naturelie). Napoleon
did not discover this world; but we know that he set out to organize
it; and he wished to arrange around him a mechanism of power that
would enable him to see the smallest event that occurred in the state
he governed; he intended, by means of the rigorous discipline that he
imposed, ‘to embrace the whole of this vast machine without the
slightest detail escaping his attention* (Treilhard, 14).
A meticulous observation of detail, and at the same time a
political awareness of these small things, for the control and use of
men, emerge through the classical age bearing with them a whole
set of techniques, a whole corpus of methods and knowledge,
descriptions, plans and data. And from such trifles, no doubt, the
man of modern humanism was born.1
The art of distributions
In the first instance, discipline proceeds from the distribution of individuals
in space. To achieve this end, it employs several techniques.
1. Discipline sometimes requires enclosure, the specification of a
place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself It is the
protected place of disciplinary monotony. There was the great
‘confinement* of vagabonds and paupers; there were other more
discreet, but insidious and effective ones. There were the colleges,
or secondary schools: the monastic model was gradually imposed;
boarding appeared as the most perfect, if not the most frequent,
educational regime; it became obligatory at Louis-le-Grand when,
after the departure of the Jesuits, it was turned into a model school
(cf. Aries, 308-13 and Snyders, 35-41). There were the military
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barracks: the army, that vagabond mass, has to be held in place;
looting and violence must be prevented; the fears of local inhabitants,
who do not care for troops passing through their towns,
must be calmed; conflicts with the civil authorities must be avoided;
desertion must be stopped, expenditure controlled. The ordinance
of 1719 envisaged the construction of several hundred barracks,
on the model of those already set up in the south of the country;
there would be strict confinements: ‘The whole will be enclosed by
an outer wall ten feet high, which will surround the said houses, at
a distance of thirty feet from all the sides’; this will have the effect
of maintaining the troops in ‘order and discipline, so that an officer
will be in a position to answer for them’ (L ’Ordonnance tnilitaire,
IXL, 25 September 1719). In 1745, there were barracks in about
320 towns; and it was estimated that the total capacity of the barracks
in 1775 was approximately 200,000 men (Daisy, 201-9; an
anonymous memoir of 1775, in Depot de la guerre, 3689, f. 156;
Navereau, 132-5). Side by side with the spread of workshops, there
also developed great manufacturing spaces, both homogeneous and
well defined: first, the combined manufactories, then, in the second
half of the eighteenth century, the works or factories proper (the
Chaussade ironworks occupied almost the whole of the Medine
peninsula, between Ni£vre and Loire; in order to set up the Indret
factory in 1777, Wilkinson, by means of embankments and dikes,
constructed an island on the Loire; Toufait built Le Creusot in the
valley of the Charbonni&re, which he transformed, and he had
workers’ accommodation built in the factory itself); it was a change
of scale, but it was also a new type of control. The factory was
explicitly compared with the monastery, the fortress, a walled town;
the guardian ‘will open the gates only on the return of the workers,
and after the bell that announces the resumption of work has been
rung*; a quarter of an hour later no one will be admitted; at the end
of the day, the workshops’ heads will hand back the keys to the Swiss
guard of the factory, who will then open the gates (Amboise, f.
12,1301). The aim is to derive the maximum advantages and to
neutralize the inconveniences (thefts, interruptions of work, disturbances
and ‘cabals’), as the forces of production become more
concentrated; to protect materials and tools and to master the labour
force: ‘The order and inspection that must be maintained require
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that all workers be assembled under the same roof, so that the partner
who is entrusted with the management of the manufactory may
prevent and remedy abuses that may arise among the workers and
arrest their progress at the outset* (Dauphin, 199).
2. But the principle of ‘enclosure’ is neither constant, nor indispensable,
nor sufficient in disciplinary machinery. This machinery
works space in a much more flexible and detailed way. It does this
first of all on the principle of elementary location or partitioning.
Each individual has his own place; and each place its individual.
Avoid distributions in groups; break up collective dispositions;
analyse confused, massive or transient pluralities. Disciplinary space
tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies or
elements to be distributed. One must eliminate the effects of imprecise
distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals,
their diffuse circulation, their unusable and dangerous coagulation;
it was a tactic of anti-desertion, anti-vagabondage, anti-concentration.
Its aim was to establish presences and absences, to know where
and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to
interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct,
of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities
or merits. It was a procedure, therefore, aimed at knowing, mastering
and using. Discipline organizes an analytical space.
And there, too, it encountered an old architectural and religious
method: the monastic cell. Even if the compartments it assigns
become purely ideal, the disciplinary space is always, basically,
cellular. Solitude was necessary to both body and soul, according to
a certain asceticism: they must, at certain moments at least, confront
temptation and perhaps the severity of God alone. ‘Sleep is the
image of death, the dormitory is the image of the sepulchre ..«
although the dormitories are shared, the beds are nevertheless
arranged in such a way and closed so exactly by means of curtains
that the girls may rise and retire without being seen’ (.Reglementpour
la cotnmunauti desfilles du Bon Pasteur, in Delamare, 507). But this
is still a very crude form.
3. The rule offunctional sites would gradually, in the disciplinary
institutions, code a space that architecture generally left at the disposal
of several different uses. Particular places were defined to
correspond not only to the need to supervise, to break dangerous
M 3
communications, but also to create a useful space. The process
appeared clearly in the hospitals, especially in the military and naval
hospitals. In France, it seems that Rochefort served both as experiment
and model. A port, and a military port is - with its circulation
of goods, men signed up willingly or by force, sailors embarking
and disembarking, diseases and epidemics - a place of desertion,
smuggling, contagion: it is a crossroads for dangerous mixtures, a
meeting-place for forbidden circulations. The naval hospital must
therefore treat, but in order to do this it must be a filter, a mechanism
that pins down and partitions; it must provide a hold over this whole
mobile, swarming mass, by dissipating the confusion of illegality
and evil. The medical supervision of diseases and contagions is
inseparable from a whole series ofother controls: the military control
over deserters, fiscal control over commodities, administrative control
over remedies, rations, disappearances, cures, deaths, simulations,
Hence the need to distribute and partition off space in a
rigorous manner. The first steps taken at Rochefort concerned
things rather than men, precious commodities, rather than patients.
The arrangements of fiscal and economic supervision preceded the
techniques of medical observation: placing of medicines under lock
and key, recording their use; a little later, a system was worked out
to verify the real number of patients, their identity, the units to
which they belonged; then one began to regulate their comings and
goings; they were forced to remain in their wards; to each bed was
attached the name of its occupant; each individual treated was
entered in a register that the doctor had to consult during the visit;
later came the isolation of contagious patients and separate beds.
Gradually, an administrative and political space was articulated upon
a therapeutic space; it tended to individualize bodies, diseases,
symptoms, lives and deaths; it constituted a real table of juxtaposed
and carefully distinct singularities. Out of discipline, a medically
useful space was born.
In the factories that appeared at the end of the eighteenth century,
the principle of individualizing partitioning became more complicated.
It was a question of distributing individuals in a space in
which one might isolate them and map them; but also of articulating
this distribution on a production machinery that had its own requirements.
The distribution of bodies, the spatial arrangement of
Discipline
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Docile bodies
production machinery and the different forms of activity in the
distribution of ‘posts* had to be linked together. The Oberkampf
manufactory at Jouy obeyed this principle. It was made up of a
series of workshops specified according to each broad type of operation:
for the printers, the handlers, the colourists, the women who
touched up the design, the engravers, the dyers. The largest of the
buildings, built in 1791, by Toussaint Barre, was no metres long
and had three storeys. The ground floor was devoted mainly to
block printing; it contained 132 tables arranged in two rows, the
length of the workshop, which had eighty-eight windows; each
printer worked at a table with his ‘puller’, who prepared and spread
the colours. There were 264 persons in all. At the end of each table
was a sort of rack on which the material that had just been printed
was left to dry (Saint-Maur). By walking up and down the central
aisle of the workshop, it was possible to carry out a supervision that
was both general and individual: to observe the worker’s presence
and application, and the quality of his work; to compare workers
with one another, to classify them according to skill and speed;
to follow the successive stages of the production process. All these
serializations formed a permanent grid: confusion was eliminated2:
that is to say, production was divided up and the labour process
was articulated, on the one hand/according to its stages or elementary
operations, and, on the other hand, according to the individuals,
the particular bodies, that carried it out: each variable of this force strength,
promptness, skill, constancy - would be observed, and
therefore characterized, assessed, computed and related to the
individual who was its particular agent. Thus, spread out in a perfectly
legible way over the whole series of individual bodies, the
work force may be analysed in individual units. At the emergence
of large-scale industry, one finds, beneath the division of the production
process, the individualizing fragmentation of labour power;
the distributions of the disciplinary space often assured both.
4. In discipline, the elements are interchangeable, since each is
defined by the place it occupies in a series, and by the gap that
separates it from the others. The unit is, therefore, neither the
territory (unit of domination), nor the place (unit of residence), but
the rank: the place one occupies in a classification, the point at which
a line and a column intersect, the interval in a series of intervals that
M 5
Discipline
one may traverse one after the other. Discipline is an art of rank,
a technique for the transformation of arrangements. It individualizes
bodies by a location that does not give them a fixed position, but
distributes them and circulates them in a network of relations.
Take the example of the ‘class’. In the Jesuit colleges, one still
found an organization that was at once binary and unified; the
classes, which might comprise up to two or three hundred pupils,
were subdivided into groups of ten; each of these groups, with its
‘decurion’, was placed in a camp, Roman or Carthaginian; each
‘denary* had its counterpart in the opposing camp. The general
form was that of war and rivalry; work, apprenticeship and classification
were carried out in the form of the joust, through the confrontation
of two armies; the contribution of each pupil was inscribed
in this general duel; it contributed to the victory or the
defeat of a whole camp; and the pupils were assigned a place that
corresponded to the function of each individual and to his value as
a combatant in the unitary group of his ‘decury’ (Rochemonteix,
5iff). It should be observed moreover that this Roman comedy
made it possible to link, to the binary exercises of rivalry, a spatial
disposition inspired by the legion, with rank, hierarchy, pyramidal
supervision. One should not forget that, generally speaking, the
Roman model, at the Enlightenment, played a dual role: in its
republican aspect, it was the very embodiment of liberty; in its
military aspect, it was the ideal schema of discipline. The Rome of
the eighteenth century and of the Revolution was the Rome of the
Senate, but it was also that of the legion; it was the Rome of the
Forum, but it was also that of the camps. Up to the empire, the
Roman reference transmitted, somewhat ambiguously, the juridical
ideal of citizenship and the technique of disciplinary methods. In
any case, the strictly disciplinary element in the ancient fable used by
the Jesuit colleges came to dominate the element of joust and mock
warfare. Gradually - but especially after 1762 - the educational
space unfolds; the class becomes homogeneous, it is no longer made
up of individual elements arranged side by side under the master’s
eye. In the eighteenth century, ‘rank’ begins to define the great form
of distribution of individuals in the educational order: rows or ranks
of pupils in the class, corridors, courtyards; rank attributed to each
pupil at the end of each task and each examination; the rank he
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Docile bodies
obtains from week to week, month to month, year to year; an
alignment of age groups, one after another; a succession of subjects
taught and questions treated, according to an order of increasing
difficulty. And, in this ensemble of compulsory alignments, each
pupil, according to his age, his performance, his behaviour, occupies
sometimes one rank, sometimes another; he moves constantly over
a series of compartments - some of these are ‘ideal* compartments,
marking a hierarchy of knowledge or ability, others express the
distribution of values or merits in material terms in the space of the
college or classroom. It is a perpetual movement in which individuals
replace one another in a space marked off by aligned intervals.
The organization of a serial space was one of the great technical
mutations of elementary education. It made it possible to supersede
the traditional system (a pupil working for a few minutes with the
master, while the rest of the heterogeneous group remained idle and
unattended). By assigning individual places it made possible the
supervision of each individual and the simultaneous work of all. It
organized a new economy of the time of apprenticeship. It made the
educational space function like a learning machine, but also as a
machine for supervising, hierarchizing, rewarding. Jean-Baptiste de
La S^lle dreamt of a classroom in which the spatial distribution
might provide a whole series of distinctions at once: according to
the pupils* progress, worth, character, application, cleanliness and
parents* fortune. Thus, the classroom would form a single great
table, with many different entries, under the scrupulously ‘classificatory*
eye of the master: ‘In every class there will be places
assigned for all the pupils of all the lessons, so that all those attending
the same lesson will always occupy the same place. Pupils attending
the highest lessons will be placed in the benches closest to the wall,
followed by the others according to the order of the lessons moving
towards the middle of the classroom. . . Each of the pupils will
have his place assigned to him and none of them will leave it or
change it except on the order or with the consent of the school
inspector.* Things must be so arranged that ‘those whose parents
are neglectful and verminous must be separated from those who are
careful and clean; that an unruly and frivolous pupil should be
placed between two who are well behaved and serious, a libertine
either alone or between two pious pupils*.3
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Discipline
In organizing ‘cells’, ‘places’ and ‘ranks’, the disciplines create
complex spaces that are at once architectural, functional and hierarchical.
It is spaces that provide fixed positions and permit circulation;
they carve out individual segments and establish operational
links; they mark places and indicate values; they guarantee the
obedience of individuals, but also a better economy of time and
gesture. They are mixed spaces: real because they govern the disposition
of buildings, rooms, furniture, but also ideal, because they
are projected over this arrangement ofcharacterizations, assessments,
hierarchies. The first of the great operations of discipline is, therefore,
the constitution of ‘tableaux vivants*, which transform the
confused, useless or dangerous multitudes into ordered multiplicities.
The drawing up of ‘tables’ was one of the great problems of the
scientific, political and economic technology of the eighteenth
century: how one was to arrange botanical and zoological gardens,
and construct at the same time rational classifications of living beings;
how one was to observe, supervise, regularize the circulation of
commodities and money and thus build up an economic table that
might serve as the principle of the increase of wealth; how one was
to inspect men, observe their presence and absence and constitute
a general and permanent register of the armed forces; how one was
to distribute patients, separate them from one another, divide up
the hospital space and make a systematic classification of diseases:
these were all twin operations in which the two elements - distribution
and analysis, supervision and intelligibility —are inextricably
bound up. In the eighteenth century, the table was both a technique
of power and a procedure of knowledge. It was a question of
organizing the multiple, of providing oneself with an instrument to
cover it and to master it; it was a question of imposing upon it an
‘order . Like the army general of whom Guibert spoke, the naturalist,
the physician, the economist was ‘blinded by the immensity,
dazed by the multitude«.. the innumerable combinations that result
from the multiplicity of objects, so many concerns together form a
burden above his strength. In perfecting itself, in approaching true
principles, the science of modern warfare might become simpler and
less difficult’; armies ‘with simple, similar tactics, capable of being
adapted to every movement.. . would be easier to move and lead’
(Guibert, xxxvi). Tactics, the spatial ordering of men; taxonomy,
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Docile bodies
the disciplinary space of natural beings; the economic table, the
regulated movement of wealth.
But the table does not have the same function in these different
registers. In the order of the economy, it makes possible the
measurement of quantities and the analysis of movements. In the
form of taxonomy, it has the function of characterizing (and consequently
reducing individual singularities) and constituting classes
(and therefore of excluding considerations of number). But in the
form of the disciplinary distribution, on the other hand, the table
has the function of treating multiplicity itself, distributing it and
deriving from it as many effects as possible. Whereas natural
taxonomy is situated on the axis that links character and category,
disciplinary tactics is situated on the axis that links the singular and
the multiple. It allows both the characterization of the individual
as individual and the ordering of a given multiplicity. It is the first
condition for the control and use of an ensemble of distinct elements:
the base for a micro-physics of what might be called a ‘cellular’
power.
The control of activity
i. The time-table is an old inheritance. The strict model was no
doubt suggested by the monastic communities. It soon spread. Its
three great methods - establish rhythms, impose particular occupations,
regulate the cycles of repetition - were soon to be found in
schools, workshops and hospitals. The new disciplines had no difficulty
in taking up their place in the old forms; the schools and poorhouses
extended the life and the regularity of the monastic communities
to which they were often attached. The rigours of the
industrial period long retained a religious air; in the seventeenth
century, the regulations of the great manufactories laid down the
exercises that would divide up the working day: ‘On arrival in the
morning, before beginning their work, all persons shall wash their
hands, offer up their work to God and make the sign of the cross*
(Saint-Maur, article i); but even in the nineteenth century, when the
rural populations were needed in industry, they were sometimes
formed into ‘congregations’, in an attempt to inure them to work
in the workshops; the framework of the ‘factory-monastery’ was
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Discipline
imposed upon the workers. In the Protestant armies of Maurice of
Orange and Gustavus Adolphus, military discipline was achieved
through a rhythmics of time punctuated by pious exercises; army
life, Boussanelle was later to say, should have some of the "perfections
of the cloister itself (Boussanelle, 2; on the religious character
of discipline in the Swedish army, cf. The Swedish Discipline,London, 1632). For centuries, the religious orders had been masters
of discipline: they were the specialists of time, the great technicians
of rhythm and regular activities. But the disciplines altered these
methods of temporal regulation from which they derived. They
altered them first by refining them. One began to count in quarter
hours, in minutes, in seconds. This happened in the army, of course:
Guibert systematically implemented the chronometric measurement
of shooting that had been suggested earlier by Vauban. In the elementary
schools, the division of time became increasingly minute;
activities were governed in detail by orders that had to be obeyed
immediately: ‘At the last stroke of the hour, a pupil will ring the
bell, and at the first sound of the bell all the pupils will kneel, with
their arms crossed and their eyes lowered. When the prayer has been
said, the teacher will strike the signal once to indicate that the pupils
should get up, a second time as a sign that they should salute Christ,
and a third that they should sit down’ (La Salle, Conduite „♦., 27-8).
In the early nineteenth century, the following time-table was suggested
for the £coles mutuelles, or ‘mutual improvement schools’:
8.45 entrance of the monitor, 8.52 the monitor’s summons, 8.56
entrance of the children and prayer, 9.00 the children go to their
benches, 9.04 first slate, 9.08 end of dictation, 9.12 second slate, etc.
(Tronchot, 221). The gradual extension of the wage-earning class
brought with it a more detailed partitioning of time: ‘If workers
arrive later than a quarter of an hour after the ringing of the bell. .
(Amboise, article 2); ‘if any one of the companions is asked for
during work and loses more than five minutes — ‘anyone who is
not at his work at the correct time — ’ (Oppenheim, article 7-8).
But an attempt is also made to assure the quality of the time used:
constant supervision, the pressure of supervisors, the elimination of
anything that might disturb or distract; it is a question of constituting
a totally useful time: ‘It is expressly forbidden during work to
amuse one’s companions by gestures or in any other way, to play
150
Docile bodies
at any game whatsoever, to eat, to sleep, to tell stories and comedies*
(Oppenheim, article 16); and even during the meal-break, ‘there will
be no telling of stories, adventures or other such talk that distracts
the workers from their work’; ‘it is expressly forbidden for any
worker, under any pretext, to bring wine into the manufactory and
to drink in the workshops’ (Amboise, article 4), Time measured and
paid must also be a time without impurities or defects; a time of
good quality, throughout which the body is constantly applied to
its exercise. Precision and application are, with regularity, the fundamental
virtues of disciplinary time. But this is not the newest thing
about it. Other methods are more characteristic of the disciplines.
2. The temporal elaboration ofthe act. There are, for example, two
ways of controlling marching troops. In the early seventeenth
century, we have: ‘Accustomed soldiers marching in file or in
battalion to march to the rhythm of the drum. And to do this, one
must begin with the right foot so that the whole troop raises the
same foot at the same time* (Montgommery, 86). In the mideighteenth
century, there are four sorts of steps: ‘The length of the
the short step will be a foot, that of the ordinary step, the double
step and the marching step will be two feet, the whole measured from
one heel to the next; as for the duration, that of the small step and
the ordinary step will last one second, during which two double
steps would be performed; the duration of the marching step will be
a little longer than one second. The oblique step will take one
second; it will be at most eighteen inches from one heel to the next.
. . . The ordinaty step will be executed forwards, holding the head
up high and the body erect, holding oneself in balance successively
on a single leg, and bringing the other forwards, the ham taut, the
point of the foot a little turned outwards and low, so that one may
without affectation brush the ground on which one must walk and
place one’s foot, in such a way that each part may come to rest there
at the same time without striking the ground’ (‘Ordonnance du icr
janvier 1766, pour regler Pexercise de l’infanterie’). Between these
two instructions, a new set of restraints had been brought into play,
another degree of precision in the breakdown of gestures and movements,
another way of adjusting the body to temporal imperatives.
What the ordinance of 1766 defines is not a time-table - the
general framework for an activity; it is rather a collective and
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Discipline
obligatory rhythm, imposed from the outside; it is a ‘programme’;
it assures the elaboration of the act itself; it controls its development
and its stages from the inside. We have passed from a form of
injunction that measured or punctuated gestures to a web that constrains
them or sustains them throughout their entire succession. A
sort of anatomo-chronological schema of behaviour is defined. The
act is broken down into its elements; the position of the body, limbs,
articulations is defined; to each movement are assigned a direction,
an aptitude, a duration; their order of succession is prescribed. Time
penetrates the body and with it all the meticulous controls of power.
3. Hence the correlation of the body and the gesture. Disciplinary
control does not consist simply in teaching or imposing a series of
particular gestures; it imposes the best relation between a gesture
and the overall position of the body, which is its condition of efficiency
and speed. In the correct use of the body, which makes
possible a correct use of time, nothing must remain idle or useless:
everything must be called upon to form the support of the act
required. A well-disciplined body forms the operational context of
the slightest gesture. Good handwriting, for example, presupposes
a gymnastics - a whole routine whose rigorous code invests the body
in its entirety, from the points of the feet to the tip of the index
finger. The pupils must always ‘hold their bodies erect, somewhat
turned and free on the left side, slightly inclined, so that, with the
elbow placed on the table, the chin can be rested upon the hand,
unless this were to interfere with the view; the left leg must be somewhat
more forward under the table than the right. A distance of two
fingers must be left between the body and the table; for not only
does one write with more alertness, but nothing is more harmful
to the health than to acquire the habit of pressing one’s stomach
against the table; the part of the left arm from the elbow to the hand
must be placed on the table. The right arm must be at a distance
from the body of about three fingers and be about five fingers from
the table, on which it must rest lightly. The teacher will place the
pupils in the posture that they should maintain when writing, and
will correct it either by sign or otherwise, when they change this
position’ (La Salle, Conduite ..., 63-4). A disciplined body is the
prerequisite of an efficient gesture.
4. The body-object articulation. Discipline defines each of the
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relations that the body must have with the object that it manipulates.
Between them, it outlines a meticulous meshing. ‘Bring the weapon
forward. In three stages. Raise the rifle with the right hand, bringing
it close to the body so as to hold it perpendicular with the right
knee, the end of the barrel at eye level, grasping it by striking it with
the right hand, the arm held close to the body at waist height. At the
second stage, bring the rifle in front of you with the left hand, the
barrel in the middle between the two eyes, vertical, the right hand
grasping it at the small of the butt, the arm outstretched, the triggerguard
resting on the first finger, the left hand at the height of the
notch, the thumb lying along the barrel against the moulding. At
the third stage, let go of the rifle with the left hand, which falls along
the thigh, raising the rifle with the right hand, the lock outwards
and opposite the chest, the right arm half flexed, the elbow close to
the body, the thumb lying against the lock, resting against the first
screw, the hammer resting on the first finger, the barrel perpendicular’
(‘Ordonnance du icr janvier 1766 . . ., titreXI, article 2*). This
is an example of what might be called the instrumental coding of the
body. It consists of a breakdown of the total gesture into two parallel
series: that of the parts of the body to be used (right hand, left hand,
different fingers of the hand, knee, eye, elbow, etc.) and that of the
parts of the object manipulated (barrel, notch, hammer, screw, etc.);
then the two sets of parts are correlated together according to a
number of simple gestures (rest, bend); lastly, it fixes the canonical
succession in which each of these correlations occupies a particular
place. This obligatory syntax is what the military theoreticians of
the eighteenth century called ‘manoeuvre . The traditional recipe
gives place to explicit and obligatory prescriptions. Over the whole
surface of contact between the body and the object it handles, power
is introduced, fastening them to one another. It constitutes a bodyweapon,
body-tool, body-machine complex. One is as far as possible
from those forms of subjection that demanded of the body only
signs or products, forms of expression or the result of labour.
The regulation imposed by power is at the same time the law of
construction of the operation. Thus disciplinary power appears to
have the function not so much of deduction as of synthesis, not so
much of exploitation of the product as of coercive link with the
apparatus of production.
*53
Discipline
5. Exhaustive use. The principle that underlay the time-table in
its traditional form was essentially negative; it was the principle of
non-idleness: it was forbidden to waste time, which was counted by
God and paid for by men; the time-table was to eliminate the danger
of wasting it - a moral offence and economic dishonesty. Discipline,
on the other hand, arranges a positive economy; it poses the principle
of a theoretically ever-growing use of time: exhaustion rather
than use; it is a question ofextracting, from time, ever more available
moments and, from each moment, ever more useful forces. This
means that one must seek to intensify the use of the slightest
moment, as if time, in its very fragmentation, were inexhaustible or
as if, at least by an ever more detailed internal arrangement, one
could tend towards an ideal point at which one maintained maximum
speed and maximum efficiency. It was precisely this that was implemented
in the celebrated regulations of the Prussian infantry that
the whole of Europe imitated after the victories of Frederick II:4the
more time is broken down, the more its subdivisions multiply,
the better one disarticulates it by deploying its internal elements
under a gaze that supervises them, the more one can accelerate an
operation, or at least regulate it according to an optimum speed;
hence this regulation of the time of an action that was so important
in the army and which was to be so throughout the entire technology
of human activity: the Prussian regulations of 1743 down six
stages to bring the weapon to one's foot, four to extend it, thirteen
to raise it to the shoulder, etc. By other means, the ‘mutual improvement
school' was also arranged as a machine to intensify the use of
time; its organization made it possible to obviate the linear, successive
character of the master's teaching: it regulated the counterpoint
of operations performed, at the same moment, by different groups
of pupils under the direction of monitors and assistants, so that each
passing moment was filled with many different, but ordered activities;
and, on the other hand, the rhythm imposed by signals, whistles,
orders imposed on everyone temporal norms that were intended both
to accelerate the process of learning and to teach speed as a virtue;5
‘the sole aim of these commands .. . is to accustom the children to
executing well and quickly the same operations, to diminish as far as
possible by speed the loss of time caused by moving from one operation
to another* (Bernard).
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Docile bodies
Through this technique of subjection a new object was beingformed;
slowly, it superseded the mechanical body - the body composed
of solids and assigned movements, the image of which had
for so long haunted those who dreamt of disciplinary perfection.
This new object is the natural body, the bearer of forces and the seat
of duration; it is the body susceptible to specified operations, which
have their order, their stages, their internal conditions, their constituent
elements. In becoming the target for new mechanisms
of power, the body is offered up to new forms of knowledge. It is
the bbdy of exercise, rather than of speculative physics; a body
manipulated by authority, rather than imbued with animal spirits;
a body of useful training and not of rational mechanics, but one in
which, by virtue of that very fact, a number of natural requirements
and functional constraints are beginning to emerge. This is the body
that Guibert discovered in his critique of excessively artificial movements.
In the exercise that is imposed upon it and which it resists,
the body brings out its essential correlations and spontaneously
rejects the incompatible: ‘On entering most of our training schools,
one sees all those unfortunate soldiers in constricting and forced
attitudes, one sees all their muscles contracted, the circulation of their
blood interrupted. . . If we studied the intention of nature and the
construction of the human body, we would find the position and
the bearing that nature clearly prescribes for the soldier. The head
must be erect, standing out from the shoulders, sitting perpendicularly
between them. It must be turned neither to left nor to right,
because, in view of the correspondence between the vertebrae of the
neck and the shoulder-blade to which they are attached, none ofthem
may move in a circular manner without slightly bringing with it
from the same side that it moves one of the shoulders and because,
the body no longer being placed squarely, the soldier can no longer
walk straight in front of him or serve as a point of alignment. . .
Since the hip-bone, which the ordinance indicates as the point
against which the butt end should rest, is not situated the same in all
men, the rifle must be placed more to the right for some, and more
to the left for others. For the same reason of inequality of structure,
the trigger-guard is more or less pressed against the body, depending
on whether the outer parts of a man’s shoulder is more or less
fleshy* (Guibert, 21-2).
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We have seen how the procedures of disciplinary distribution had
their place among the contemporary techniques of classification and
tabulation; but also how they introduced into them the specific
problem of individuals and multiplicity. Similarly, the disciplinary
controls of activity belonged to a whole series of researches, theoretical
or practical, into the natural machinery of bodies; but they
began to discover in them specific processes; behaviour and its
organized requirements gradually replaced the simple physics of
movement. The body, required to be docile in its minutest operations,
opposes and shows the conditions of functioning proper to an
organism. Disciplinary power has as its correlative an individuality
that is not only analytical and ‘cellular5, but also natural and
‘organic’.
The organisation ofgeneses
In 1667, the edict that set up the manufactory of the Gobelins
envisaged the organization of a school. Sixty scholarship children
were to be chosen by the superintendent of royal buildings, entrusted
for a time to a master whose task it would be to provide them
with ‘upbringing and instruction’, then apprenticed to the various
master tapestry makers of the manufactory (who by virtue of this
fact received compensation deducted from the pupils’ scholarships);
after six years’ apprenticeship, four years of service and a qualifying
examination, they were given the right to ‘set up and run a shop*
in any town of the kingdom. We find here the characteristics of
guild apprenticeship: the relation of dependence on the master that
is both individual and total; the statutory duration of the training,
which is concluded by a qualifying examination, but which is not
broken down according to a precise programme; an overall exchange
between the master who must give his knowledge and the apprentice
who must offer his services, his assistance and often some payment.
The form of domestic service is mixed with a transference of
knowledge.6 In 1737, an edict organized a school of drawing for
the apprentices of the Gobelins; it was not intended to replace the
training given by the master workers, but to complement it. It
involved a quite different arrangement of time. Two hours a day,
except on Sundays and feast days, the pupils met in the school. A
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roll-call was taken, from a list on the wall; the absentees were noted
down in a register. The school was divided into three classes. The
first for those who had no notion of drawing; they were made to
copy models, which were more or less difficult according to the
abilities of each pupil. The second ‘for those who already have some
principles', or who had passed through the first class; they had to
reproduce pictures ‘at sight, without tracing’, but considering only
the drawing. In the third class, they learnt colouring and pastel
drawing, and were introduced to the theory and practice of dyeing.
The pupils performed individual tasks at regular intervals; each of
these exercises, signed with the name of its author and date of
execution, was handed in to the teacher; the best were rewarded;
assembled together at the end of the year and compared, they made
it possible to establish the progress, the present ability and the
relative place of each pupil; it was then decided which of them could
pass into the next class. A general book, kept by the teachers and
their assistants, recorded from day to day the behaviour of the
pupils and everything that happened in the school; it was periodically
shown to an inspector (Gerspach, 1892).
The Gobelins school is only one example of an important phenomenon:
the development, in the classical period, of a new technique
for taking charge of the time of individual existences; for regulating
the relations of time, bodies and forces; for assuring an accumulation
of duration; and for turning to ever-increased profit or use the
movement of passing time. How can one capitalize the time of
individuals, accumulate it in each of them, in their bodies, in their
forces or in their abilities, in a way that is susceptible of use and
control? How can one organize profitable durations? The disciplines,
which analyse space, break up and rearrange activities, must also be
understood as machinery for adding up and capitalizing time. This
was done in four ways, which emerge most clearly in military
organization.
1. Divide duration into successive or parallel segments, each of
which must end at a specific time. For example, isolate the period
of training and the period of practice; do not mix the instruction of
recruits and the exercise of veterans; open separate military schools
for the armed service (in 1764, the creation of the ficole Militaire in
Paris, in 1776 the creation of twelve schools in the provinces);
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recruit professional soldiers at the youngest possible age, take
children, ‘have them adopted by the nation, and brought up in
special schools’ (Servan, J., 456),' teach in turn posture, marching,
the handling of weapons, shooting, and do not pass to another
activity until the first has been completely mastered; ‘One of the
principal mistakes is to show a soldier every exercise at once’
(‘R£glement de 1743 • • • ’); *n short, break down time into separate
and adjusted threads. 2. Organize these threads according to an
analytical plan - successions of elements as simple as possible,
combining according to increasing complexity. This presupposes
that instruction should abandon the principle of analogical repetition.
In the sixteenth century, military exercise consisted above all
in copying all or part of the action, and of generally increasing the
soldier’s skill or strength;7in the eighteenth century, the instruction
of the ‘manual’ followed the principle of the elementary* and not of
the ‘exemplary’: simple gestures - the position of the fingers, the
bend of the leg, the movement of the arms - basic elements for useful
actions that also provide a general training in strength, skill,
docility. 3. Finalize these temporal segments, decide on how long
each will last and conclude it with an examination, which will have
the triple function of showing whether the subject has reached the
level required, of guaranteeing that each subject undergoes the same
apprenticeship and of differentiating the abilities of each individual.
When the sergeants, corporals, etc. ‘entrusted with the task of
instructing the others, are of the opinion that a particular soldier is
ready to pass into the first class, they will present him first to the
officers of their company, who will carefully examine him; if they
do not find him sufficiently practised, they will refuse to admit him;
if, on the other hand, the man presented seems to them to be ready,
the said officers will themselves propose him to the commanding
officer of the regiment, who will see him if he thinks it necessary,
and will have him examined by the senior officers. The slightest
mistakes will be enough to have him rejected, and no one will be
able to pass from the second class to the first until he has undergone
this first examination’ (Instruction par Vexercise de Vinfanterie, 14
mai 1754). 4* Draw up series of series; lay down for each individual,
according to his level, his seniority, his rank, the exercises that are
suited to him; common exercises have a differing role and each
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Dodle bodies
difference involves specific exercises. At the end of each series,
others begin, branch off and subdivide in turn. Thus each individual
is caught up in a temporal series which specifically defines his level
or his rank. It is a disciplinary polyphony of exercises: ‘Soldiers of
the second class will be exercised every morning by sergeants,
corporals, anspessadesy lance-corporals. . . The lance-corporals will
be exercised every Sunday by the head of the section .. .; the corporals
and anspessades will be exercised every Tuesday afternoon
by the sergeants and their company and these in turn on the afternoons
of every second, twelfth and twenty-second day of each
month by senior officers' (Instruction . . .).
It is this disciplinary time that was gradually imposed on pedagogical
practice - specializing the time of training and detaching it
from the adult time, from the time of mastery; arranging different
stages, separated from one another by graded examinations; drawing
up programmes, each of which must take place during a particular
stage and which involves exercises of increasing difficulty; qualifying
individuals according to the way in which they progress through
these series. For the ‘initiatory* time of traditional training (an overall
time, supervised by the master alone, authorized by a single
examination), disciplinary time had substituted its multiple and
progressive series. A whole analytical pedagogy was being formed,
meticulous in its detail (it broke down the subject being taught into
its simplest elements, it hierarchized each stage of development into
small steps) and also very precocious in its history (it largely anticipated
the genetic analyses of theideologues, whose technical model
it appears to have been). At the beginning of the eighteenth century,
Demia suggested a division of the process of learning to read into
seven levels: the first for those who are beginning to learn the letters,
the second for those who are learning to spell, the third for those
who are learning to join syllables together to make words, the
fourth for those who are reading Latin in sentences or from punctuation
to punctuation, the fifth for those who are beginning to read
French, the sixth for the best readers, the seventh for those who can
read manuscripts. But, where there are a great many pupils, further
subdivisions would have to be introduced; the first class would
comprise four streams: one for those who are learning the ‘simple
letters’; a second for those who are learning the ‘mixed’ letters; a
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Discipline
third for those who are learning the abbreviated letters (a, e . ..);
a fourth for those who are learning the double letters (ff9ss, tty st).
The second class would be divided into three streams: for those who
‘count each letter aloud before spelling the syllable, D .O ., D O '; for
those ‘who spell the most difficult syllables, such as bant, brand,
spinx\ etc. (Demia, 19-20). Each stage in the combinatory of elements
must be inscribedwithin a greattemporal series, which is both
a natural progress of the mind and a code for educative procedures.
The ‘seriation’ of successive activities makes possible a whole
investment of duration by power: the possibility of a detailed control
and a regular intervention (of differentiation, correction,
punishment, elimination) in each moment of time; the possibility of
characterizing, and therefore of using individuals according to the
level in the series that they are moving through; the possibility of
accumulating time and activity, of rediscovering them, totalized and
usable in a final result, which is the ultimate capacity of an individual.
Temporal dispersal is brought together to produce a profit, thus
mastering a duration that would otherwise elude one’s grasp. Power
is articulated directly onto time; it assures its control and guarantees
its use.
The disciplinary methods reveal a linear time whose moments are
integrated, one upon another, and which is orientated towards a
terminal, stable point; in short, an ‘evolutive’ time. But it must be
recalled that, at the same moment, the administrative and economic
techniques of control reveal a social time of a serial, orientated,
cumulative type: the discovery of an evolution in terms of ‘progress’.
The disciplinary techniques reveal individual series: the discovery of
an evolution in terms of ‘genesis’. These two great ‘discoveries’
of the eighteenth century - the progress of societies and the geneses
of individuals - were perhaps correlative with the new techniques of
power, and more specifically, with a new way of administering
time and making it useful, by segmentation, seriation, synthesis and
totalization. A macro- and a micro-physics of power made possible,
not the invention of history (it had long had no need of that), but
the integration of a temporal, unitary, continuous, cumulative
dimension in the exercise ofcontrols and the practice of dominations.
‘Evolutive’ historicity, as it was then constituted - and so profoundly
that it is still self-evident for many today - is bound up with a mode
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of functioning of power. No doubt it is as if the ‘history-remembering*
of the chronicles, genealogies, exploits, reigns and deeds had
long been linked to a modality of power. With the new techniques
of subjection, the ‘dynamics’ of continuous evolutions tends to replace
the ‘dynasties* of solemn events.
In any case, the small temporal continuum of individualitygenesis
certainly seems to be, like the individuality-cell or the
individuality-organism, an effect and an object of discipline. And, at
the centre of this seriation of time, one finds a procedure that is, for
it, what the drawing up of ‘tables* was for the distribution of
individuals and cellular segmentation, or, again, what ‘manoeuvre
was for the economy of activities and organic control. This procedure
is ‘exercise*. Exercise is that technique by which one imposes
on the body tasks that are both repetitive and different, but always
graduated. By bending behaviour towards a terminal state, exercise
makes possible a perpetual characterization of the individual either
in relation to this term, in relation to other individuals, or in relation
to a type of itinerary. It thus assures, in the form of continuity and
constraint, a growth, an observation, a qualification. Before adopting
this strictly disciplinary form, exercise had a long history: it is
to be found in military, religious and university practices either as
initiation ritual, preparatory ceremony, theatrical rehearsal or
examination. Its linear, continuously progressive organization, its
genetic development in time were, at least in the army and the
school, introduced at a later date - and were no doubt of religious
origin. In any case, the idea of an educational ‘programme* that
would follow the child to the end of his schooling and which would
involve from year to year, month to month, exercises of increasing
conlplexity, first appeared, it seems, in a religious group, the
Brothers of the Common Life (cf. Meir, 160 ff). Strongly inspired
by Ruysbroek and Rhenish mysticism, they transposed certain of
the spiritual techniques to education - and to the education not only
of clerks, but also of magistrates and merchants: the theme of a perfection
towards which the exemplary master guides the pupil became
with them that of an authoritarian perfection of the pupils by the
teacher; the ever-increasing rigorous exercises that the ascetic life
proposed became tasks of increasing complexity that marked the
gradual acquisition of knowledge and good behaviour; the striving
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of the whole community towards salvation became the collective,
permanent competition of individuals being classified in relation to
one another. Perhaps it was these procedures of community life and
salvation that were the first nucleus of methods intended to produce
individually characterized, but collectively useful aptitudes.8 In its
mystical or ascetic form, exercise was a way of ordering earthly time
for the conquest of salvation. It was gradually, in the history of the
West, to change direction while preserving certain of its characteristics;
it served to economize the time of life, to accumulate it in a
useful form and to exercise power over men through the mediation
of time arranged in this way. Exercise, having become an element
in the political technology of the body and of duration, does not
culminate in a beyond, but tends towards a subjection that has never
reached its limit.
The composition offorces
‘Let us begin by destroying the old prejudice, according to which
one believed one was increasing the strength of a troop by increasing
its depth. All the physical laws of movement become chimeras when
one wishes to adapt them to tactics/9 From the end of the seventeenth
century, the technical problem of infantry had been freed
from the physical model of mass. In an army of pikes and muskets slow,
imprecise, practically incapable of selecting a target and taking
aim - troops were used as a projectile, a wall or a fortress: ‘the
formidable infantry of the army of Spain’; the distribution ofsoldiers
in this mass was carried out above all according to their seniority
and their bravery; at the centre, with the task of providing weight
and volume, of giving density to the body, were the least experienced;
in front, at the angles and on the flanks, were the bravest or
reputedly most skilful soldiers* In the course of the classical period,
one passed over to a whole set of delicate articulations. The unit regiment,
battalion, section and, later, ‘division’10 - became a sort
of machine with many parts, moving in relation to one another, in
order to arrive at a configuration and to obtain a specific result.
What were the reasons for this mutation? Some were economic: to
make each individual useful and the training, maintenance, and
arming of troops profitable; to give to each soldier, a precious unit,
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maximum efficiency. But these economic reasons could become
determinant only with a technical transformation: the invention of
the rifle:11 more accurate, more rapid than the musket, it gave
greater value to the soldier’s skill; more capable of reaching a particular
target, it made it possible to exploit fire-power at an individual
level; and, conversely, it turned every soldier into a possible
target, requiring by the same token greater mobility; it involved
therefore the disappearance of a technique of masses in favour of an
art that distributed units and men along extended, relatively flexible,
mobile lines. Hence the need to find a whole calculated practice of
individual and collective dispositions, movements of groups or
isolated elements, changes of position, of movement from one disposition
to another; in short, the need to invent a machinery whose
principle would no longer be the mobile or immobile mass, but a
geometry of divisible segments whose basic unity was the mobile
soldier with his rifle;12 and, no doubt, below the soldier himself, the
minimal gestures, the elementary stages of actions, the fragments of
spaces occupied or traversed.
The same problems arose when it was a question of constituting
a productive force whose effect had to be superior to the sum of
elementary forces that composed it: ‘The combined working-day
produces, relatively to an ecjual sum of working-days, a greater
quantity of use-values, and, consequently, diminishes the labourtime
necessary for the production of a given useful effect. Whether
the combined working-day, in a given case, acquires this increased
productive power, because it heightens the mechanical force of
labour, or extends its sphere of action over a greater space, or contracts
the field of production relatively to the scale of production,
or at the critical moment sets large masses of labour to work .. . the
special productive power of the combined working-day is, under
all circumstances, the social productive power of labour, or the
productive power of social labour. This power is due to cooperation
itself’ (Marx, Capital\ vol. i, 311-12). On several occasions, Marx
stresses the analogy between the problems of the division of labour
and those of military tactics. For example: ‘Just as the offensive
power of a squadron of cavalry, or the defensive power of a regiment
of infantry, is essentially different from the sum of the offensive
or defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry
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soldiers taken separately, so the sum total of the mechanical forces
exerted by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is
developed, when many hands take part simultaneously in one and
the same undivided operation* (Marx, Capital, vol. i, 308).
Thus a new demand appears to which discipline must respond: to
construct a machine whose effect will be maximized by the concerted
articulation of the elementary parts of which it is composed. Discipline
is no longer simply an art of distributing bodies, of extracting
time from them and accumulating it, but of composing forces in
order to obtain an efficient machine. This demand is expressed in
several ways.
1. The individual body becomes an element that may be placed,
moved, articulated on others. Its bravery or its strength are no
longer the principal variables that define it; but the place it occupies,
the interval it covers, the regularity, the good order according to
which it operates its movements. The soldier is above all a fragment
of mobile space, before he is courage or honour. Guibert describes
the soldier in the following way: ‘When he is under arms, he occupies
two feet along his greatest diameter, that is to say, taking him
from one end to the other, and about one foot in his greatest thickness
taken from the chest to the shoulders, to which one must add an
interval of a foot between him and the next man; this gives two feet
in all directions per soldier and indicates that a troop of infantry in
battle occupies, either in its front or in its depth, as many steps as it
has ranks’ (Guibert, 27). This is a functional reduction of the body.
But it is also an insertion of this body-segment in a whole ensemble
over which it is articulated. The soldier whose body has been trained
to function part by part for particular operations must in turn form
an element in a mechanism at another level. The soldiers will be
instructed first ‘one by one, then two by two, then in greater
numbers. . . For the handling of weapons, one will ascertain that,
when the soldiers have been separately instructed, they will carry it
out two by two, and then change places alternately, so that the one
on the left may learn to adapt himself to the one on the right*
(‘Ordonnance .. .*). The body is constituted as a part of a multisegmentary
machine.
2. The various chronological series that discipline must combine
to form a composite time are also pieces of machinery. The time of
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each must be adjusted to the time of the others in such a way that the
maximum quantity of forces may be extracted from each and combined
with the optimum result. Thus Servan dreamt of a military
machine that would cover the whole territory of the nation and in
which each individual would be occupied without interruption but
in a different way according to the evolutive segment, the genetic
sequence in which he finds himself. Military life would begin in
childhood, when young children would be taught the profession of
arms in ‘military manors’; it would end in these same manors when
the veterans, right up to their last day, would teach the children,
exercise the recruits, preside over the soldiers’ exercises, supervise
them when they were carrying out works in the public interest, and
finally make order reign in the country, when the troops were fighting
at the frontiers. There is not a single moment of life from which
one cannot extract forces, providing one knows how to differentiate
it and combine it with others. Similarly, one uses the labour of
children and of old people in the great workshops; this is because
they have certain elementary capacities for which it is not necessary
to use workers who have many other aptitudes; furthermore, they
constitute a cheap labour force; lastly, if they work, they are no
longer at anyone’s charge: ‘Labouring mankind’, said a tax collector
of an enterprise at Angers, ‘may find in this manufactory, from the
age of ten to old age, resources against idleness and the penury that
follows from it’ (Marchegay, 360). But it was probably in primary
education that this adjustment of different chronologies was to be
carried out with most subtlety. From the seventeenth century to the
introduction, at the beginning of the nineteenth, of the Lancaster
method, the complex clockwork of the mutual improvement school
was built up cog by cog: first the oldest pupils were entrusted with
tasks involving simple supervision, then of checking work, then of
teaching; in the end, all the time of all the pupils was occupied either
with teaching or with being taught. The school became a machine
for learning, in which each pupil, each level and each moment, if
correctly combined, were permanently utilized in the general process
of teaching. One of the great advocates of the mutual improvement
schools gives us some idea of this progress: ‘In a school of 360
children, the master who would like to instruct each pupil in turn
for a session of three hours would not be able to give half a minute
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to each. By the new method, each of the 360 pupils writes, reads or
counts for two and a half hours' (cf. Bernard).
3. This carefully measured combination of forces requires a
precise system of command. All the activity of the disciplined
individual must be punctuated and sustained by injunctions whose
efficacity rests on brevity and clarity; the order does not need to be
explained or formulated; it must trigger off the required behaviour
and that is enough. From the master of discipline to him who is
subjected to it the relation is one of signalization: it is a question not
of understanding the injunction but of perceiving the signal and
reacting to it immediately, according to a more or less artificial,
prearranged code. Place the bodies in a little world of signals to each
of which is attached a single, obligatory response: it is a technique
of training, of dressage, that 'despotically excludes in everything
the least representation, and the smallest murmur’; the disciplined
soldier ‘begins to obey whatever he is ordered to do; his
obedience is prompt and blind; an appearance of indocility, the least
delay would be a crime* (Boussanelle, 2). The training of schoolchildren
was to be carried out in the same way: few words, no
explanation, a total silence interrupted only by signals - bells, clapping
of hands, gestures, a mere glance from the teacher, or that little
wooden apparatus used by the Brothers of the Christian Schools; it
was calledpar excellence the ‘Signal’ and it contained in its mechanical
brevity both the technique of command and the morality of obedience.
‘The first and principal use of the signal is to attract at once
the attention of all the pupils to the teacher and to make them
attentive to what he wishes to impart to them. Thus, whenever he
wishes to attract the attention of the children, and to bring the
exercise to an end, he will strike the signal once. Whenever a good
pupil hears the noise of the signal, he will imagine that he is hearing
the voice of the teacher or rather the voice of God himself calling
him by his name. He will then partake of the feelings of the young
Samuel, saying with him in the depths of his soul: “ Lord, I am
here.” ’ The pupil will haye to have learnt the code of the signals
and respond automatically to them. ‘When prayer has been said,
the teacher will strike the signal at once and, turning to the child
whom he wishes to read, he will make the sign to begin. To make a
sign to stop to a pupil who is reading, he will strike the signal
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once. . . To make a sign to a pupil to repeat when he has read
badly or mispronounced a letter, a syllable or a word, he will strike
the signal twice in rapid succession* If, after the sign had been made
two or three times, the pupil who is reading does not find and repeat
the word that he has badly read or mispronounced - because he has
read several words beyond it before being called to order - the
teacher will strike three times in rapid succession, as a sign to him to
begin to read farther back; and he will continue to make the sign
till the pupil finds the word which he has said incorrectly* (La Salle,
Conduite . . . 137-8; cf. also Demia, 21). The mutual improvement
school was to exploit still further this control of behaviour by the
system of signals to which one had to react immediately. Even
verbal orders were to function as elements of signalization: ‘Enter
your benches. At the word enter, the children bring their right
hands down on the table with a resounding thud and at the same
time put one leg into the bench; at the words your benches they put
the other leg in and sit down opposite their slates . . . Take your
slates. At the word take, the children, with their right hands, take
hold of the string by which the slate is suspended from the nail
before them, and, with their left hands, they grasp the slate in the
middle; at the word slates, they unhook it and place it on the table*.13
To sum up, it might be said that discipline creates out of the
bodies it controls four types of individuality, or rather an individuality
that is endowed with four characteristics: it is cellular (by the
play ofspatial distribution), it is organic (by the coding of activities),
it is genetic (by the accumulation of time), it is combinatory (by the
composition of forces). And, in doing so, it operates four great
techniques: it draws up tables; it prescribes movements; it imposes
exercises; lastly, in order to obtain the combination of forces, it
arranges ‘tactics*. Tactics, the art of constructing, with located
bodies, coded activities and trained aptitudes, mechanisms in which
the product of the various forces is increased by their calculated
combination are no doubt the highest form of disciplinary practice.
In this knowledge, the eighteenth-century theoreticians saw the
general foundation of all military practice, from the control and
exercise of individual bodies to the use of forces specific to the most
complex multiplicities. The architecture, anatomy, mechanics,
economy of the disciplinary body: ‘In the eyes of most soldiers,
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tactics are only a branch of the vast science of war; for me, they are
the base of this science; they are this science itself, because they
teach how to constitute troops, order them, move them, get them to
fight; because tactics alone may make up for numbers, and handle
the multitude; lastly, it will include knowledge of men, weapons,
tensions, circumstances, because it is all these kinds of knowledge
brought together that must determine those movements’ (Guibert,
4). Or again: ‘The term tactics ., . gives some idea of the respective
position of the men who make up a particular troop in relation
to that of the different troops that make up an army, their
movements and their actions, their relations with one another* (Joly
de Maizeroy, 2).
It may be that war as strategy is a continuation of politics. But it
must not be forgotten that ‘politics, has been conceived as a continuation,
if not exactly and directly of war, at least of the military
model as a fundamental means of preventing civil disorder. Politics,
as a technique of internal peace and order, sought to implement the
mechanism of the perfect army, of the disciplined mass, of the docile,
useful troop, of the regiment in camp and in the field, on manoeuvres
and on exercises. In the great eighteenth-century states, the
army guaranteed civil peace no doubt because it was a real force,
an ever-threatening sword, but also because it was a technique and a
body of knowledge that could project their schema over the social
body. If there is a politics-war series that passes through strategy,
there is an army-politics series that passes through tactics. It is
strategy that makes it possible to understand warfare as a way of
conducting politics between states; it is tactics that makes it possible
to understand the army as a principle for maintaining the absence of
warfare in civil society. The classical age saw the birth of the great
political and military strategy by which nations confronted each
other's economic and demographic forces; but it also saw the birth
of meticulous military and political tactics by which the control of
bodies and individual forces was exercised within states. The
‘militaire' - the military institution, military science, the militaire
himself, so different from what was formerly characterized by the
term 4komme de guerre - was specified, during this period, at the
point of junction between war and the noise of battle on the one
hand, and order and silence, subservient to peace, on the other.
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Historians of ideas usually attribute the dream of a perfect society to
the philosophers and jurists of the eighteenth century; but there was
also a military dream of society; its fundamental reference was not to
the state of nature, but to the meticulously subordinated cogs of a
machine, not to the primal social contract, but to permanent coercions,
not to fundamental rights, but to indefinitely progressive
forms of training, not to the general will but to automatic docility.
‘Discipline must be made national/ said Guibert. ‘The state that
I depict will have a simple, reliable, easily controlled administration.
It will resemble those huge machines, which by quite uncomplicated
means produce great effects; the strength of this state will spring
from its own strength, its prosperity from its own prosperity. Time,
which destroys all, will increase its power. It will disprove that
vulgar prejudice by which we are made to imagine that empires are
subjected to an imperious law of decline and ruin* (Guibert, xxiiixxiv;
cf. what Marx says about the army and forms of bourgeois
society in his letter to Engels, 25 September 1857). The Napoleonic
regime was not far off and with it the form of state that was to
survive it and, we must not forget, the foundations of which were
laid not only by jurists, but also by soldiers, not only councillors of
state, but also junior officers, not only the men of the courts, but also
the men of the camps. The Roman reference that accompanied this
formation certainly bears with it this double index: citizens and
legionaries, law and manoeuvres. While jurists or philosophers
were seeking in the pact a primal model for the construction or
reconstruction of the social body, the soldiers and with them the
technicians of discipline were elaborating procedures for the individual
and collective coercion of bodies.
169
-.-.v.^-, ;„ ^ - a t t a e a a a i l : .-;•-
1 Medal commemorating Louis XlV's first military
revue in 1668 (B,N. Cabinetdes mSdailles).
Cf. p. 188.
2 Handwriting model (Collections historiquesde
ri.N.R.D.P.). Cf. p. 152.
3 J. Bentham. Plan of the Panopticon (The Works ofJeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring,
vol. IV. 1843.172-3). Cf. d .201.
N. Harou-Romain. Plan for a penitentiary, 1840. A prisoner, in his cell, kneeling at
prayer before the central inspection tower. Cf. p. 250.
5 The Maison centrale at Rennes in 1877. Cf. p. 250.
6 Interior of the penitentiary at Stateville, United States, twentieth century. Cf. p. 250.
Bedtime at the reformatory of Mettray. Cf. p. 294.
Lecture on the evils of alcoholism in the auditorium of Fresnes prison.
9 Steam machine for the 'celeriferous' correction of young boys and girls. 'Fathers
and Mothers. Uncles and Aunts, Guardian Masters and Mistresses of boarding
schools and all those who have lazy, greedy, disobedient, rebellious, insolent,
quarrelsome, tale-bearing, chattering, irreligious children, or children having any
other defect, are hereby informed that Mr Bogeyman and Mrs Bricabrac have just set
up in every mairie of the city of Paris a machine similar to the one represented in this
engraving and are ready to accept all naughty children in need of correction in
their establishments each day, from midday to two o'clock. Mr Werewolf, Coalman
Scarecrow, Eat-without-Hunger and Mrs Wildcat, Spiteful Slag and Drink-withoutThirst,
friends and relations of Mr Bogeyman and Mrs Bricabrac, will, for a small sum,
set up similar machines to be sent into provincial towns and will themselves supervise
their operation. The cheapness of correction given by the steam machine and the
surprising effects that it produces will persuade parents to ava^ themselves of it as
often as the bad behaviour of their children will require it. Wealso take incorrigible
children as boarders; they are fed on bread and water.' Engraving of the late
eighteenth century (Collections historiques de 1'I.N.R.D.P.).
10 N. Andry, L‘orthopedie oul'art deprevenir et de corriger dans
fes enfants les difformit&s du corps (Orthopaedics or the art
of preventing and correcting deformities of the body in
children). 1749.
z. The means of correct training
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Walhausen spoke of
‘strict discipline* as an art of correct training. The chief function of
the disciplinary power is to 'train*, rather than to select and to levy;
or, no doubt, to train in order to levy and select all the more. It does
not link forces together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them
together in such a way as to multiply and use them. Instead of bending
all its subjects into a single uniform mass, it separates, analyses,
differentiates, carries its procedures of decomposition to the point of
necessary and sufficient single units. It ‘trains’ the moving, confused,
useless multitudes of bodies and forces into a multiplicity of individual
elements - small, separate cells, organic autonomies, genetic
identities and continuities, combinatory segments. Discipline
‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that
regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise.
It is not a triumphant power, which because of its own excess can
pride itself on its omnipotence; it is a modest, suspicious power,
which functions as a calculated, but permanent economy. These
are humble modalities, minor procedures, as compared with the
majestic rituals of sovereignty or the great apparatuses of the state.
And it is precisely they that were gradually to invade the major
forms, altering their mechanisms and imposing their procedures. The
legal apparatus was not to escape this scarcely secret invasion. The
success of disciplinarypower derives no doubt from the use of simple
instruments; hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and
theircombination in a procedure that is specific to it, theexamination.
Hierarchical observation
The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by
means of observation; an apparatus in which the techniques that
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The means of correct training
make it possible to see induce effects of power, and in which,
conversely, the means of coercion make those on whom they are
applied clearly visible. Slowly, in the course of the classical age, we
see the construction of those ‘observatories’ of human multiplicity
for which the history of the sciences has so little good to say. Side
by side with the major technology of the telescope, the lens and the
light beam, which were an integral part of the new physics and cosmology,
there were the minor techniques of multiple and intersecting
observations, of eyes that must see without being seen; using
techniques of subjection and methods of exploitation, an obscure
art of light and the visible was secretly preparing a new knowledge
of man.
These ‘observatories* had an almost ideal model: the military
camp - the short-lived, artificial city, built and reshaped almost at
will; the seat of a power that must be all the stronger, but also all
the more discreet, all the more effective and on the alert in that it is
exercised over armed men. In the perfect camp, all power would be
exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a
part of the overall functioning of power. The old, traditional square
plan was considerably refined in innumerable new projects. The
geometry of the paths, the number and distribution of the tents,
the orientation of their entrances, the disposition of files and ranks
were exactly defined; the network of gazes that supervised one
another was laid down: ‘In the parade ground, five lines are drawn
up, the first is sixteen feet from the second; the others are eight feet
from one another; and the last is eight feet from the arms depots.
The arms depots are ten feet from the tents of the junior officers,
immediately opposite the first tentpole. A company street is fifty-one
feet wide. . . All tents are two feet from one another. The tents of
the subalterns are opposite the alleys of their companies. The rear
tentpole is eight feet from the last soldiers’ tent and the gate is
opposite the captains’ tent. . . The captains* tents are erected
opposite the streets of their companies. The entrance is opposite the
companies themselves.’1 The camp is the diagram of a power that
acts by means of general visibility. For a long time this model of the
camp or at least its underlying principle was found in urban development,
in the construction of working-class housing estates, hospitals,
asylums, prisons, schools: the spatial ‘nesting’ of hierarchized
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Discipline
surveillance. The principle was one o f‘embedding’ (‘encastrement’).
The camp was to the rather shameful art of surveillance what the
dark room was to the great science of optics.
A whole problematic then develops: that of an architecture that
is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of
palaces), or to observe the external space (cf. the geometry of fortresses),
but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control to
render visible those who are inside it; in more general terms, an
architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on
those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the
effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to
alter them. Stones can make people docile and knowable. The old
simple schema of confinement and enclosure - thick walls, a heavy
gate that prevents entering or leaving - began to be replaced by the
calculation of openings, of filled and empty spaces, passages and
transparencies. In this way the hospital building was gradually
organized as an instrument of medical action: it was to allow a better
observation of patients, and therefore a better calibration of their
treatment; the form of the buildings, by the careful separation of the
patients, was to prevent contagions; lastly, the ventilation and the
air that circulated around each bed was to prevent the deleterious
vapours from stagnating around the patient, breaking down his
humours and spreading the disease by their immediate effects. The
hospital - which was to be built in the second half of the century
and for which so many plans were drawn up after the Hotel-Dieu
was burnt down for the second time - was no longer simply the
roof under which penury and imminent death took shelter; it was,
in its very materiality, a therapeutic operator.
Similarly, the school building was to be a mechanism for training.
It was as a pedagogical machine that Paris-Duverney conceived the
ficole Militaire, right down to the minute details that he had imposed
on the architect, Gabriel. Train vigorous bodies, the imperative of
health; obtain competent officers, the imperative of qualification;
create obedient soldiers, the imperative of politics; prevent debauchery
and homosexuality, the imperative of morality. A fourfold
reason for establishing sealed compartments between individuals,
but also apertures for continuous surveillance. The very building
of the £cole was to be an apparatus for observation; the rooms were
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The means of correct training
distributed along a corridor like a series of small cells; at regular
intervals, an officer’s quarters were situated, so that ‘every ten pupils
had an officer on each side*; the pupils were confined to their cells
throughout the night; and Paris had insisted that 'a window be
placed on the corridor wall of each room from chest-level to within
one or two feet of the ceiling. Not only is it pleasant to have such
windows, but one would venture to say that it is useful, in several
respects, not to mention the disciplinary reasons that may determine
this arrangement* (quoted in Laulan, 117-18). In the diningrooms
was ‘a slightly raised platform for the tables of the inspectors
of studies, so that they may see all the tables of the pupils of their
divisions during meals*; latrines had been installed with half-doors,
so that the supervisor on duty could see the head and legs of the
pupils, and also with side walls sufficiently high ‘that those inside
cannot see one another’.2 This infinitely scrupulous concern with
surveillance is expressed in the architecture by innumerable petty
mechanisms. These mechanisms can only be seen as unimportant
if one forgets the role of this instrumentation, minor but flawless,
in the progressive objectification and the ever more subtle partitioning
of individual behaviour. The disciplinary institutions secreted
a machinery ofcontrol that functioned like a microscope of conduct;
the fine, analytical divisions that they created formed around men
an apparatus of observation, recording and training. How was one
to subdivide the gaze in these observation machines? How was one
to establish a network of communications between them? How was
one so to arrange things that a homogeneous, continuous power
would result from their calculated multiplicity?
The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a
single gaze to see everything constantly. A central point would be
both the source of light illuminating everything, and a locus of
convergence for everything that must be known: a perfect eye that
nothing would escape and a centre towards which all gazes would be
turned. This is what Ledoux had imagined when he built Arc-etSenans;
all the buildings were to be arranged in a circle, opening on
the inside, at the centre of which a high construction was to house
the administrative functions of management, the policing functions
of surveillance, the economic functions of control and checking, the
religious functions of encouraging obedience and work; from here
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Discipline
all orders would come, all activities would be recorded, all offences
perceived and judged; and this would be done immediately with no
other aid than an exact geometry. Among all the reasons for the
prestige that was accorded in the second half o f the eighteenth
century, to circular architecture, one must no doubt include the fact
that it expressed a certain political utopia.
But, the disciplinary gaze did, in fact, need relays. The pyramid
was able to fulfil, more efficiently than the circle, two requirements:
to be complete enough to form an uninterrupted network - consequently
the possibility of multiplying its levels, and of distributing
them over the entire surface to be supervised,* and yet to be discreet
enough not to weigh down with an inert mass on the activity to be
disciplined, and not to act as a brake or an obstacle to it; to be
integrated into the disciplinary mechanism as a function that increases
its possible effects. It had to be broken down into smaller
elements, but in order to increase its productive function: specify
the surveillance and make it functional.
This was the problem of the great workshops and factories, in
which a new type of surveillance was organized. It was different
from the one practised in the regimes of the manufactories, which
had been carried out from the outside by inspectors, entrusted with
the task o f applying the regulations; what was now needed was an
intense, continuous supervision; it ran right through the labour
process; it did not bear - or not only - on production (the nature
and quantity o f raw materials, the type of instruments used, the
dimensions and quality of the products); it also took into account
the activity of the men, their skill, the way they set about their tasks,
their promptness, their zeal, their behaviour. But it was also different
from the domestic supervision of the master present beside his
workers and apprentices; for it was carried out by clerks, supervisors
and foremen. As the machinery of production became larger and
more complex, as the number of workers and the division of labour
increased, supervision became ever more necessary and more difficult.
It became a special function, which had nevertheless to form
an integral part of the production process, to run parallel to it
throughout its entire length. A specialized personnel became indispensable,
constantly present and distinct from the workers: ‘In the
large factory, everything is regulated by the clock. The workers are
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The means of correct training
treated strictly and harshly. The clerks, who are used to treating
them with an air of superiority and command, which is really
necessary with the multitude, treat them with severity or contempt;
hence these workers either cost more or leave the factory soon after
arrival* (Encyclopidie, article on ‘Manufacture*). But, although the
workers preferred a framework of a guild type to this new regime
of surveillance, the employers saw that it was indissociable from the
system of industrial production, private property and profit. At the
scale of a factory, a great iron-works or a mine, ‘the objects of
expenditure are so multiplied, that the slightest dishonesty on each
object would add up to an immense fraud, which would not only
absorb the profits, but would lead to a loss of capital. . . the slightest
incompetence, if left unnoticed and therefore repeated each day, may
prove fatal to the enterprise to the extent of destroying it in a very
short time*; hence the fact that only agents, directly dependent on
the owner, and entrusted with this task alone would be able to see
‘that not a sou is spent uselessly, that not a moment of the day is
lost*; their role would be ‘to supervise the workers, to inspect all the
places of work,' to inform the directors of everything that takes
place* (Cournol). 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. ‘The work of
directing, superintending and adjusting becomes one of the functions
of capital, from the moment that the labour under the control of
capital, becomes cooperative. Once a function of capital, it requires
special characteristics’ (Marx, Capital, vol. i, 313).
The same movement was to be found in the reorganization of
elementary teaching: the details of surveillance were specified and
it was integrated into the teaching relationship. The development
of the parish schools, the increase in the number of their pupils, the
absence of methods for regulating simultaneously the activity of a
whole class, and the disorder and confusion that followed from this
made it necessary to work out a system of supervision. In order to
help the teacher, Batencour selected from among the best pupils a
whole series of ‘officers* - intendants, observers, monitors, tutors,
reciters of prayers, writing officers, receivers of ink, almoners and
visitors. The roles thus defined were of two kinds: the first involved
material tasks (distributing ink and paper, giving alms to the poor,
175
reading spiritual texts on feast days, etc,); the second involved surveillance:
the ‘observers must record who left his bench, who was
talking, who did not have his rosary, or Book of Hours, who did not
comport himself properly at mass, who committed an impure act,
who indulged in idle talk or was unruly in the street’; the ‘admonitors’
were placed in charge of those ‘who talk or hum when studying
their lessons and those who will not write and who waste their time
in play’; the ‘visitors’ called on the families of pupils who had been
absent or who had committed serious offences. The ‘intendants’
supervised all the other officers. Only the ‘tutors’ had a pedagogical
role: their task was to teach the pupils reading, two by two, in low
tones (M.I.D.B., 68—83). A few decades later, Demia favoured a
hierarchy of the same type but almost all the functions of surveillance
were duplicated by a pedagogical role: an assistant teacher taught the
holding of the pen, guided the pupil’s hand, corrected mistakes and
at the same time ‘marked down trouble-makers; another assistant
teacher had the same tasks in the reading class; the intendant who
supervised the other officers and was in charge of behaviour in
general also had the task of ‘initiating newcomers into the customs
of the school’; the decurions got the pupils to recite their lessons and
‘marked down’ those who did not know them.3 We have here a
sketch of an institution of the ‘mutual’ type in which three procedures
are integrated into a single mechanism: teaching proper, the
acquisition of knowledge by the very practice of the pedagogical
activity and a reciprocal, hierarchized observation. A relation of
surveillance, defined and regulated, is inscribed at the heart of the
practice of teaching, not as an additional or adjacent part, but as a
mechanism that is inherent to it and which increases its efficiency.
Hierarchized, continuous and functional surveillance may not be
one of the great technical ‘inventions’ of the eighteenth century, but
its insidious extension owed its importance to the mechanisms of
power that it brought with it. By means of such surveillance, disciplinary
power became an ‘integrated’ system, linked from the
inside to the economy and to the aims of the mechanism in which it
was practised. It was also organized as a multiple, automatic and
anonymous power; for although surveillance rests on individuals,
its functioning is that of a network of relations from top to bottom,
but also to a certain extent from bottom to top and laterally; this
Discipline
176
The means of correct training
network ‘holds* the whole together and traverses it in its entirety
with effects of power that derive from one another: supervisors,
perpetually supervised. The power in the hierarchized surveillance
of the disciplines is not possessed as a thing, or transferred as a
property; it functions like a piece of machinery. And, although it is
true that its pyramidal organization gives it a ‘head*, it is the apparatus
as a whole that produces ‘power* and distributes individuals in
this permanent and continuous field. This enables the disciplinary
power to be both absolutely indiscreet, since it is everywhere and
always alert, since by its very principle it leaves no zone of shade and
constantly supervises the very individuals who are entrusted with
the task of supervising; and absolutely ‘discreet*, for it functions
permanently and largely in silence. Discipline makes possible the
operation of a relational power that sustains itself by its own
mechanism and which, for the spectacle of public events, substitutes
the uninterrupted play of calculated gazes. Thanks to the techniques
of surveillance, the ‘physics* of power, the hold over the body,
operate according to the laws of optics and mechanics, according
to a whole play of spaces, lines, screens, beams, degrees and without
recourse, in principle at least, to excess, force or violence. It is a
power that seems all the less ‘corporal1 in that it is more subtly
‘physical*.
Normaliiingjudgement
i. At the orphanage of the Chevalier Paulet, the sessions of the
tribunal that met each morning gave rise to a whole ceremonial:
‘W e found all the pupils drawn up as if for battle, in perfect alignment,
immobility and silence. The major, a young gentleman of
sixteen years, stood outside the ranks, sword in hand; at his command,
the troop broke ranks at the double and formed a circle. The
council met in the centre; each officer made a report of his troop
for the preceding twentyrfour hours. The accused were allowed to
defend themselves; witnesses were heard; the council deliberated
and, when agreement was reached, the major announced the number
of guilty, the nature of the offences and the punishments ordered.
The troop then marched off in the greatest order* (Pictet). At the
heart of all disciplinary systems functions a small penal mechanism.
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Discipline
It enjoys a kind of judicial privilege with its own laws, its specific
offences, its particular forms of judgement. The disciplines established
an ‘infra-penality’; they partitioned an area that the laws had
left empty; they defined and repressed a mass of behaviour that the
relative indifference of the great systems of punishment had allowed
to escape. ‘On entering, the companions will greet one another .. .
on leaving, they must lock up the materials and tools that they have
been using and also make sure that their lamps are extinguished*;
‘it is expressly forbidden to amuse companions by gestures or in any
other way*; they must ‘comport themselves honestly and decently*;
anyone who is absent for more than five minutes without warning
M. Oppenheim will be ‘marked down for a half-day*; and in order
to be sure that nothing is forgotten in this meticulous criminal
justice, it is forbidden to do ‘anything that may harm M. Oppenheim
and his companions* (Oppenheim, 29 September 1809). The workshop,
the school, the army were subject to a whole micro-penality
of time (latenesses, absences, interruptions of tasks), of activity
(inattention, negligence, lack of zeal), of behaviour (impoliteness,
disobedience), of speech (idle chatter, insolence), of the body
(‘incorrect’ attitudes, irregular gestures, lack of cleanliness), of
sexuality (impurity, indecency). At the same time, by way of punishment,
a whole series of subtle procedures was used, from light
physical punishment to minor deprivations and petty humiliations.
It was a question both of making the slightest departures from correct'
behaviour subject to punishment, and of giving a punitive
function to the apparently indifferent elements of the disciplinary
apparatus: so that, if necessary, everything might serve to punish
the slightest thing; each subject find himself caught in a punishable,
punishing universality. ‘By the word punishment, one must understand
everything that is capable of making children feel the offence
they have committed, everything that is capable of humiliating them,
of confusing them: . . . a certain coldness, a certain indifference, a
question, a humiliation, a removal from office* (La Salle, Conduite
. .2 0 4 -5 ).
2. But discipline brought with it a specific way of punishing that
was not only a small-scale model of the court. What is specific to
the disciplinary penality is non-observance, that which does not
measure up to the rule, that departs from it. The whole indefinite
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The means of correct training
domain of the non-conforming is punishable: the soldier commits
an ‘offence’ whenever he does not reach the level required; a pupil’s
‘offence’ is not only a minor infraction, but also an inability to carry
out his tasks. The regulations for the Prussian infantry ordered that
a soldier who had not correctly learnt to handle his rifle should be
treated with the ‘greatest severity’. Similarly, ‘when a pupil has not
retained the catechism from the previous day, he must be forced to
learn it, without making any mistake, and repeat it the following
day; either he will be forced to hear it standing or kneeling, his
hands joined, or he will be given some other penance’.
The order that the disciplinary punishments must enforce is o f a
mixed nature: it is an ‘artificial’ order, explicitly laid down by a law,
a programme, a set of regulations. But it is also an order defined by
natural and observable processes: the duration of an apprenticeship,
the time taken to perform an exercise, the level of aptitude refer to
a regularity that is also a rule. The children o f the Christian Schools
must never be placed in a ‘lesson’ of which they are not yet capable,
for this would expose them to the danger o f being unable to learn
anything; yet the duration of each stage is fixed by regulation and a
pupil who at the end of three examinations has been unable to pass
into the higher order must be placed, well in evidence, on the bench
of the ‘ignorant’. In a disciplinary regime punishment involves a
double juridico-natural reference.
3. Disciplinary punishment has the function of reducing gaps.
It must therefore be essentially corrective. In addition to punishments
borrowed directly from the judicial model (fines, flogging,
solitary confinement), the disciplinary systems favour punishments
that are exercise - intensified, multiplied forms of training, several
times repeated: the regulations of 1766 for the infantry laid down
that lance-corporals ‘who show some negligence or lack of willingness
will be reduced to the rank of private’, and they will be able
to rise to their former rank only after new exercises and a new
examination. As; Jean^-Baptiste de La Salle put it: ‘O f all penances,
impositions are the most honest for a teacher, the most advantageous
for the parents’; they make it possible to ‘derive, from the very
offences of the children, means of advancing their progress by
correcting their defects’; to those, for example, ‘who have not written
all that they were supposed to write or who have not applied
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Discipline
themselves to doing it well, one can give some impositions to write
out or to learn by heart’ (La Salle, Conduite . . ., 205). Disciplinary
punishment is, in the main, isomorphic with obligation itself; it is
not so much the vengeance of an outraged law as its repetition, its
reduplicated insistence. So much so that the corrective effect expected
of it involves only incidentally expiation and repentance; it is
obtained directly through the mechanics of a training. To punish
is to exercise.
4. In discipline, punishment is only one element of a double
system: gratification-punishment. And it is this system that operates
in the process of training and correction. The teacher ‘must avoid,
as far as possible, the use of punishment; on the contrary, he must
endeavour to make rewards more frequent than penalties, the lazy
being more encouraged by the desire to be rewarded in the same
way as the diligent than by the fear of punishment; that is why it
will be very beneficial, when the teacher is obliged to use punishment,
to win the heart of the child if he can before doing so* (Demia,
17). This mechanism with two elements makes possible a number
of operations characteristic of disciplinary penality. First, the
definition of behaviour and performance on the basis of the two
opposed values of good and evil; instead of the simple division of
the prohibition, as practised in penal justice, we have a distribution
between a positive pole and a negative pole; all behaviour falls
in the field between good and bad marks, good and bad points.
Moreover, it is possible to quantify this field and work out an
arithmetical economy based on it. A penal accountancy, constantly
brought up to date, makes it possible to obtain the punitive balancesheet
of each individual. School ‘justice’, rudiments of which are to
be found in the army and the workshops, carried this system very
far. The Brothers of the Christian Schools organized a whole microeconomy
of privileges and impositions: ‘Privileges may be used by
pupils to gain exemption from penances which have been imposed
on them. . . For example, a pupil may have been given four or six
catechism questions to copy out as an imposition; he will be able to
gain exemption from this penance by accumulating a certain number
of privilege points; the teacher will assign the number for each
question. . . Since privileges are worth a certain number of points,
the teacher also has others of less value, which serve as small change
1 80
The means of correct training
for the first. For example, a child has an imposition from which he
can redeem himself with six points; he earns a privilege of ten;
he presents it to the teacher who gives him back four points, and so
on' (La Salle, Conduite . . 156ff). What we have here is a transposition
of the system of indulgences. And by the play of this quantification,
this circulation of awards and debits, thanks to the continuous
calculation of plus and minus points, the disciplinary apparatuses
hierarchized the ‘good* and the ‘bad* subjects in relation to one
another. Through this micro-economy of a perpetual penality
operates a differentiation that is not one of acts, but of individuals
themselves, of their nature, their potentialities, their level or their
value. By assessing acts with precision, discipline judges individuals
‘in truth"; the penality that it implements is integrated into the cycle
of knowledge of individuals.
5. The distribution according to ranks or grade has a double role:
it marks the gaps, hierarchizes qualities, skills and aptitudes; but it
also punishes and rewards. It is the penal functioning of setting in
order and the ordinal character of judging. Discipline rewards
simply by the play of awards, thus making it possible to attain
higher ranks and places; it punishes by reversing this process. Rank
in itself serves as a reward or punishment. At the ficole Militaire, a
complex system of ‘honorary’ classification was developed; this
classification was visible to all in the form of slight variations in
uniform and more or less noble or ignoble punishments were
associated, as a mark of privilege or infamy, with the ranks thus
distributed. This classificatory, penal distribution was carried out
at short intervals by the reports that the officers, teachers and their
assistants made, without consideration of age or grade, on ‘the
moral qualities of the pupils’ and on ‘their universally recognized
behaviour’. The first class, known as the ‘very good’, were distinguished
by a silver epaulette; they enjoyed the honour of being
treated as ‘purely military troops’; they therefore had a right to
military punishment (arrests and, in serious cases, imprisonment).
The second class, ‘the good’, wore an epaulette of red silk and silver;
they could be arrested and condemned to prison, but also to the cage
and to kneeling. The class of ‘mediocres\ had the right to an epaulette
of red wool; to the preceding penalties was added, if necessary, the
wearing of sackcloth. The last class, that of the ‘bad’, was marked by
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Discipline
an epaulette of brown wool; ‘the pupils of this class will be subjected
to all the punishments used in the Hotel or all those that are thought
necessary, even solitary confinement in a dark dungeon*. To this
was added, for a time, the ‘shameful* class, for which special regulations
were drawn up ‘so that those who belonged to it would always
be separated from the others and would be dressed in sackcloth*.
Since merit and behaviour alone must decide the place of the pupil,
‘those of the last two classes would be able to flatter themselves that
they would be able to rise to the first two and bear its marks, when,
by universal agreement, they will be recognized as having made
themselves worthy of it by the change in their conduct and by their
progress; and those of the top classes will similarly descend into the
others if they become slack and if the various reports taken together
are to their disadvantage and show that they no longer deserve the
rewards and prerogatives of the higher classes. . .* The penal
classification should tend to disappear. The ‘shameful* class existed
only to disappear: ‘In order to judge the kind of conversion
undergone by pupils of the shameful class who behave well*, they
were reintroduced into the other classes, and given back their
uniforms; but they would remain with their comrades in infamy
during meals and recreation; they would remain there if they did not
continue to behave well; they ‘would leave it absolutely, if their
conduct was considered satisfactory both in this class and in this
division' (Archives nationales, MM 658, 30 March 1758 and MM 666,
15 September 1763). This hierarchizing penality had, therefore, a
double effect: it distributed pupils according to their aptitudes and
their conduct, that is, according to the use that could be made of
them when they left the school; it exercised over them a constant
pressure to conform to the same model, so that they might all be
subjected to ‘subordination, docility, attention in studies and
exercises, and to the correct practice of duties and all the parts of
discipline*. So that they might all be like one another.
In short, the art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power,
is aimed neither at expiation, nor even precisely at repression. It
brings live quite distinct operations into play: it refers individual
actions to a whole that is at once a field of comparison, a space of
differentiation and the principle of a rule to be followed. It differentiates
individuals from one another, in terms of the following overall
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rule: that the rule be made to function as a minimal threshold, as
an average to be respected or as an optimum towards which one
must move. It measures in quantitative terms and hierarchizes in
terms of value the abilities, the level, the ‘nature* of individuals. It
introduces, through this ‘value-giving’ measure, the constraint of
a conformity that must be achieved. Lastly, it traces the limit
that will define difference in relation to all other differences, the
external frontier of the abnormal (the ‘shameful* class of the £cole
Militaire). The perpetual penality that traverses all points and
supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares,
differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes* In short, it
normalises.
It is opposed, therefore, term by term, to a judicial penality
whose essential function is to refer, not to a set of observable
phenomena, but to a corpus of laws and texts that must be remembered;
that operates not by differentiating individuals, but by
specifying acts according to a number of general categories; not by
hierarchizing, but quite simply by bringing into play the binary
opposition of the permitted and the forbidden; not by homogenizing,
but by operating the division, acquired once and for all, of
,condemnation. The disciplinary mechanisms secreted a ‘penality of
the norm*, which is irreducible ifi its principles and functioning to
the traditional penality of the law. The minor court that seems to sit
permanently in the buildings of discipline, and which sometimes
assumes the theatrical form of the great legal apparatus, must not
mislead us: it does not bring, except for a few formal remnants, the
mechanisms of criminal justice to the web of everyday existence; or
at least that is not its essential role; the disciplines created - drawing
on a whole series of very ancient procedures - a new functioning
of punishment, and it was this that gradually invested the great
external apparatus that it seemed to reproduce in either a modest or
an ironic way. The juridico-anthropological functioning revealed in
the wholeihistory of modem penality did not originate in the superimposition
of the human sciences on criminal justice and in the
requirements proper to this new rationality or to the humanism that
it appeared to bring with it; it originated in the disciplinary technique
that operated these new mechanisms of normalizing
judgement.
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The power of the Norm appears through the disciplines. Is this
the new law of modern society? Let us say rather that, since the
eighteenth century, it has joined other powers - the Law, the Word
(Parole) and the Text, Tradition - imposing new delimitations upon
them* The Normal is established as a principle of coercion in teaching
with the introduction of a standardized education and the
establishment of the icoles normales (teachers’ training colleges); it
is established in the effort to organize a national medical profession
and a hospital system capable of operating general norms of health;
it is established in the standardization of industrial processes and
products (on this topic, one should refer to the important contribution
of Canguilhem, 171-91). Like surveillance and with it, normalization
becomes one of the great instruments of power at the end of
the classical age. For the marks that once indicated status, privilege
and affiliation were increasingly replaced - or at least supplemented
- by a whole range of degrees of normality indicating membership
of a homogeneous social body but also playing a part in classification,
hierarchization and the distribution of rank. In a sense, the
power of normalization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes
by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to fix
specialities and to render the differences useful by fitting them one
to another. It is easy to understand how the power of the norm
functions within a system of formal equality, since within a homogeneity
that is the rule, the norm introduces, as a useful imperative
and as a result of measurement, all the shading of individual
differences.
The examination
The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy
and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a
surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to
punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which
one differentiates them and judges them. That is why, in all the
mechanisms of discipline, the examination is highly ritualized. In it
are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment,
the deployment of force and the establishment of truth. At the
heart of the procedures of discipline, it manifests the subjection of
Discipline
184
The means of correct training
those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those
who are subjected. The superimposition of the power relations and
knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible
brilliance. It is yet another innovation of the classical age that the
historians of science have left unexplored. People write the history
of experiments on those born blind, on wolf-children or under
hypnosis. But who will write the more general, more fluid, but also
more determinant history of the ‘examination’ - its rituals, its
methods, its characters and their roles, its play of questions and
answers, its systems of marking and classification? For in this
slender technique are to be found a whole domain of knowledge, a
whole type of power. One often speaks of the ideology that the
human ‘sciences’ bring with them, in either discreet or prolix manner.
But does their very technology, this tiny operational schema that
has become so widespread (from psychiatry to pedagogy, from the
diagnosis of diseases to the hiring of labour), this familiar method
of the examination, implement, within a single mechanism, power
relations that make it possible to extract and constitute knowledge?
It is not simply at the level of consciousness, of representations and
in what one thinks one knows, but at the level ofwhat makes possible
the knowledge that is transformed into political investment.
One of the essential conditions for the epistemological ‘thaw’ of
medicine at the end of the eighteenth century was the organization
of the hospital as an ‘examining’ apparatus. The ritual of the visit
was its most obvious form. In the seventeenth century, the physician,
coming from the outside, added his inspection to many other
controls - religious, administrative, etc.; he hardly participated in
the everyday administration of the hospital. Gradually, the visit
became more regular, more rigorous, above all more extended: it
became an ever more important part of the functioning of the
hospital. In 1661, the physician of the Hotel-Dieu of Paris was
called upon to make a daily visit; in 1687, an ‘expectant’ physician
was to examine, in the afternoon, certain seriously sick patients.
The eighteenth-century regulations laid down the hours of the visit
and its duration (at least two hours); they insisted on a rotation of
physicians, which would guarantee visits every day ‘even on Easter
Sunday’; at last, in 1771, a resident physician was appointed, charged
with ‘providing all the services of his state, at night as well as in the
185
Discipline
day, in the intervals between visits by an outside physician’ (Reglstre
des deliberations du bureau de VHotel-Dieu). The old form of inspection,
irregular and rapid, was transformed into a regular observation
that placed the patient in a situation of almost perpetual examination,
This had two consequences: in the internal hierarchy, the
physician, hitherto an external element, begins to gain over the
religious staff and to relegate them to a clearly specified, but subordinate
role in the technique of the examination; the category of the
‘nurse* then appears; while the hospital itself, which was once little
more than a poorhouse, was to become a place of training and of
the correlation of knowledge; it represented a reversal therefore of
the power relations and the constitution of a corpus of knowledge.
The Veil-disciplined’ hospital became the physical counterpart of
the medical ‘discipline’; this discipline could now abandon its textual
character and take its references not so much from the tradition of
author-authorities as from a domain of objects perpetually offered
for examination.
Similarly, the school became a sort of apparatus of uninterrupted
examination that duplicated along its entire length the operation of
teaching. It became less and less a question of jousts in which pupils
pitched their forces against one another and increasingly a perpetual
comparison of each and all that made it possible both to measure and
to judge. The Brothers of the Christian Schools wanted their pupils
to be examined every day of the week: on the first for spelling, on
the second for arithmetic, on the third for catechism in the morning
and for handwriting in the afternoon, etc. Moreover, there was to be
an examination each month in order to pick out those who deserved
to be submitted for examination by the inspector (La Salle, Conduite
. . 1 6 0 ) . From 1775, there existed at the ficole des Ponts et
Chaussees sixteen examinations a year: three in mathematics, three
in architecture, three in drawing, two in writing, one in stonecutting,
one in style, one in surveying, one in levelling, one in
quantity surveying. The examination did not simply mark the end of
an apprenticeship; it was one of its permanent factors; it was woven
into it through a constantly repeated ritual of power. The examination
enabled the teacher, while transmitting his knowledge, to
transform his pupils into a whole field of knowledge. Whereas the
examination with which an apprenticeship ended in the guild
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The means of correct training
tradition validated an acquired aptitude - the ‘master-work’
authenticated a transmission of knowledge that had already been
accomplished - the examination in the school was a constant
exchanger of knowledge; it guaranteed the movement of knowledge
from the teacher to the pupil, but it extracted from the pupil a
knowledge destined and reserved for the teacher. The school became
the place of elaboration for pedagogy. And just as the procedure of
the hospital examination made possible the epistemological ‘thaw’ of
medicine, the age of the ‘examining’ school marked the beginnings
of a pedagogy that functions as a science. The age of inspections and
endlessly repeated movements in the army also marked the development
of an immense tactical knowledge that had its effect in the
period of the Napoleonic wars.
The examination introduced a whole mechanism that linked to a
certain type of the formation of knowledge a certain form of the
exercise of power.
i. The examination transformed the economy of visibility into the
exercise ofpower. Traditionally, power was what was seen, what was
shown and what was manifested and, paradoxically, found the
principle of its force in the movement by which it deployed that
force. Those on whom it was exercised could remain in the shade;
they received light only from' that portion of power that was
conceded to them, or from the reflection of it that for a moment they
carried. Disciplinary power, on the other hand, is exercised through
its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it subjects
a principle of compulsory visibility. In discipline, it is the subjects
who have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power
that is exercised over them. It is the fact of being constantly seen,
of being able always to be seen, that maintains the disciplined
individual in his subjection. And the examination is the technique
by which power, instead of emitting the signs of its potency, instead
of imposing its mark on its subjects, holds them in a mechanism of
objectification. In this space of domination, disciplinary power
manifests its potency, essentially, by arranging objects. The
examination is, as it were, the ceremony of this objectification.
Hitherto the role of the political ceremony had been to give rise
to the excessive, yet regulated manifestation of power; it was a
spectacular expression of potency, an ‘expenditure’, exaggerated and
187
Discipline
coded, in which power renewed its vigour. It was always more or
less related to the triumph. The solemn appearance of the sovereign
brought with it something of the consecration, the coronation, the
return from victory; even the funeral ceremony took place with all
the spectacle of power deployed. Discipline, however, had its own
type of ceremony. It was not the triumph, but the review, the
‘parade’, an ostentatious form of the examination. In it the ‘subjects’
were presented as ‘objects’ to the observation of a power that was
manifested only by its gaze. They did not receive directly the image
of the sovereign power; they only felt its effects - in replica, as it
were —on their bodies, which had become precisely legible and
docile. On 15 March 1666, Louis XIV took his first military review:
18,000 men, ‘one of the most spectacular actions of the reign’, which
was supposed to have ‘kept all Europe in disquiet’. Several years
later, a medal was struck to commemorate the event (cf. Jucquiot,
50-54). It bears the exergue, ‘Disciplina militaris restitua and the
legend ‘Prolusio ad victorias*. On the right, the king, right foot
forward, commands the exercise itself with a stick. On the left,
several ranks of soldiers are shown full face and aligned in depth;
they have raised their right arms to shoulder height and are holding
their rifles exactly vertical, their right legs are slightly forward and
their left feet turned outwards. On the ground, lines intersect at
right angles, to form, beneath the soldiers’ feet, broad rectangles
that serve as references for different phases and positions of the
exercise. In the background is a piece of classical architecture. The
columns of the palace extend those formed by the ranks of men and
the erect rifles, just as the paving no doubt extends the lines of the
exercise. But above the balustrade that crowns the building are
statues representing dancing figures: sinuous lines, rounded gestures,
draperies.^ The marble is covered with movements whose
principle of unity is harmonic. The men, on the other hand, are
frozen into a uniformly repeated attitude of ranks and lines: a
tactical unity. The order of the architecture, which frees at its summit
the figures of the dance, imposes its rules and its geometry on the
disciplined men on the ground. The columns of power. ‘Very good’,
Grand Duke Mikhail once remarked of a regiment, after having
kept it for one hour presenting arms, ‘only they breathe (Kropotkin,
8; I owe this reference to G. Canguilhem).
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The means o f correct training
Let us take this medal as evidence of the moment when, paradoxically
but significantly, the most brilliant figure of sovereign
power is joined to the emergence of the rituals proper to disciplinary
power. The scarcely sustainable visibility of the monarch is turned
into the unavoidable visibility of the subjects. And it is this inversion
ofvisibility in the functioning of the disciplines that was to assure the
exercise of power even in its lowest manifestations. We are entering
the age of the infinite examination and of compulsory objectification.
2. The examination also introduces individuality into the field of
documentation. The examination leaves behind it a whole meticulous
archive constituted in terms of bodies and days. The examination
that places individuals in a field of surveillance also situates them in
a network of writing; it engages them in a whole mass of documents
that capture and fix them. The procedures of examination were
accompanied at the same time by a system of intense registration
and of documentary accumulation. A ‘power of writing’ was constituted
as an essential part in the mechanisms of discipline. On many
points, it was modelled on the traditional methods of administrative
documentation, though with particular techniques and important
innovations. Some concerned methods of identification, signalling
Or description. This was the problem in the army, where it was
necessary to track down deserters, avoid repeating enrolments,
correct fictitious ‘information’ presented by officers, know the services
and value of each individual, establish with certainty
the balance-sheet of those who had disappeared or died. It was the
problem of the hospitals, where it was necessary to recognize
the patients, expel shammers, follow the evolution of diseases, study
the effectiveness of treatments, map similar cases and the beginnings
of epidemics. It was the problem of the teaching establishments,
where one had to define the aptitude of each individual, situate his
level and his abilities, indicate the possible use that might be made
of them: ‘The register enables one, by being available in time and
place, to know the habits of the children, their progress in piety,
in catechism, in the letters, during the time they have been at the
School’ (M.I.D.B., 64).
Hence the formation of a whole series of codes of disciplinary
individuality that made it possible to transcribe, by means of homogenization
the individual features established by the examination:
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Discipline
the physical code of signalling, the medical code of symptoms, the
educational or military code of conduct or performance. These
codes were still very crude, both in quality and quantity, but they
marked a first stage in the 'formalization’ of the individual within
power relations.
The other innovations of disciplinary writing concerned the
correlation of these elements, the accumulation of documents, their
seriation, the organization of comparative fields making it possible
to classify, to form categories, to determine averages, to fix norms.
The hospitals of the eighteenth century, in particular, were great
laboratories for scriptuary and documentary methods. The keeping
of registers, their specification, the modes of transcription from one
to the other, their circulation during visits, their comparison during
regular meetings of doctors and administrators, the transmission of
their data to centralizing bodies (either at the hospital or at the
central office of the poorhouses), the accountancy of diseases, cures,
deaths, at the level of a hospital, a town and even of the nation as a
whole formed an integral part of the process by which hospitals
were subjected to the disciplinary regime. Among the fundamental
conditions of a good medical ‘discipline’, in both senses of the word,
one must include the procedures of writing that made it possible to
integrate individual data into cumulative systems in such a way that
they were not lost; so to arrange things that an individual could be
located in the general register and that, conversely, each datum of
the individual examination might affect overall calculations.
Thanks to the whole apparatus of writing that accompanied it, the
examination opened up two correlative possibilities: firstly, the
constitution of the individual as a describable, analysable object, not
in order to reduce him to ‘specific’ features, as did the naturalists in
relation to living beings, but in order to maintain him in his individual
features, in his particular evolution, in his own aptitudes or
abilities, under the gaze o f a permanent corpus of knowledge; and,
secondly, the constitution of a comparative system that made
possible the measurement of overall phenomena, the description of
groups, the characterization of collective facts, the calculation of the
gaps between individuals, their distribution in a given ‘population*.
These small techniques of notation, of registration, of constituting
files, of arranging facts in columns and tables that are so familiar
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The means of correct training
to us now, were of decisive importance in the epistemological ‘thaw’
of the sciences of the individual. One is no doubt right to pose the
Aristotelean problem: is a science of the individual possible and
legitimate? A great problem needs great solutions perhaps. But
there is the small historical problem of the emergence, towards the
end of the eighteenth century, of what might generally be termed
the ‘clinical* sciences; the problem of the entry of the individual (and
no longer the species) into the field of knowledge; the problem of
the entry of the individual description, of the cross-examination, of
anamnesis, of the ‘file* into the general functioning of scientific discourse.
To this simple question of fact, one must no doubt give an
answer lacking in ‘nobility'; one should look into these procedures
of writing and registration, one should look into the mechanisms of
examination, into the formation of the mechanisms of discipline, and
of a new type of power over bodies. Is this the birth of the sciences
of man? It is probably to be found in these ‘ignoble* archives, where
the modern play of coercion over bodies, gestures and behaviour
has its beginnings.
3. The examination, surrounded by all its documentary techniques,
makes each individual a 'case7: a case which at one and the same time
constitutes an object for a branch of knowledge and a hold for a
branch of power. The case is no longer, as in casuistry or jurisprudence,
a set of circumstances defining an act and capable of
modifying the application of a rule; it is the individual as he may be
described, judged, measured, compared with others, in his very
individuality; and it is also the individual who has to be trained or
corrected, classified, normalized, excluded, etc.
For a long time ordinary individuality - the everyday individuality
of everybody - remained below the threshold of description.
To be looked at, observed, described in detail, followed from day
to day by an uninterrupted writing was a privilege. The chronicle of
aman, the account of his life, his historiography, written as he lived
out his life formed part of the rituals of his power. The disciplinary
methods reversed this relation, lowered the threshold of describable
individuality and made of this description a means of control and a
method of domination. It is no longer a monument for future
memory, but a document for possible use. And this new describability
is all the more marked in that the disciplinary framework is
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Discipline
a strict one: the child, the patient, the madman, the prisoner, were
to become, with increasing ease from the eighteenth century and
according to a curve which is that of the mechanisms of discipline,
the object of individual descriptions and biographical accounts.
This turning of real lives into writing is no longer a procedure of
heroization; it functions as a procedure of objectification and subjection*
The carefully collated life of mental patients or delinquents
belongs, as did the chronicle of kings or the adventures of the great
popular bandits, to a certain political function of writing; but in a
quite different technique of power.
The examination as the fixing, at once ritual and ‘scientific’, of
individual differences, as the pinning down of each individual in his
own particularity (in contrast with the ceremony in which status,
birth, privilege, function are manifested with all the spectacle of
their marks) clearly indicates the appearance of a new modality of
power in which each individual receives as his status his own individuality,
and in which he is linked by his status to the features, the
measurements, the gaps, the ‘marks' that characterize him and make
him a ‘case’.
Finally, the examination is at the centre of the procedures that
constitute the individual as effect and object of power, as effect and
object of knowledge. It is the examination which, by combining
hierarchical surveillance and normalizing judgement, assures the
great disciplinary functions of distribution and classification, maximum
extraction of forces and time, continuous genetic accumulation,
optimum combination of aptitudes and, thereby, the fabrication
of cellular, organic, genetic and combinatory individuality. With it
are ritualized those disciplines that may be characterized in a word
by saying that they are a modality of power for which individual
difference is relevant.
The disciplines mark the moment when the reversal of the political
axis of individualization - as one might call it - takes place. In
certain societies, of which the feudal regime is only one example,
it may be said that individualization is greatest where sovereignty
is exercised and in the higher echelons of power. The more one
possesses power or privilege, the more one is marked as an individual,
by rituals, written accounts or visual reproductions. The ‘name*
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The means of correct training
and the genealogy that situate one within a kinship group, the
performance of deeds that demonstrate superior strength and which
are immortalized in literary accounts, the ceremonies that mark the
power relations in their very ordering, the monuments or donations
that bring survival after death, the ostentation and excess of expenditure,
the multiple, intersecting links of allegiance and suzerainty,
all these are procedures of an "ascending’ individualization. In a
disciplinary regime, on the other hand, individualization is ‘descending7:
as power becomes more anonymous and more functional,
those on whom it is exercised tend to be more strongly individualized;
it is exercised by surveillance rather than ceremonies, by observation
rather than commemorative accounts, by comparative
measures that have the ‘norm’ as reference rather than genealogies
giving ancestors as points of reference; by ‘gaps' rather than by
deeds. In a system of discipline, the child is more individualized
than the adult, the patient more than the healthy man, the madman
and the delinquent more than the normal and the non-delinquent.
In each case, it is towards the first of these pairs that all the individualizing
mechanisms are turned in our civilization; and when one
wishes to individualize the healthy, normal and law-abiding adult,
it is always by asking him how much of the child he has in him,
what secret madness lies within him, what fundamental crime he
has dreamt of committing. All the sciences, analyses or practices
employing the root ‘psycho-* have their origin in this historical
reversal of the procedures of individualization. The moment that
saw the transition from historico-ritual mechanisms for the formation
of individuality to the scientifico-disciplinary mechanisms,
when the normal took over from the ancestral, and measurement
from status, thus substituting for the individuality of the memorable
man that of the calculable man, that moment when the sciences of
man became possible is the moment when a new technology of
power and a new political anatomy of the body were implemented.
And if from the early Middle Ages to the present day the ‘adventure*
is an account of individuality, the passage from the epic to the
novel, from the noble deed to the secret singularity, from long
exiles to the internal search for childhood, from combats to phantasies,
it is also inscribed in the formation of a disciplinary society.
The adventure of our childhood no longer finds expression in 7<?
193
Discipline
bonpetit Henri\ but in the misfortunes of ‘little Hans'. The Romance
ofthe Rose is written today by Mary Barnes; in the place of Lancelot,
we have Judge Schreber.
It is often said that the model of a society that has individuals
as its constituent elements is borrowed from the abstract juridical
forms of contract and exchange. Mercantile society, according to
this view, is represented as a contractual association of isolated
juridical subjects. Perhaps. Indeed, the political theory of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often seems to follow this
schema. But it should not be forgotten that there existed at the same
period a technique for constituting individuals as correlative elements
of power and knowledge. The individual is no doubt the
fictitious atom of an ‘ideological’ representation of society; but he is
also a reality fabricated by this specific technology o f power that I
have called ‘discipline'. W e must cease once and for all to describe
the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’ , it ‘represses’,
it ‘censors', it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks', it ‘conceals’. In fact, power
produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and
rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be
gained of him belong to this production.
Is it not somewhat excessive to derive such power from the petty
machinations of discipline? How could they achieve effects of such
scope?
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3 * Panopticism
The following, according to an order published at the end of the
seventeenth century, were the measures to be taken when the plague
appeared in a town.1
First, a strict spatial partitioning: the closing of the town and its
outlying districts, a prohibition to leave the town on pain of death,
the killing of all stray animals; the division of the town into distinct
quarters, each governed by an intendant. Each street is placed under
the authority of a syndic, who keeps it under surveillance; if he
leaves the street, he will be condemned to death. On the appointed
day, everyone is ordered to stay indoors: it is forbidden to leave
on pain of death. The syndic himself comes to lock the door of
each house from the outside; he takes the key with him and hands
it over to the intendant of the quarter; the intendant keeps it until
the end of the quarantine. Each family will have made its own
provisions; but, for bread and wine, small wooden canals are set up
)between the street and the interior of the houses, thus allowing each
person to receive his ration without communicating with the suppliers
and other residents; meat, fish and herbs will be hoisted up
into the houses with pulleys and baskets. If it is absolutely necessary
to leave the house, it will be done in turn, avoiding any meeting.
Only the intendants, syndics and guards will move about the
streets and also, between the infected houses, from one corpse to
another, the ‘crows’, who can be left to die: these are ‘people of little
substance who carry the sick, bury the dead, clean and do many vile
and abject offices’. It is a segmented, immobile, frozen space. Each
individual is fixed in his place. And, if he moves, he does so at the
risk of his life, contagion or punishment.
Inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere: ‘A
considerable body of militia, commanded by good officers and men
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of substance’, guards at the gates, at the town hall and in every
quarter to ensure the prompt obedience of the people and the most
absolute authority of the magistrates, ‘as also to observe all disorder,
theft and extortion’. A t each of the town gates there will be an
observation post; at the end of each street sentinels. Every day, the
intendant visits the quarter in his charge, inquires whether the
syndics have carried out their tasks, whether the inhabitants have
anything to complain of; they ‘observe their actions’. Every day,
too, the syndic goes into the street for which he is responsible;
stops before each house: gets all the inhabitants to appear at the
windows (those who live overlooking the courtyard will be allocated
a window looking onto the street at which no one but they
may show themselves); he calls each of them by name; informs
himself as to the state of each and every one of them - ‘in which
respect the inhabitants will be compelled to speak the truth under
pain of death’; if someone does not appear at the window, the syndic
must ask why: ‘In this way he will find out easily enough whether
dead or sick are being concealed.1 Everyone locked up in his
cage, everyone at his window, answering to his name and showing
himself when asked - it is the great review of the living and the
dead.
This surveillance is based on a system of permanent registration:
reports from the syndics to the intendants, from the intendants to
the magistrates or mayor. At the beginning of the ‘lock up’, the role
of each of the inhabitants present in the town is laid down, one by
one; this document bears ‘the name, age, sex of everyone, notwithstanding
his condition': a copy is sent to the intendant of the quarter,
another to the office of the town hall, another to enable the syndic
to make his daily roll call. Everything that may be observed during
the course of the visits - deaths, illnesses, complaints, irregularities is
noted down and transmitted to the intendants and magistrates.
The magistrates have complete control over medical treatment; they
have appointed a physician in charge; no other practitioner may
treat, no apothecary prepare medicine, no confessor visit a sick
person without having received from him a written note ‘to prevent
anyone from concealing and dealing with those sick of the contagion,
unknown to the magistrates’. The registration of the pathological
must be constantly centralized. The relation of each individual to his
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disease and to his death passes through the representatives of power,
the registration they make of it, the decisions they take on it.
Five or six days after the beginning o f the quarantine, the process
of purifying the houses one by one is begun. All the inhabitants are
made to leave; in each room 'the furniture and goods’ are raised
from the ground or suspended from the air; perfume is poured
around the room; after carefully sealing the windows, doors and
even the keyholes with wax, the perfume is set alight. Finally, the
entire house is closed while the perfume is consumed; those who
have carried out the work are searched, as they were on entry, ‘in
the presence of the residents of the house, to see that they did not
have something on their persons as they left that they did not have
on entering’. Four hours later, the residents are allowed to re-enter
their homes.
This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in
which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the
slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded,
in which an uninterrupted work of writing links the centre and
periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according
to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly
located, examined and distributed among the living beings,
the sick and the dead - all this constitutes a compact model of the
disciplinary mechanism. The plague is met by order; its function is
to sort out every possible confusion: that of the disease, which is
transmitted when bodies are mixed together; that of the evil, which
is increased when fear and death overcome prohibitions. It lays
down for each individual his place, his body, his disease and his
death, his well-being, by means of an omnipresent and omniscient
power that subdivides itself in a regular, uninterrupted way even
to the ultimate determination of the individual, of what characterizes
him, of what belongs to him, of what happens to him. Against the
plague, which is a mixture, discipline brings into play its power,
which is one of analysis. A whole literary fiction of the festival grew
up around the plague: suspended laws, lifted prohibitions, the
frenzy of passing time, bodies mingling together without respect,
individuals unmasked, abandoning their statutory identity and the
figure under which they had been recognized, allowing a quite
different truth to appear. But there was also a political dream of the
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plague, which was exactly its reverse: not the collective festival,
but strict divisions; not laws transgressed, but the penetration of
regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life through the
mediation of the complete hierarchy that assured the capillary functioning
of power; not masks that were put on and taken off, but the
assignment to each individual of his ‘true* name, his ‘true* place, his
<true, body, his ‘true’ disease. The plague as a form, at once real
and imaginary, of disorder had as its medical and political correlative
discipline. Behind the disciplinary mechanisms can be read the
haunting memory of ‘contagions', of the plague, o f rebellions,
crimes, vagabondage, desertions, people who appear and disappear,
live and die in disorder.
If it is true that the leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion, which to
a certain extent provided the model for and general form of the
great Confinement, then the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects.
Rather than the massive, binary division between one set of
people and another, it called for multiple separations, individualizing
distributions, an organization in depth o f surveillance and control,
an intensification and a ramification of power. The leper was caught
up in a practice of rejection, of exile-enclosure; he was left to his
doom in a mass among which it was useless to differentiate; those
sick o f the plague were caught up in a meticulous tactical partitioning
in which individual differentiations were the constricting effects
o f a power that multiplied, articulated and subdivided itself; the great
confinement on the one hand; the correct training on the other.
The leper and his separation; the plague and its segmentations. The
first is marked; the second analysed and distributed. The exile of
the leper and the arrest of the plague do not bring with them the
same political dream. The first is that of a pure community, the
second that of a disciplined society. Tw o ways of exercising power
over men, of controlling their relations, of separating out their
dangerous mixtures. The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout
with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town
immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in
a distinct way over all individual bodies - this is the utopia of the
perfectly governed city. The plague (envisaged as a possibility at
least) is the trial in the course o f which one may define ideally the
exercise of disciplinary power. In order to make rights and laws
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function according to pure theory, the jurists place themselves in
imagination in the state of nature; in order to see perfect disciplines
functioning, rulers dreamt of the state of plague. Underlying disciplinary
projects the image of the plague stands for all forms of
confusion and disorder; just as the image of the leper, cut off from
all human contact, underlies projects of exclusion.
They are different projects, then, but not incompatible ones. W e
see them coming slowly together, and it is the peculiarity of the
nineteenth century that it applied to the space of exclusion of which
the leper was the symbolic inhabitant (beggars, vagabonds, madmen
and the disorderly formed the real population) the technique of
power proper to disciplinary partitioning. Treat ‘lepers’ as ‘plague
victims’, project the subtle segmentations of discipline onto the
confused space of internment, combine it with the methods of analytical
distribution proper to power, individualize the excluded, but
use procedures of individualization to mark exclusion - this is what
Was operated regularly by disciplinary power from the beginning
of the nineteenth century in the psychiatric asylum, the penitentiary,
the reformatory, the approved school and, to some extent, the
hospital. Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual
control function according to a double mode; that of binary division
and branding (mad/sane; dangerpus/harmless; normal/abnormal);
and that of coercive assignment, of differential distribution (who he
is; where he must be; how he is to be characterized; how he is to be
recognized; how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him
in an individual way, etc.). On the one hand, the lepers are treated as
plague victims; the tactics of individualizing disciplines are imposed
on the excluded; and, on the other hand, the universality of disciplinary
controls makes it possible to brand the ‘leper’ and to bring
into play against him the dualistic mechanisms of exclusion. The
constant division between the normal and the abnormal, to which
every individual is subjected, brings us back to our own time, by
applying the binary branding and exile of the leper to quite different
objects; the existence of a whole set of techniques and institutions
for measuring, supervising and correcting the abnormal brings into
play the disciplinary mechanisms to which the fear of the plague
gave rise. All the mechanisms of power which, even today, are
disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him and to alter
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him, are composed of those two forms from which they distantly
derive.
Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition.
W e know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery,
an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with
wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric
building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole
width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside,
corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside,
allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other.
All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower
and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man,
a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can
observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light,
the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are
like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is
alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible- The panoptic
mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly
and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle
of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions - to enclose, to
deprive of light and to hide - it preserves only the first and eliminates
the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture
better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.
T o begin with, this made it possible - as a negative effect - to
avoid those compact, swarming, howling masses that were to be
found in places of confinement, those painted by Goya or described
by Howard. Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a
cell from which he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the
side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions.
He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information,
never a subject in communication. The arrangement of his room,
opposite the central tower, imposes on him an axial visibility; but
the divisions of the ring, those separated cells, imply a lateral
invisibility. And this invisibility is a guarantee of order. If the inmates
are convicts, there is no danger of a plot, an attempt at
collective escape, the planning of new crimes for the future, bad
reciprocal influences; if they are patients, there is no danger of
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contagion; if they are madmen there is no risk of their committing
violence upon one another; if they are schoolchildren, there is no
copying, no noise, no chatter, no waste of time; if they are workers,
there are no disorders, no theft, no coalitions, none of those distractions
that slow down the rate of work, make it less perfect or
cause accidents. The crowd, a compact mass, a locus of multiple
exchanges, individualities merging together, a collective effect, is
abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities.
From the point of view of the guardian, it is replaced by a multiplicity
that can be numbered and supervised; from the point of view of
the inmates, by a sequestered and observed solitude (Bentham,
60-64).
Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate
a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic
functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance
is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its
action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual
exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a
machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent
of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be
caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the
bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the
prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little,
for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much,
because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham
laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable.
Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the
tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon.
Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being
looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always
be so. In order to make the presence or absence of the inspector
unverifiable, so that the prisoners, in their cells, cannot even see a
shadow, Bentham envisaged not only Venetian blinds on the
windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions
that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from
one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the
slightest noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door
would betray the presence of the guardian.2 The Panopticon is a
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machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric
ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central
tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.3
It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes
power. Power has its principle not so much in a person as
in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes;
in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation
in which individuals are caught up. The ceremonies, the rituals, the
marks by which the sovereign's surplus power was manifested are
useless. There is a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium,
difference. Consequently, it does not matter who exercises
power. Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the
machine: in the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his
visitors, even his servants (Bentham, 45). Similarly, it does not
matter what motive animates him: the curiosity of the indiscreet, the
malice of a child, the thirst for knowledge of a philosopher who
wishes to visit this museum of human nature, or the perversity of
those who take pleasure in spying and punishing. The more
numerous those anonymous and temporary observersare, the greater
the risk for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious
awareness of being observed. The Panopticon is a marvellous
machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces
homogeneous effects of power.
A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation.
So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good
behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy
to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations.
Bentham was surprised that panoptic institutions could be so light:
there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks; all
that was needed was that the separations should be clear and the
openings well arranged. The heaviness of the old ‘houses of security’,
with their fortress-like architecture, could be replaced by the simple,
economic geometry of a ‘house of certainty’. The efficiency of
power, its constraining force have, in a sense, passed over to the
other side - to the side of its surface of application. He who is
subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility
for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously
upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in
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which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle
of his own subjection. By this very fact, the external power may
throw off its physical weight; it tends to the non-corporal; and, the
more it approaches this limit, the more constant, profound and
permanent are its effects: it is a perpetual victory that avoids any
physical confrontation and which is always decided in advance.
Bentham does not say whether he was inspired, in his project, by
Le Vaux’s menagerie at Versailles: the first menagerie in which the
different elements are not, as they traditionally were, distributed in
a park (Loisel, 104-7). At the centre was an octagonal pavilion
which, on the first floor, consisted of only a single room, the king’s
salon; on every side large windows looked out onto seven cages
(the eighth side was. reserved for the entrance), containing different
species of animals. By Bentham’s time, this menagerie had disappeared.
But one finds in the programme of the Panopticon a
similar concern with individualizing observation, with characterization
and classification, with the analytical arrangement of space. The
Panopticon is a royal menagerie; the animal is replaced by man,
individual distribution by specific grouping and the king by the
machinery of a furtive power. With this exception, the Panopticon
also does the work of a naturalist. It makes it possible to draw up
differences: among patients, to observe the symptoms of each individual,
without the proximity of beds, the circulation of miasmas, the
effects of contagion confusing the clinical tables; among schoolchildren,
it makes it possible to observe performances (without
there being any imitation or copying), to map aptitudes, to assess
characters, to draw up rigorous classifications and, in relation to
normal development, to distinguish ‘laziness and stubbornness’ from
‘incurable imbecility*; among workers, it makes it possible to note
the aptitudes of each worker, compare the time he takes to perform
a task, and if they are paid by the day, to calculate their wages
(Bentham, 60-64).
So much for the question of observation. But the Panopticon was
also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments,
to alter behaviour, to train or correct individuals. To experiment
with medicines and monitor their effects. To try out different
punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and character,
and to seek the most effective ones. To teach different techniques
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simultaneously to the workers, to decide which is the best. To try
out pedagogical experiments - and in particular to take up once
again the well-debated problem of secluded education, by using
orphans. One would see what would happen when, in their sixteenth
or eighteenth year, they were presented with other boys or
girls; one could verify whether, as Helvetius thought, anyone could
learn anything; one would follow ‘the genealogy of every observable
idea’; one could bring up different children according to different
systems of thought, making certain children believe that two and
two do not make four or that the moon is a cheese, then put them
together when they are twenty or twenty-five years old; one would
then have discussions that would be worth a great deal more than
the sermons or lectures on which so much money is spent; one
would have at least an opportunity of making discoveries in the
domain of metaphysics. The Panopticon is a privileged place for
experiments on men, and for analysing with complete certainty the
transformations that may be obtained from them. The Panopticon
may even provide an apparatus for supervising its own mechanisms.
In this central tower, the director may spy on all the employees that
he has under his orders: nurses, doctors, foremen, teachers, warders;
he will be able to judge them continuously, alter their behaviour,
impose upon them the methods he thinks best; and it will
even be possible to observe the director himself. An inspector
arriving unexpectedly at the centre of the Panopticon will be able to
judge at a glance, without anything being concealed from him, how
the entire establishment is functioning. And, in any case, enclosed
as he is in the middle of this architectural mechanism, is not the
director’s own fate entirely bound up with it? The incompetent
physician who has allowed contagion to spread, the incompetent
prison governor or workshop manager will be the first victims of an
epidemic or a revolt.4“ By every tie I could devise” , said the master
of the Panopticon, “ my own fate had been bound up by me with
theirs” ’ (Bentham, 177). The Panopticon functions as a kind of
laboratory of power. Thanks to its mechanisms of observation, it
gains in efficiency and in the ability to penetrate into men’s behaviour;
knowledge follows the advances of power, discovering new
objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is
exercised.
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The plague-stricken town, the panoptic establishment - the
differences are important. They mark, at a distance of a century and
a half, the transformations of the disciplinary programme. In the
first case, there is an exceptional situation: against an extraordinary
evil, power is mobilized; it makes itself everywhere present and
visible; it invents new mechanisms; it separates, it immobilizes, it
partitions; it constructs for a time what is both a counter-city and
the perfect society; it imposes an ideal functioning, but one that is
reduced, in the final analysis, like the evil that it combats, to a simple
dualism of life and death: that which moves brings death, and one
kills that which moves. The Panopticon, on the other hand, must
be understood as a generalizable model o f functioning; a way o f
defining power relations in terms o f the everyday life of men. No
doubt Bentham presents it as a particular institution, closed in upon
itself. Utopias, perfectly closed in upon themselves, are common
enough. As opposed to the ruined prisons, littered with mechanisms
of torture, to be seen in Piranese’s engravings, the Panopticon
presents a cruel, ingenious cage. The fact that it should have given
rise, even in our own time, to so many variations, projected or
realized, is evidence of the imaginary intensity that it has possessed
for almost two hundred years. But the Panopticon must not be
understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of
power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any
obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural
and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology
that may and must be detached from any specific use.
It is polyvalent in its applications; it serves to reform prisoners,
but also to treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the
insane, to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work. It is
a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals
in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, of disposition
of centres and channels of power, of definition of the instruments
and modes of intervention of power, which can be implemented
in hospitals, workshops, schools, prisons. Whenever one is
dealing with a multiplicity of individuals on whom a task or a
particular form of behaviour must be imposed, the panoptic schema
may be used. It is - necessary modifications apart - applicable ‘to
all establishments whatsoever, in which, within a space not too large
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to be covered or commanded by buildings, a number of persons are
meant to be kept under inspection’ (Bentham, 40; although Bentham
takes the penitentiary house as his prime example, it is because it has
many different functions to fulfil — safe custody, confinement,
solitude, forced labour and instruction).
In each of its applications, it makes it possible to perfect the exercise
of power. It does this in several ways: because it can reduce the
number o f those who exercise it, while increasing the number of
those on whom it is exercised. Because it is possible to intervene at
any moment and because the constant pressure acts even before the
offences, mistakes or crimes have been committed. Because, in these
conditions, its strength is that it never intervenes, it is exercised
spontaneously and without noise, it constitutes a mechanism whose
effects follow from one another. Because, without any physical
instrument other than architecture and geometry, it acts directly on
individuals; it gives ‘power of mind over mind\ The panoptic
schema makes any apparatus of power more intense: it assures its
economy (in material, in personnel, in time); it assures its efficacity
by its preventative character, its continuous functioning and its
automatic mechanisms. It is a way of obtaining from power ‘in
hitherto unexampled quantity*, ‘a great and new instrument of
government . . . ; its great excellence consists in the great strength
it is capable of giving to any institution it may be thought proper to
apply it to’ (Bentham, 66).
It’s a case of ‘it’s easy once you’ve thought of it* in the political
sphere. It can in fact be integrated into any function (education,
medical treatment, production, punishment); it can increase the
effect of this function, by being linked closely with it; it can constitute
a mixed mechanism in which relations of power (and of knowledge)
may be precisely adjusted, in the smallest detail, to the processes
that are to be supervised; it can establish a direct proportion
between ‘surplus power5 and ‘surplus production’. In short, it
arranges things in such a way that the exercise o f power is not
added on from the outside, like a rigid, heavy constraint, to the
functions it invests, but is so subtly present in them as to increase
their efficiency by itself increasing its own points of contact. The
panoptic mechanism is not simply a hinge, a point of exchange
between a mechanism of power and a function; it is a way of making
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power relations function in a function, and of making a function
function through these power relations. Bentham’s Preface to
Panopticon opens with a list o f the benefits to be obtained from his
‘inspection-house’: ‘Morals reformed —health preserved — industry
invigorated—instruction diffused—publicburthenslightened—Economy
seated, as it were, upon a rock - the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws
not cut, but untied - all by a simple idea in architecture!1 (Bentham,
39)Furthermore,
the arrangement of this machine is such that its
enclosed nature does not preclude a permanent presence from the
outside: we have seen that anyone may come and exercise in the central
tower the functions of surveillance, and that, this being the case,
he can gain a clear idea of theway inwhich the surveillance is practised.
In fact, any panoptic institution, even if it is as rigorously closed
as a penitentiary, may without difficulty be subjected to such irregular
and constant inspections: and not only by the appointed inspectors,
but also by the public; any member of society will have the
right to come and see with his own eyes how the schools, hospitals,
factories, prisons function. There is no risk, therefore, that the
increase of power created by the panoptic machine may degenerate
into tyranny; the disciplinary mechanism will be democratically
controlled, since it will be constantly accessible ‘to the great tribunal
committee of the world’.4 This Panopticon, subtly arranged so that
an observer may observe, at a glance, so jnany different individuals,
also enables everyone to come and observe any of the observers.
The seeing machine was once a sort of dark room into which
individuals spied; it has become a transparent building in which the
exercise o f power may be supervised by society as a whole.
The panoptic schema, without disappearing as such or losing any
of its properties, was destined to spread throughout the social body;
its vocation was to become a generalized function. The plaguestricken
town provided an exceptional disciplinary model: perfect,
but absolutely violent; to the disease that brought death, power
opposed its perpetual threat o f death; life inside it was reduced to
its simplest expression; it was, against the power of death, the meticulous
exercise of the right of the sword. The Panopticon, on the
other hand, has a role of amplification; although it arranges power,
although it is intended to make it more economic and more effective,
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it does so not for power itself, nor for the immediate salvation of a
threatened society: its aim is to strengthen the social forces - to
increase production, to develop the economy, spread education,
raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply.
How is power to be strengthened in such a way that, far from
impeding progress, far from weighing upon it with its rules and
regulations, it actually facilitates such progress? What intensificator
o f power will be able at the same time to be a multiplicator of production?
How will power, by increasing its forces, be able to increase
those of society instead of confiscating them or impeding them? The
Panopticon’s solution to this problem is that the productive increase
o f power can be assured only if, on the one hand, it can be exercised
continuously in the very foundations of society, in the subtlest
possible way, and if, on the other hand, it functions outside these
sudden, violent, discontinuous forms that are bound up with the
exercise of sovereignty. The body of the king, with its strange
material and physical presence, with the force that he himself deploys
or transmits to some few others, is at the opposite extreme of this
new physics of power represented by panopticism; the domain of
panopticism is, on the contrary, that whole lower region, that region
o f irregular bodies, with their details, their multiple movements,
their heterogeneous forces, their spatial relations; what are required
are mechanisms that analyse distributions, gaps, series, combinations,
and which use instruments that render visible, record,
differentiate and compare: a physics of a relational and multiple
power, which has its maximum intensity not in the person of the
king, but in the bodies that can be individualized by these relations.
At the theoretical level, Bentham defines another way of analysing
the social body and the power relations that traverse it; in terms of
practice, he defines a procedure o f subordination of bodies and forces
that must increase the utility of power while practising the economy
o f the prince. Panopticism is the general principle of a new ‘political
anatomy* whose object and end are not the relations of sovereignty
but the relations of discipline.
The celebrated, transparent, circular cage, with its high tower,
powerful and knowing, may have been for Bentham a project of a
perfect disciplinary institution; but he also set out to show how one
may ‘unlock’ the disciplines and get them to function in a diffused,
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multiple, polyvalent way throughout the whole social body. These
disciplines, which the classical age had elaborated in specific,
relatively enclosed places - barracks, schools, workshops - and
whose total implementation had been imagined only at the limited
and temporary scale of a plague-stricken town, Bentham dreamt of
transforming into a network of mechanisms that would be everywhere
and always alert, running through society without interruption
in space or in time. The panoptic arrangement provides the
formula for this generalization. It programmes, at the level of an
elementary and easily transferable mechanism, the basic functioning
of a society penetrated through and through with disciplinary
mechanisms.
There are two images, then, of discipline. A t one extreme, the
discipline-blockade, the enclosed institution, established on the
edges of society, turned inwards towards negative functions:
arresting evil, breaking communications, suspending time. At the
other extreme, with panopticism, is the discipline-mechanism: a
functional mechanism that must improve the exercise of power by
making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle
coercion for a society to come. The movement from one project
to the other, from a schema of exceptional discipline to one of
a generalized surveillance, rests on a historical transformation:
the gradual extension of the mechanisms of discipline throughout
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their spread throughout the
whole social body, the formation of what might be called in general
the disciplinary society.
A whole disciplinary generalization - the Benthamite physics of
power represents an acknowledgement of this - had operated
throughout the classical age. The spread of disciplinary institutions,
whose network was beginning to cover an ever larger surface and
occupying above all a less and less marginal position, testifies to
this: what was an islet, a privileged place, a circumstantial measure,
or a singular model, became a general formula; the regulations
characteristic of the Protestant and pious armies of William of
Orange or of Gustavus Adolphus were transformed into regulations
for all the armies of Europe; the model colleges of the Jesuits, or the
schools of Batencour or Demia, following the example set by Sturm,
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provided the outlines for the general forms of educational discipline;
the ordering of the naval and military hospitals provided
the model for the entire reorganization of hospitals in the eighteenth
century.
But this extension of the disciplinary institutions was no doubt
only the most visible aspect of various, more profound processes.
i. The functional inversion of the disciplines. At first, they were
expected to neutralize dangers, to fix useless or disturbed populations,
to avoid the inconveniences of over-large assemblies; now
they were being asked to play a positive role, for they were becoming
able to do so, to increase the possible utility of individuals.
Military discipline is no longer a mere means of preventing looting,
desertion or failure to obey orders among the troops; it has become
a basic technique to enable the army to exist, not as an assembled
crowd, but as a unity that derives from this very unity an increase
in its forces; discipline increases the skill of each individual, coordinates
these skills, accelerates movements, increases fire power,
broadens the fronts of attack without reducing their vigour, increases
the capacity for resistance, etc. The discipline of the workshop,
while remaining a way ofenforcing respect for the regulations
and authorities, of preventing thefts or losses, tends to increase
aptitudes, speeds, output and therefore profits; it still exerts a moral
influence over behaviour, but more and more it treats actions in
terms of their results, introduces bodies into a machinery, forces into
an economy. When, in the seventeenth century, the provincial
schools or the Christian elementary schools were founded, the
justifications given for them were above all negative: those poor
who were unable to bring up their children left them ‘in ignorance
of their obligations: given the difficulties they have in earning a
living, and themselves having been badly brought up, they are
unable to communicate a sound upbringing that they themselves
never had’; this involves three major inconveniences: ignorance of
God, idleness (with its consequent drunkenness, impurity, larceny,
brigandage); and the formation of those gangs of beggars, always
ready to stir up public disorder and ‘virtually to exhaust the funds
of the Hotel-Dieu* (Demia, 60-61). Now, at the beginning of the
Revolution, the end laid down for primary education was to be,
among other things, to ‘fortify*, to ‘develop the body’, to prepare
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the child ‘for a future in some mechanical work’, to give him ‘an
observant eye, a sure hand and prompt habits’ (Talleyrand’s Report
to the Constituent Assembly, 10 September 1791, quoted by Leon,
106). The disciplines function increasingly as techniques for making
useful individuals. Hence their emergence from a marginal position
on the confines of society, and detachment from the forms of
exclusion or expiation, confinement or retreat. Hence the slow
loosening of their kinship with religious regularities and enclosures.
Hence also their rooting in the most important, most central and
most productive sectors of society. They become attached to some
of the great essential functions: factory production, the transmission
of knowledge, the diffusion of aptitudes and skills, the war-machine.
Hence, too, the double tendency one sees developing throughout
the eighteenth century to increase the number of disciplinary institutions
and to discipline the existing apparatuses.
2. The swarming of disciplinary mechanisms. While, on the one
hand, the disciplinary establishments increase, their mechanisms
have a*certain tendency to become ‘de-institutionalized’, to emerge
from the closed fortresses in which they once functioned and to
circulate in a ‘free’ state; the massive, compact disciplines are broken
down into flexible methods of control, which may be transferred
and adapted. Sometimes the closed apparatuses add to their internal
and specific function a role of external surveillance, developing
around themselves a whole margin of lateral controls. Thus the
Christian School must not simply train docile children; it must also
make it possible to supervise the parents, to gain information as to
their way of life, their resources, their piety, their morals. The
school tends to constitute minute social observatories that penetrate
even to the adults and exercise regular supervision over them: the
bad behaviour of the child, or his absence, is a legitimate pretext,
according to Demia, for one to go and question the neighbours,
especially if there is any reason to believe that the family will not
tell the truth; one can then go and question the parents themselves,
to find out whether they know their catechism and the prayers,
whether they are determined to root out the vices of their children,
how many beds there are in the house and what the sleeping arrangements
are; the visit may end with the giving of alms, the present of a
religious picture, or the provision ofadditional beds (Demia, 39-40).
2 11
Discipline
Similarly, the hospital is increasingly conceived of as a base for
the medical observation of the population outside; after the burning
down of the Hotel-Dieu in 1772, there were several demands that
the large buildings, so heavy and so disordered, should be replaced
by a series of smaller hospitals; their function would be to take in
the sick of the quarter, but also to gather information, to be alert
to any endemic or epidemic phenomena, to open dispensaries, to
give advice to the inhabitants and to keep the authorities informed
of the sanitary state of the region.5
One also sees the spread of disciplinary procedures, not in the
form of enclosed institutions, but as centres of observation disseminated
throughout society. Religious groups and charity
organizations had long played this role of ‘disciplining* the population.
From the Counter-Reformation to the philanthropy of the
July monarchy, initiatives of this type continued to increase; their
aims were religious (conversion and moralization), economic (aid
and encouragement to work) or political (the struggle against discontent
or agitation). One has only to cite by way of example the
regulations for the charity associations in the Paris parishes. The
territory to be covered was divided into quarters and cantons and
the members of the associations divided themselves up along the
same lines. These members had to visit their respective areas
regularly, lThey will strive to eradicate places of ill-repute, tobacco
shops, life-classes, gaming house, public scandals, blasphemy, impiety,
and any other disorders that may come to their knowledge.*
They will also have to make individual visits to the poor; and the
information to be obtained is laid down in regulations: the stability
of the lodging, knowledge of prayers, attendance at the sacraments,
knowledge of a trade, morality (and ‘whether they have not fallen
into poverty through their own fault*); lastly, ‘one must learn by
skilful questioning in what way they behave at home. Whether there
is peace between them and their neighbours, whether they are careful
to bring up their children in the fear of God . . . whether they do
not have their older children of different sexes sleeping together and
with them, whether they do not allow licentiousness and cajolery
in their families, especially in their older daughters. If one has any
doubts as to whether they are married, one must ask to see their
marriage certificate*.5
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3. The state-control ofthe mechanisms ofdiscipline. In England, it
was private religious groups that carried out, for a long time, the
functions of social discipline (cf, Radzinovitz, 203-14); in France,
although a part of this role remained in the hands of parish guilds
or charity associations, another - and no doubt the most important
part - was very soon taken over by the police apparatus.
The organization of a centralized police had long been regarded,
even by contemporaries, as the most direct expression of royal
absolutism; the sovereign had wished to have ‘his own magistrate to
whom he might directly entrust his orders, his commissions, intentions,
and who was entrusted with the execution of orders and
orders under the King’s private seal’ (a note by Duval, first secretary
at the police magistrature, quoted in Funck-Brentano, 1). In effect,
in taking over a number of pre-existing functions - the search for
criminals, urban surveillance, economic and political supervision the
police magistratures and the magistrature-general that presided
over them in Paris transposed them into a single, strict, administrative
machine: ‘All the radiations of force and information that
spread from the circumference culminate in the magistrate-general.
. . . It is he who operates all the wheels that together produce order
and harmony. The effects of his administration cannot be better
compared than to the movement of the celestial bodies’ (Des
Essarts, 344 and 528).
But, although the police as an institution were certainly organized
in the form of a state apparatus, and although this was certainly
linked directly to the centre of political sovereignty, the type of
power that it exercises, the mechanisms it operates and the elements
to which it applies them are specific. It is an apparatus that must be
coextensive with the entire social body and not only by the extreme
limits that it embraces, but by the minuteness of the details it is
concerned with. Police power must bear ‘over everything’: it is not
however the totality of the state nor of the kingdom as visible and
invisible body of the monarch; it is the dust of events, actions,
behaviour, opinions - ‘everything that happens’;7 the police are
concerned with ‘those things of every moment’, those ‘unimportant
things’, of which Catherine II spoke in her Great Instruction
(Supplement to the Instructionfor the drawing up ofa new code, 1769,
article 535). With the police, one is in the indefinite world of a
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supervision that seeks ideally to reach the most elementary particle,
the most passing phenomenon of the social body: ‘The ministry of
the magistrates and police officers is o f the greatest importance; the
objects that it embraces are in a sense definite, one may perceive
them only by a sufficiently detailed examination’ (Delamare, unnumbered
Preface): the infinitely small of political power.
And, in order to be exercised, this power had to be given the
instrument of permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance,
capable of making all visible, as long as it could itself remain invisible.
It had to be like a faceless gaze that transformed the whole
social body into a field o f perception: thousands o f eyes posted
everywhere, mobile attentions ever on the alert, a long, hierarchized
network which, according to Le Maire, comprised for Paris the
forty-eight commissaires, the twenty inspecteurs, then the ‘observers’,
who were paid regularly, the ‘basses mouches\ or secret agents, who
were paid by the day, then the informers, paid according to the job
done, and finally the prostitutes. And this unceasing observation
had to be accumulated in a series of reports and registers; throughout
the eighteenth century, an immense police text increasingly covered
society by means of a complex documentary organization (on the
police registers in the eighteenth century, cf. Chassaigne). And,
unlike the methods of judicial or administrative writing, what was
registered in this way were forms of behaviour, attitudes, possibilities,
suspicions - a permanent account of individuals’ behaviour.
Now, it should be noted that, although this police supervision
was entirely ‘in the hands of the king’, it did not function in a single
direction. It was in fact a double-entry system: it had to correspond,
by manipulating the machinery of justice, to the immediate wishes
o f the king, but it was also capable of responding to solicitations
from below; the celebrated lettres de cachet, or orders under the
king’s private seal, which were long the symbol of arbitrary royal
rule and which brought detention into disrepute on political
grounds, were in fact demanded by families, masters, local notables,
neighbours, parish priests; and their function was to punish by
confinement a whole infra-penality, that of disorder, agitation, disobedience,
bad conduct; those things that Ledoux wanted to exclude
from his architecturally perfect city and which he called ‘offences of
non-surveillance’. In short, the eighteenth-century police added a
2x4
Panopticism
disciplinary function to its role as the auxiliary of justice in the
pursuit of criminals and as an instrument for the political supervision
of plots, opposition movements or revolts. It was a complex function
since it linked the absolute power of the monarch to the lowest
levels of power disseminated in society; since, between these different,
enclosed institutions of discipline (workshops, armies, schools),
it extended an intermediary network, acting where they could not
intervene, disciplining the non-disciplinary spaces; but it filled in
the gaps, linked them together, guaranteed with its armed force an
interstitial discipline and a meta-discipline. 'By means of a wise
police, the sovereign accustoms the people to order and obedience’
(Vattel, 162).
The organization o f the police apparatus in the eighteenth century
sanctioned a generalization of the disciplines that became co-extensive
with the state itself. Although it was linked in the most explicit
way with everything in the royal power that exceeded the exercise
of regular justice, it is understandable why the police offered such
slight resistance to the rearrangement o f the judicial power; and why
it has not ceased to impose its prerogatives upon it, with everincreasing
weight, right up to the present day; this is no doubt
because it is the secular arm of the judiciary; but it is also because,
to a far greater degree than the judicial institution, it is identified,
by reason of its extent and mechanisms, with a society of the
disciplinary type. Yet it would be wrong to believe that the disciplinary
functions were confiscated and absorbed once and for all
by a state apparatus.
‘Discipline’ may be identified neither with an institution nor with
an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising
a whole set o f instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of
application, targets; it is a ‘physics' or an ‘anatomy’ of power, a
technology. And it may be taken over either by ‘specialized’ institutions
(the penitentiaries or ‘houses of correction’ of the nineteenth
century), or by institutions that use it as an essential instrument for a
particular end (schools, hospitals), or by pre-existing authorities
that find in it a means o f reinforcing or reorganizing their internal
mechanisms of power (one day we should show how intra-familial
relations, essentially in the parents-children cell, have become ‘disciplined’,
absorbing since the classical age external schemata, first
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educational and military, then medical, psychiatric, psychological,
which have made the family the privileged locus of emergence for
the disciplinary question of the normal and the abnormal); or by
apparatuses that have made discipline their principle of internal
functioning (the disciplinarization of the administrative apparatus
from the Napoleonic period), or finally by state apparatuses whose
major, if not exclusive, function is to assure that discipline reigns
over society as a whole (the police).
On the whole, therefore, one can speak of the formation of a
disciplinary society in this movement that stretches from the
enclosed disciplines, a sort of social ‘quarantine’, to an indefinitely
generalizable mechanism of ‘panopticism’. Not because the disciplinary
modality of power has replaced all the others; but because
it has infiltrated the others, sometimes undermining them, but
serving as an intermediary between them, linking them together,
extending them and above all making it possible to bring the effects
of power to the most minute and distant elements. It assures an
infinitesimal distribution of the power relations.
A few years after Bentham, Julius gave this society its birth
certificate (Julius, 384-6). Speaking of the panoptic principle, he
said that there was much more there than architectural ingenuity:
it was an event in the ‘history of the human mind’. In appearance,
it is merely the solution of a technical problem; but, through it, a
whole type of society emerges. Antiquity had been a civilization of
spectacle. ‘To render accessible to a multitude of men the inspection
of a small number of objects’: this was the problem to which the
architecture of temples, theatres and circuses responded. With
spectacle, there was a predominance of public life, the intensity of
festivals, sensual proximity. In these rituals in which blood flowed,
society found new vigour and formed for a moment a single great
body. The modern age poses the opposite problem: ‘To procure
for a small number, or even for a single individual, the instantaneous
view of a great multitude.’ In a society in which the principal
elements are no longer the community and public life, but, on the
one hand, private individuals and, on the other, the state, relations
can be regulated only in a form that is the exact reverse of the
spectacle: ‘It was to the modem age, to the ever-growing influence
of the state, to its ever more profound intervention in all the details
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and all the relations of social life, that was reserved the task of
increasing and perfecting its guarantees, by using and directing
towards that great aim the building and distribution of buildings
intended to observe a great multitude of men at the same time/
Julius saw as a fulfilled historical process that which Bentham had
described as a technical programme. Our society is one not of
spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one
invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange,
there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces;
the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation
and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the
anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the
individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is
rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a
whole technique of forces and bodies. We are much less Greeks than
we believe. We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage,
but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which
we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism. The
importance, in historical mythology, of the Napoleonic character
probably derives from the fact that it is at the point of junction of
the monarchical, ritual exercise of sovereignty and the hierarchical,
permanent exercise of indefinite discipline. He is the individual who
looms over everything with a single gaze which no detail, however
minute, can escape: "You may consider that no part of the Empire
is without surveillance, no crime, no offence, no contravention that
remains unpunished, and that the eye of the genius who can enlighten
all embraces the whole of this vast machine, without, however,
the slightest detail escaping his attention* (Treilhard, 14). At
the moment of its full blossoming, the disciplinary society still
assumes with the Emperor the old aspect of the power of spectacle.
As a monarch who is at one and the same time a usurper of the
ancient throne and the organizer of the new state, he combined
into a single symbolic, ultimate figure the whole of the long process
by which the pomp of sovereignty, the necessarily spectacular
manifestations of power, were extinguished one by one in the daily
exercise of surveillance, in a panopticism in which the vigilance of
intersecting gazes was soon to render useless both the eagle and
the sun.
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The formation of the disciplinary society is connected with a
number of broad historical processes - economic, juridico-political
and, lastly, scientific - of which it forms part.
i. Generally speaking, it might be said that the disciplines are
techniques for assuring the ordering of human multiplicities. It is
true that there is nothing exceptional or even characteristic in this;
every system of power is presented with the same problem. But the
peculiarity of the disciplines is that they try to define in relation to
the multiplicities a tactics of power that fulfils three criteria: firstly,
to obtain the exercise ofpower at the lowest possible cost (economically,
by the low expenditure it involves; politically, by its discretion,
its low exteriorization, its relative invisibility, the little resistance it
arouses); secondly, to bring the effects of this social power to their
maximum intensity and to extend them as far as possible, without
either failure or interval; thirdly, to link this ‘economic' growth of
power with the output of the apparatuses (educational, military,
industrial or medical) within which it is exercised; in short, to
increase both the docility and the utility of all the elements of the
system. This triple objective of the disciplines corresponds to a
well-known historical conjuncture. One aspect of this conjuncture
was the large demographic thrust of the eighteenth century; an
increase in the floating population (one of the primary objects of
discipline is to fix; it is an anti-nomadic technique); a change of
quantitative scale in the groups to be supervised or manipulated
(from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the eve of the
French Revolution, the school population had been increasing
rapidly, as had no doubt the hospital population; by the end of the
eighteenth century, the peace-time army exceeded 200,000 men).
The other aspect of the conjuncture was the growth in the apparatus
of production, which was becoming more and more extended and
complex; it was also becoming more costly and its profitability had
to be increased. The development of the disciplinary methods
corresponded to these two processes, or rather, no doubt, to the new
need to adjust their correlation. Neither the residual forms of feudal
power nor the structures of the administrative monarchy, nor the
local mechanisms of supervision, nor the unstable, tangled mass
they all formed together could carry out this role: they were
hindered from doing so by the irregular and inadequate extension of
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Panopticism
their network, by their often conflicting functioning, but above all
by the ‘costly* nature of the power that was exercised in them. It
was costly in several senses: because directly it cost a great deal to
the Treasury; because the system of corrupt offices and farmed-out
taxes weighed indirectly, but very heavily, on the population;
because the resistance it encountered forced it into a cycle of perpetual
reinforcement; because it proceeded essentially by levying
(levying on money or products by royal, seigniorial, ecclesiastical
taxation; levying on men or time by corvies of press-ganging, by
locking up or banishing vagabonds). The development of the disciplines
marks the appearance of elementary techniques belonging to
a quite different economy: mechanisms of power which, instead of
proceeding by deduction, are integrated into the productive efficiency
of the apparatuses from within, into the growth of this
efficiency and into the use of what it produces. For the old principle
of ‘levying-violence*, which governed the economy of power, the
disciplines substitute the principle of ‘mildness-production-profit’.
These are the techniques that make it possible to adjust the multiplicity
of men and the multiplication of the apparatuses of production
(and this means not only ‘production’ in the strict sense, but
also the production of knowledge and skills in the school, the
production of health in the hospitals, the production of destructive
force in the army).
In this task of adjustment, discipline had to solve a number of
problems for which the old economy of power was not sufficiently
equipped. It could reduce the inefficiency of mass phenomena:
reduce what, in a multiplicity, makes it much less manageable than
a unity; reduce what is opposed to the use of each of its elements
and of their sum; reduce everything that may counter the advantages
of number. That is why discipline fixes; it arrests or regulates
movements; it clears up confusion; it dissipates compact groupings
of individuals wandering about the country in unpredictable ways;
it establishes calculated distributions. It must also master all the
forces that are formed from the very constitution of an organized
multiplicity; it must neutralize the effects of counter-power that
spring from them and which form a resistance to the power that
wishes to dominate it: agitations, revolts, spontaneous organizations,
coalitions - anything that may establish horizontal conjunctions.
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Hence the fact that the disciplines use procedures of partitioning
and verticality, that they introduce, between the different elements
at the same level, as solid separations as possible, that they define
compact hierarchical networks, in short, that they oppose to the
intrinsic, adverse force of multiplicity the technique of the continuous,
individualizing pyramid. They must also increase the particular
utility of each element of the multiplicity, but by means that are the
most rapid and the least costly, that is to say, by using the multiplicity
itself as an instrument of this growth. Hence, in order to
extract from bodies the maximum time and force, the use of those
overall methods known as time-tables, collective training, exercises,
total and detailed surveillance. Furthermore, the disciplines must
increase the effect of utility proper to the multiplicities, so that each
is made more useful than the simple sum of its elements: it is in
order to increase the utilizable effects of the multiple that the disciplines
define tactics of distribution, reciprocal adjustment of bodies,
gestures and rhythms, differentiation of capacities, reciprocal coordination
in relation to apparatuses or tasks. Lastly, the disciplines
have to bring into play the power relations, not above but inside
the very texture of the multiplicity, as discreetly as possible, as well
articulated on the other functions of these multiplicities and also in
the least expensive way possible: to this correspond anonymous
instruments of power, coextensive with the multiplicity that they
regiment, such as hierarchical surveillance, continuous registration,
perpetual assessment and classification. In short, to substitute for a
power that is manifested through the brilliance of those who exercise
it, a power that insidiously objectifies those on whom it is applied;
to form a body of knowledge about these individuals, rather than to
deploy the ostentatious signs of sovereignty. In a word, the disciplines
are the ensemble of minute technical inventions that made it
possible to increase the useful size of multiplicities by decreasing the
inconveniences of the power which, in order to make them useful,
must control them. A multiplicity, whether in a workshop or a
nation, an army or a school, reaches the threshold of a discipline
when the relation of the one to the other becomes favourable.
If the economic take-off of the West began with the techniques
that made possible the accumulation of capital, it might perhaps be
said that the methods for administering the accumulation of men
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Panopticism
made possible a political take-off in relation to the traditional, ritual,
costly, violent forms of power, which soon fell into disuse and were
superseded by a subtle, calculated technology of subjection. In fact,
the two processes - the accumulation of men and the accumulation
of capital - cannot be separated; it would not have been possible
to solve the problem of the accumulation of men without the growth
of an apparatus of production capable of both sustaining them and
using them; conversely, the techniques that made the cumulative
multiplicity of men useful accelerated the accumulation of capital.
At a less general level, the technological mutations of the apparatus
of production, the division of labour and the elaboration of the
disciplinary techniques sustained an ensemble of very close relations
(cf. Marx, Capital, vol. i, chapter XIII and the very interesting
analysis in Guerry and Deleule). Each makes the other possible and
necessary; each provides a model for the other. The disciplinary
pyramid constituted the small cell of power within which the
separation, coordination and supervision of tasks was imposed and
made efficient; and analytical partitioning of time, gestures and
bodily forces constituted an operational schema that could easily be
transferred from the groups to be subjected to the mechanisms of
production; the massive projection of military methods onto industrial
organization was an example of this modelling of the division
of labour following the model laid down by the schemata of power.
But, on the other hand, the technical analysis of the process of
production, its ‘mechanical* breaking-down, were projected onto
the labour force whose task it was to implement it: the constitution
of those disciplinary machines in which the individual forces that
they bring together are composed into a whole and therefore
increased is the effect of this projection. Let us say that discipline
is the unitary technique by which the body is reduced as a ‘political’
force at the least cost and maximized as a useful force. The growth
of a capitalist economy gave rise to the specific modality of disciplinary
power, whose general formulas, techniques of submitting
forces and bodies, in short, ‘political anatomy’, could be operated
in the most diverse political regimes, apparatuses or institutions.
2. The panoptic modality of power - at the elementary, technical,
merely physical level at which it is situated - is not under
the immediate dependence or a direct extension of the great
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juridico-political structures of a society; it is nonetheless not
absolutely independent. Historically, the process by which the
bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically
dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit,
coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible
by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But
the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms
constituted the other, dark side of these processes* The general
juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian
in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical
mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially
non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines. And
although, in a formal way, the representative regime makes it possible,
directly or indirectly, with or without relays, for the will of
all to form the fundamental authority of sovereignty, the disciplines
provide, at the base, a guarantee of the submission of forces and
bodies. The real, corporal disciplines constituted the foundation of
the formal, juridical liberties. The contract may have been regarded
as the ideal foundation of law and political power; panopticism
constituted the technique, universally widespread, of coercion.
It continued to work in depth on the juridical structures of society,
in order to make the effective mechanisms of power function in
opposition to the formal framework that it had acquired. The
‘Enlightenment’, which discovered the liberties, also invented the
disciplines.
In appearance, the disciplines constitute nothing more than an
infra-law. They seem to extend the general forms defined by law to
the infinitesimal level of individual lives; or they appear as methods
of training that enable individuals to become integrated into these
general demands. They seem to constitute the same type of law on
a different scale, thereby making it more meticulous and more
indulgent. The disciplines should be regarded as a sort of counterlaw.
They have the precise role of introducing insuperable asymmetries
and excluding reciprocities. First, because discipline creates
between individuals a ‘private’ link, which is a relation ofconstraints
entirely different from contractual obligation; the acceptance of a
discipline may be underwritten by contract; the way in which it is
imposed, the mechanisms it brings into play, the non-reversible
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subordination of one group of people by another, the ‘surplus’
power that is always fixed on the same side, the inequality of position
of the different ‘partners’ in relation to the common regulation,
all these distinguish the disciplinary link from the contractual link,
and make it possible to distort the contractual link systematically
from the moment it has as its content a mechanism of discipline.
We know, for example, how many real procedures undermine the
legal fiction of the work contract: workshop discipline is not the
least important. Moreover, whereas the juridical systems define
juridical subjects according to universal norms, the disciplines
characterize, classify, specialize; they distribute along a scale,
around a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another
and, if necessary, disqualify and invalidate. In any case, in the space
and during the time in which they exercise their control and bring
into play the asymmetries of their power, they effect a suspension
of the law that is never total, but is never annulled either. Regular
and institutional as it may be, the discipline, in its mechanism, is a
‘counter-law’. And, although the universal juridicism of modern
society seems to fix limits on the exercise of power, its universally
widespread panopticism enables it to operate, on the underside of
the law, a machinery that is both immense and minute, which supports,
reinforces, multiplies the asymmetry of power and undermines
the limits that are traced around the law. The minute disciplines,
the panopticisms of every day may well be below the level
of emergence of the great apparatuses and the great political
struggles. But, in the genealogy of modern society, they have been,
with the class domination that traverses it, the political counterpart
of the juridical norms according to which power was redistributed.
Hence, no doubt, the importance that has been given for so long
to the small techniques of discipline, to those apparently insignificant
tricks that it has invented, and even to those ‘sciences’ that give it a
respectable face; hence the fear of abandoning them if one cannot
find any substitute; hence the affirmation that they are at the very
foundation of society, and an element in its equilibrium, whereas
they are a series of mechanisms for unbalancing power relations
definitively and everywhere; hence the persistence in regarding them
as the humble, but concrete form of every morality, whereas they
are a set of physico-political techniques.
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Discipline
To return to the problem of legal punishments, the prison with
all the corrective technology at its disposal is to be resituated at the
point where the codified power to punish turns into a disciplinary
power to observe; at the point where the universal punishments of
the law are applied selectively to certain individuals and always the
same ones; at the point where the redefinition of the juridical subject
by the penalty becomes a useful training of the criminal; at the point
where the law is inverted and passes outside itself, and where the
counter-law becomes the effective and institutionalized content of
the juridical forms. What generalizes the power to punish, then, is
not the universal consciousness of the law in each juridical subject;
it is the regular extension, the infinitely minute web of panoptic
techniques.
3. Taken one by one, most of these techniques have a long
history behind them. But what was new, in the eighteenth century,
was that, by being combined and generalized, they attained a level
at which the formation of knowledge and the increase of power
regularly reinforce one another in a circular process. At this point,
the disciplines crossed the ‘technological’ threshold. First the
hospital, then the school, then, later, the workshop were not simply
‘reordered' by the disciplines; they became, thanks to them,
apparatuses such that any mechanism of objectification could be
used in them as an instrument of subjection, and any growth of
power could give rise in them to possible branches of knowledge;
it was this link, proper to the technological systems, that made
possible within the disciplinary element the formation of clinical
medicine, psychiatry, child psychology, educational psychology,
the rationalization of labour. It is a double process, then: an epistemological
‘thaw* through a refinement of power relations; a
multiplication of the effects of power through the formation
and accumulation of new forms of knowledge.
The extension of the disciplinary methods is inscribed in a broad
historical process: the development at about the same time of many
other technologies - agronomical, industrial, economic. But it must
be recognized that, compared with the mining industries, the
emerging chemical industries or methods of national accountancy,
compared with the blast furnaces or the steam engine, panopticism
has received little attention. It is regarded as not much more than a
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Panopticism
bizarre little utopia, a perverse dream - rather as though Bentham
had been the Fourier of a police society, and the Phalanstery had
taken on the form of the Panopticon. And yet this represented the
abstract formula of a very real technology, that of individuals.
There were many reasons why it received little praise; the most
obvious is that the discourses to which it gave rise rarely acquired,
except in the academic classifications, the status of sciences; but the
real reason is no doubt that the power that it operates and which it
augments is a direct, physical power that men exercise upon one
another. An inglorious culmination had an origin that could be
only grudgingly acknowledged. But it would be unjust to compare
the disciplinary techniques with such inventions as the steam engine
or Amici's microscope. They are much less; and yet, in a way, they
are much more. If a historical equivalent or at least a point of
comparison had to be found for them, it would be rather in the
‘inquisitorial* technique.
The eighteenth century invented the techniques of discipline and
the examination, rather as the Middle Ages invented the judicial
investigation. But it did so by quite different means. The investigation
procedure, an old fiscal and administrative technique, had
developed above all with the reorganization of the Church and the
increase of the princely states in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
At this time it permeated to a very large degree the jurisprudence
first of the ecclesiastical courts, then of the lay courts.
The investigation as an authoritarian search for a truth observed
or attested was thus opposed to the old procedures of the oath,
the ordeal, the judicial duel, the judgement of God or even of the
transaction between private individuals. The investigation was the
sovereign power arrogating to itself the right to establish the truth
by a number of regulated techniques. Now, although the investigation
has since then been an integral part of western justice (even up
to our own day), one must not forget either its political origin, its
link with the birth of the states and of monarchical sovereignty, or
its later extension and its role in the formation of knowledge. In
fact, the investigation has been the no doubt crude, but fundamental
element in the constitution of the empirical sciences; it has been the
juridico-political matrix of this experimental knowledge, which, as
we know, was very rapidly released at the end of the Middle Ages.
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It is perhaps true to say that, in Greece, mathematics were born
from techniques of measurement; the sciences of nature, in any case,
were born, to some extent, at the end of the Middle Ages, from the
practices of investigation. The great empirical knowledge that
covered the things of the world and transcribed them into the
ordering of an indefinite discourse that observes, describes and
establishes the 'facts' (at a time when the western world was beginning
the economic and political conquest of this same world) had
its operating model no doubt in the Inquisition - that immense
invention that our recent mildness has placed in the dark recesses
of our memory. But what this politico-juridical, administrative and
criminal, religious and lay, investigation was to the sciences of
nature, disciplinary analysis has been to the sciences of man. These
sciences, which have so delighted our ‘humanity" for over a century,
have their technical matrix in the petty, malicious minutiae of the
disciplines and their investigations. These investigations are perhaps
to psychology, psychiatry, pedagogy, criminology, and so many
other strange sciences, what the terrible power of investigation was
to the calm knowledge of the animals, the plants or the earth.
Another power, another knowledge. On the threshold of the classical
age, Bacon, lawyer and statesman, tried todevelop a methodology
of investigation for the empirical sciences. What Great Observer
will produce the methodology of examination for the human
sciences? Unless, of course, such a thing is not possible. For,
although it is true that, in becoming a technique for the empirical
sciences, the investigation has detached itself from the inquisitorial
procedure, in which it was historically rooted, the examination has
remained extremely close to the disciplinary power that shaped it.
It has always been and still is an intrinsic element of the disciplines.
O f course it seems to have undergone a speculative purification by
integrating itself with such sciences as psychology and psychiatry.
And, in effect, its appearance in the form of tests, interviews,
interrogations and consultations is apparently in order to rectify
the mechanisms of discipline: educational psychology is supposed to
correct the rigours of the school, just as the medical or psychiatric
interview is supposed to rectify the effects of the discipline of work.
But we must not be misled; these techniques merely refer individuals
from one disciplinary authority to another, and they reproduce, in
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a concentrated or formalized form, the schema of power-knowledge
proper to each discipline (on this subject, cf. Tort). The great
investigation that gave rise to the sciences of nature has become
detached from its politico-juridical model; the examination, on the
other hand, is still caught up in disciplinary technology.
In the Middle Ages, the procedure of investigation gradually
superseded the old accusatory justice, by a process initiated from
above; the disciplinary technique, on the other hand, insidiously
and as if from below, has invaded a penal justice that is still, in
principle, inquisitorial. All the great movements of extension that
characterize modem penality - the problematization of the criminal
behind his crime, the concern with a punishment that is a correction,
a therapy, a normalization, the division of the act of judgement
between various authorities that are supposed to measure, assess,
diagnose, cure, transform individuals - all this betrays the penetration
of the disciplinary examination into the judicial inquisition.
1 What is now imposed on penal justice as its point of application,
its ‘useful* object, will no longer be the body of the guilty man set
up against the body of the king; nor will it be the juridical subject
of an ideal contract; it will be the disciplinary individual. The
extreme point of penal justice under the Ancien Regime was the
infinite segmentation of the body of the regicide: a manifestation
of the strongest power over the body of the greatest criminal,
whose total destruction made the crime explode into its truth. The
ideal point of penality today would be an indefinite discipline: an
interrogation without end, an investigation that would be extended
without limit to a meticulous and ever more analytical observation,
a judgement that would at the same time be the constitution of a file
that was never closed, the calculated leniency of a penalty that would
be interlaced with the ruthless curiosity of an examination, a procedure
that would be at the same time the permanent measure of a
gap in relation to an inaccessible norm and the asymptotic movement
that strives to meet in infinity. The public execution was the
logical culmination of a procedure governed by the Inquisition. The
practice of placing individuals under ‘observation5is a natural extension
of a justice imbued with disciplinary methods and examination
procedures. Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular
chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and
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registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the
functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument
of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools,
barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?
PA RT F O U R
Prison
i. Complete and austere institutions
It would not be true to say that the prison was born with the new
codes. The prison form antedates its systematic use in the penal
system. It had already been constituted outside the legal apparatus
when, throughout the social body, procedures were being elaborated
for distributing individuals, fixing them in space, classifying them,
extracting from them the maximum in time and forces, training their
bodies, coding their continuous behaviour, maintaining them in
perfect visibility, forming around them an apparatus of observation,
registration and recording, constituting on them a body of knowledge
that is accumulated and centralized. The general form of an
apparatus intended to render individuals docile and useful, by means
of precise work upon their bodies, indicated the prison institution,
before the law ever defined it as the penalty par excellence. At the
turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was, it is true,
a penality of detention; and it was a new thing. But it was really the
opening up of penality to mechanisms of coercion already elaborated
elsewhere. The ‘models’ of penal detention - Ghent, Gloucester,
Walnut Street - marked the first visible points of this transition,
rather than innovations or points of departure. The prison, an
essential elementin thepunitive panopoly, certainly marks animportant
moment in the history of penal justice: its access to 'humanity'.
But it is also an important moment in the history of those disciplinary
mechanisms that the new class power was developing: that
in which they colonized the legal institution. At the turn of the
tentury, a new legislation defined the power to punish as a general
function of society that was exercised in the same manner over all its
members, and in which each individual was equally represented: but
in making detention the penaltypar excellence,, it introduced procedures
of domination characteristic of a particular type of power. A
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justice that is supposed to be ‘equal’, a legal machinery that is
supposed to be ‘autonomous’, but which contains all the asymmetries
of disciplinary subjection, this conjunction marked the birth of the
prison, ‘the penalty of civilized societies’ (Rossi, 169).
One can understand the self-evident character that prison punishment
very soon assumed. In the first years of the nineteenth century,
people were still aware of its novelty; and yet it appeared so bound
up and at such a deep level with the very functioning of society
that it banished into oblivion all the other punishments that
the eighteenth-century reformers had imagined. It seemed to have
no alternative, as if carried along by the very movement of history:
‘It is not chance, it is not the whim of the legislator that have made
imprisonment the base and almost the entire edifice of our present
perial scale: it is the progress of ideas and the improvement in
morals’ (Van Meenan, 529-30). And, although, in a little over a
century, this self-evident character has become transformed, it has
not disappeared. We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison,
and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot
‘see* how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems
unable to do without.
This ‘self-evident’ character of the prison, which we find so difficult
to abandon, is based first of all on the simple form of ‘deprivation
of liberty’. How could prison not be the penalty par excellence
in a society in which liberty is a good that belongs to all in the same
way and to which each individual is attached, as Duport put it, by
a ‘universal and constant’ feeling? Its loss has therefore the same
value for all; unlike the fine, it is an ‘egalitarian* punishment. The
prison is the clearest, simplest, most equitable of penalties. Moreover,
it makes it possible to quantify the penalty exactly according
to the variable of time. There is a wages-form of imprisonment that
constitutes, in industrial societies, its economic ‘self-evidence* —and
enables it to appear as a reparation. By levying on the time of the
prisoner, the prison seems to express in concrete terms the idea that
the offence has injured, beyond the victim, society as a whole. There
is an economico-moral self-evidence of a penality that metes out
punishments in days, months and years and draws up quantitative
equivalences between offences and durations. Hence the expression,
so frequently heard, so consistent with the functioning of
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Complete and austere institutions
punishments, though contrary to the strict theory of penal law,
that one is in prison in order to ‘pay one's debt*. The prison is
‘natural’, just as the use of time to measure exchanges is ‘natural*
in our society.1
But the self-evidence of the prison is also based on its role,
supposed or demanded, as anapparatus for transforming individuals.
How could the prison not be immediately accepted when, by locking
up, retraining and rendering docile, it merely reproduces, with a
little more emphasis, all the mechanisms that are to be found in the
social body? The prison is like a rather disciplined barracks, a strict
school, a dark workshop, but not qualitatively different. This double
foundation -rjuridico-economic on the one hand, technico-disciplinary
on the other - made the prison seem the most immediate and
civilized form of all penalties. And it is this double functioning that
immediately gave it its solidity. One thing is clear: the prison was
not at first a deprivation of liberty to which a technical function of
correction was later added; it was from the outset a form of ‘legal
detention' entrusted with an additional corrective task, or an enterprise
for reforming individuals that the deprivation of liberty
allowed to function in the legal system. In short, penal imprisonment,
from the beginning of the nineteenth century, covered both
the deprivation of liberty and' the technical transformation of
individuals.
Let us remember a number of facts. In the codes of 1808 and 1810,
and the measures that immediately preceded or followed them,
imprisonment was never confused with mere deprivation of liberty.
It was, or in any case had to be, a differentiated and finalized mechanism.
Differentiated because it had to have the same form, whether
the prisoner had been sentenced or was merely accused, whether he
was a minor offender or a criminal: the various types of prison maison
d*arret, maisort de correction, maison centrale — ought in
principle to correspond more or less to these differences and provide
a punishment that would be not only graduated in intensity, but
diversified in its ends. For the prison has a purpose, which is laid
down at the outset: ‘The law inflicting penalties, some of which are
more serious than others, cannot allow the individual condemned
to light penalties to be imprisoned in the same place as the criminal
condemned to more serious penalties . . . although the penalty fixed
*33
Prison
by the law has as its principal aim the reparation of the crime, it also
desires the amendment of the guilty man’ (Real, 244). And this
transformation must be one of the internal effects of imprisonment.
Prison-punishment, prison-apparatus: ‘The order that must reign in
the maison deforce may contribute powerfully to the regeneration
of the convicts; the vices of upbringing, the contagion o f bad
example, idleness . . . have given birth to crime. Well, let us try to
close up all these sources of corruption; let the rules of a healthy
morality be practised in the maisons deforce; that, compelled to work,
convicts may come in the end to like it; when they have reaped the
reward, they will acquire the habit, the taste, the need for occupation;
let them give each other the example of a laborious life; it will
soon become a pure life; soon they will begin to know regret for the
past, the first harbinger of a love of duty/2 The techniques of correction
immediately form part of the institutional framework of
penal detention.
One should also recall that the movement for reforming the prisons,
for controlling their functioning is not a recent phenomenon.
It does not even seem to have originated in a recognition of failure.
Prison ‘reform’ is virtually contemporary with the prison itself: it
constitutes, as it were, its programme. From the outset, the prison
was caught up in a series of accompanying mechanisms, whose
purpose was apparently to correct it, but which seem to form part
of its very functioning, so closely have they been bound up with its
existence throughout its long history. There was, at once, a prolix
technology of the prison. There were inquiries: that of Chaptal in
1801 (whose task it was to discover what could be used to introduce
the modern prison system into France), that of Decazes in 1819,
Villerme’s work published in 1820, the report on the maisons centrales
drawn up by Martignac in 1829, the inquiries carried out in
the United States by Beaumont and Tocqueville in 1831, by Demetz
and Blouet in 1835, the questionnaires addressed by Montalivet to
the directors of the maisons centrales and to the general councils of
the dipartements during the debate on solitary confinement. There
were societies for supervising the functioning of the prisons and for
suggesting improvements: in 1818, the very official Societe pour
Vamelioration des prisons, a little later the Societe des prisons and
various philanthropic groups. Innumerable measures - orders,
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Complete and austere institutions
instructions or laws: from the reform that the first Restoration had
envisaged in September 1814, and which was never implemented, to
the law of 1844, drawn up by Tocqueville, which ended for a time
the long debate on the means of making imprisonment effective.
There were programmes drawn up to improve the functioning of
the machine-prison:3programmes for the treatment of the prisoners,
models for material improvement, some of these, like those of
Danjou and Harou-Romain, remaining no more than projects,
others becoming embodied in instructions (like the circular of 9
August 1841 on the building of maisons d’arret), others becoming
actual buildings, such as the Petite Roquette in which cellular
imprisonment was organized for the first time in France.
To these should be added the publications that sprang more or
less directly from the prison and were drawn up either by philanthropists
like Appert, or a little later by ‘specialists' (such as the
Annales de la Charite)4 or, again, by former prisoners; Pauvre
Jacques at the end of the Restoration, or the Gazette de SaintePelagie
at the beginning of the July monarchy.5
The prison should not be seen as an inert institution, shaken at
intervals by reform movements. The ‘theory of the prison* was its
constant set of operational instructions rather than its incidental
criticism - one of its conditions of functioning. The prison has
always formed part of an active field in which projects, improvements,
experiments, theoretical statements, personal evidence and
investigations have proliferated. The prison institution has always
been a focus of concern and debate. Is the prison still, then, a dark,
abandoned region? Is the fact that one has ceased to say so for
almost 200 years sufficient proof that it is not? In becoming a legal
punishment, it weighted the old juridico-political question of the
right to punish with all the problems, all the agitations that have
surrounded the corrective technologies of the individual.
Baltard called them ‘complete and austere institutions* (Baltard,
1829). In several respects, the prison must be an exhaustive disciplinary
apparatus: it must assume responsibility for all aspects of the
individual, his physical training, his aptitude to work, his everyday
conduct, his moral attitude, his state of mind; the prison, much more
than the school, the workshop or the army, which always involved a
235
Prison
certain specialization, is ‘omni-disciplinary’. Moreover, the prison
has neither exterior nor gap; it cannot be interrupted, except when
its task is totally completed; its action on the individual must be
uninterrupted: an unceasing discipline. Lastly, it gives almost total
power over the prisoners; it has its internal mechanisms of repression
and punishment: a despotic discipline. It carries to their greatest
intensity all the procedures to be found in the other disciplinary
mechanisms. It must be the most powerful machinery for imposing
a new form on the perverted individual; its mode of action is the
constraint of a total education: ‘In prison the government may
dispose of the liberty of the person and of the time of the prisoner;
from then on, one can imagine the power of the education which,
not only in a day, but in the succession of days and even years, may
regulate for man the time ofwaking and sleeping, ofactivity and rest,
the number and duration of meals, the quality and ration of food,
the nature and product of labour, the time of prayer, the use of
speech and even, so to speak, that of thought, that education which,
in the short, simple journeys from refectory to workshop, from
workshop to the cell, regulates the movements of the body, and even
in moments of rest, determines the use of time, the time-table, this
education, which, in short, takes possession of man as a whole, of
all the physical and moral faculties that are in him and of the time
in which he is himself* (Lucas, II, 123-4). This complete ‘reformatory’
lays down a recoding of existence very different from the mere
juridical deprivation of liberty and very different, too, from the
simple mechanism of exempla imagined by the reformers at the time
of the ideologues.
1. The first principle was isolation. The isolation of the convict
from the external world, from everything that motivated the offence,
from the complicities that facilitated it. The isolation of the prisoners
from one another. Not only must the penalty be individual, but it
must also be individualizing - in two ways. First, the prison must be
designed in such a way as to efface ofitself the harmful consequences
to which it gives rise in gathering together very different convicts
in the same place: to stifle plots and revolts, to prevent the formation
of future complicities that may give rise to blackmail (when the
convicts are once again at liberty), to form an obstacle to the immorality
of so many ‘mysterious associations’. In short, the prison
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Complete and austere institutions
should form from the malefactors that it gathers together a homogeneous
and interdependent population: 'There exists at this moment
among us an organized society of criminals . .. They form a small
nation within the greater. Almost all these men met or meet again
in prison. We must now disperse the members of this society*
(Tocqueville, Rapport a la Chambre des Deputes, quoted in Beaumont
and Tocqueville, 392-3). Moreover, through the reflection
that it gives rise to and the remorse that cannot fail to follow,
solitude must be a positive instrument of reform: ‘Thrown into
solitude, the convict reflects. Placed alone in the presence of his
crime, he learns to hate it, and, if his soul is not yet blunted by evil,
it is in isolation that remorse will come to assail him* (Beaumont and
Tocqueville, 109). Through the fact, too, that solitude assures a
sort of self-regulation of the penalty and makes possible a spontaneous
individualization of the punishment: the more the convict is
capable of reflecting, the more capable he was of committing his
crime; but, also, the more lively his remorse, the more painful his
solitude; on the other hand, when he has profoundly repented and
made amends without the least dissimulation, solitude will no longer
weigh upon him: ‘Thus, according to this admirable discipline, each
intelligence and each morality bears within itself the principle and
measure of a punishment whose error and human fallibility cannot
alter the certainty and invariable equity . . . Is it not in truth like
the seal of a divine and providential justice?* (Aylies, 132-3). Lastly,
and perhaps above all, the isolation of the convicts guarantees that
it is possible to exercise over them, with maximum intensity, a
power that will not be overthrown by any other influence; solitude
is the primary condition of total submission: ‘Just imagine,’ said
Charles Lucas, referring to the role of the governor, the instructor,
the chaplain and other ‘charitable persons* as regards the isolated
convict, ‘just imagine the power of human speech intervening in
the midst of the terrible discipline of silence to speak to the heart,
to the soul, to the human person’ (Lucas, I, 167). Isolation provides
an intimate exchange between the convict and the power that is
exercised over him.
It is at this point that the debate on the two American systems of
imprisonment, that of Auburn and that of Philadelphia, was situated.
In fact, this debate, which was so wide-ranging and long drawn out,6
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Prison
concerned only the way in which isolation should be used, it being
accepted by all.
The Auburn model prescribed the individual cell during the
night, work and meals in common, but under the rule of absolute
silence, the convicts being allowed to speak only to the warders,
with their permission and in a low voice. It was a clear reference to
the monastic model; a reference, too, to the discipline of the workshop.
The prison must be the microcosm of a perfect society in
which individuals are isolated in their moral existence, but in which
they come together in a strict hierarchical framework, with no
lateral relation, communication being possible only in a vertical
direction. The advantage of the Auburnian system, according to its
advocates, was that it formed a duplication of society itself. Constraint
was assured by material means, but above all by a rule that
one had to learn to respect and which was guaranteed by surveillance
and punishment Rather than keep the convicts ‘under lock and key
like wild beasts in their cages’, they must be brought together,
‘made to join together in useful exercises, forced together to adopt
good habits, preventing moral contagion by active surveillance,
maintaining reflection by the rule of silence*; this rule accustoms the
convict ‘to regard the law as a sacred precept whose violation brings
just and legitimate harm* (Mittermaier, in Revuefranqaise et etrangere
de^legislation, 1836). Thus this operation of isolation, assembly
without communication and law guaranteed by uninterrupted
supervision, must rehabilitate the criminal as a social individual; it
trains him to a ‘useful and resigned activity* (Gasparin); it restores
for him ‘habits of sociability* (Beaumont and Tocqueville, 112).
In absolute isolation - as at Philadelphia - the rehabilitation of
the criminal is expected not of the application of a common law,
but of the relation of the individual to his own conscience and to
what may enlighten him from within.7‘Alone in his cell, the convict
is handed over to himself; in the silence of his passions and of the
world that surrounds him, he descends into his conscience, he
questions it and feels awakening within him the moral feeling that
never entirely perishes in the heart of man* (Journal des dconomistes,
II, 1842). It is not, therefore, an external respect for the law or fear
of punishment alone that will act upon the convict but the workings
of the conscience itself. A profound submission, rather than a super­
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Complete and austere institutions
ficial training; a change of ‘morality*, rather than of attitude. In the
Pennsylvanian prison, the only operations of correction were the
conscience and the silent architecture that confronted it. At Cherry
Hill, ‘the walls are the punishment of the crime; the cell confronts
the convict with himself; he is forced to listen to his conscience*.
Hence work there is more in the nature of a consolation than an
obligation; supervisors do not have to exert force - this is assured
by the materiality of things —and consequently, their authority may
be accepted: ‘At each visit, a few benevolent words flow from this
honest mouth and bring to the heart of the inmate gratitude, hope
and consolation; he loves his warder; and he loves him because he
is gentle and sympathetic. Walls are terrible, but man is good*
(Blouet). In this closed cell, this temporary sepulchre, the myths of
resurrection arise easily enough. After night and silence, the regenerated
life. Auburn was society itself reduced to its bare essentials.
Cherry Hill was life annihilated and begun again. Catholicism soon
absorbed this Quaker technique into its discourses. ‘I see your cell
as no more than a frightful sepulchre where, instead of worms,
remorse and despair come to gnaw at you and to turn your existence
into a hell in anticipation. But. . . what is for an irreligious prisoner
merely a tomb, a repulsive ossuary, becomes, for the sincerely
Christian convict, the very cradle of blessed immortality.*8
A whole series of different conflicts stemmed from the opposition
between these two models: religious (must conversion be the principal
element of correction?), medical (does total isolation drive
convicts insane?), economic (which method costs less?), architectural
and administrative (which form guarantees the best surveillance?).
This, no doubt, was why the argument lasted so long. But,
at the heart of the debate, and making it possible, was this primary
objective of carceral action: coercive individualization, by the
termination of any relation that js not supervised by authority or
arranged according to hierarchy.
2. ‘Work alternating with meals accompanies the convict to
evening prayer; then a new sleep gives him an agreeable rest that is
not disturbed by the phantoms of an unregulated imagination. Thus
the six weekdays pass by. They are followed by a day devoted
exclusively to prayer, instruction and salutary meditations. Thus
the weeks, the months, the years follow one another; thus the
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prisoner who, on entering the establishment, was an inconstant
man, or one who was single-minded only in his irregularity, seeking
to destroy his existence by the variety ofhis vices, gradually becomes
by dint of a habit that is at first purely external, but is soon transformed
into a second nature, so familiar with work and the pleasures
that derive from it, that, provided wise instruction has opened up
his soul to repentance, he may be exposed with more confidence to
temptations, when he finally recovers his liberty’ (Julius, 417-18).
Work is defined, with isolation, as an agent of carceral transformation.
This is to be found as early as the code of 1808: ‘Although the
penalty inflicted by the law has as its aim the reparation of a crime,
it is also intended to reform the convict, and this double aim will
be fulfilled if the malefactor is snatched from that fatal idleness
which, having brought him to prison, meets him again within its
walls and, seizing hold of him, brings him to the ultimate degree of
depravity.’9 Work is neither an addition nor a corrective to the
regime of detention: whether it is a question of forced labour,
reclusion or imprisonment, it is conceived, by the legislator himself,
as necessarily accompanying it. But the necessity involved is precisely
not the necessity of which the eighteenth-century reformers
spoke, when they wished to make imprisonment either an example
for the public or a useful reparation for society. In the carceral
regime, the link between work and punishment is of another type.
Several polemics that took place under the Restoration and the
July Monarchy throw light on the function attributed to penal
labour. First, there was the debate on the subject of wages. The
labour of prisoners was remunerated in France. This posed a problem:
if work in prison is remunerated, that work cannot really form
part of the penalty; and the prisoner may therefore refuse to perform
it. Moreover, wages reward the skill of the worker and not the
improvement of the convict: ‘The worst subjects are almost everywhere
the most skilful workers; they are the most highly remunerated,
consequently the most intemperate and least ready to repent’
(Marquet-Wasselot, quoted in Lucas, 324). The debate, which had
never quite died down, was resumed with great liveliness in the
early 1840s: it was a period of economic crisis, a period of workers’
agitation and a period, too, in which the opposition between the
worker and the delinquent was beginning to crystallize (cf. below,
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285). There were strikes against the prison workshops: when a
Chaumont glove-maker succeeded in organizing a workshop at
Clairvaux, the workers protested, declared that their labour was
dishonoured, occupied the manufactory and forced the employer to
abandon his project (cf. Aguet, 30-31). There was also awidespread
press campaign in the workers’ newspapers: on the theme that the
government encouraged penal labour in order to reduce ‘free* wages;
on the theme that the inconveniences of these prison workshops
were even more evident for women, who were thus deprived of their
labour, driven to prostitution and therefore to prison, where these
same women, who could no longer work when they were free, then
competed with those who were still at work {O Atelier, 3rd year,
no. 4, December 1842); on the theme that prisoners were given the
safest jobs - ‘in warm and sheltered conditions thieves execute the
work of hat-making and cabinet-making’, while the unemployed
hatter is forced to go ‘to the human slaughter-house to make whitelead
at two francs a day’ {JOAtelier, 6th year, no. 2, November 1845);
on the theme that philanthropy is more concerned about the working
conditions of prisoners than those of free workers: ‘We are sure
that if prisoners worked with mercury, for example, science would
be a great deal more ready than it is to find ways of protecting the
workers from the dangers of its, fumes: “ Those poor convicts?*’
someone would exclaim, who scarcely has a word for the gilders.
But what can you expect? One has to have killed or robbed to
arouse compassion or interest.’ On the theme above all that, if the
prison was tending to become a workshop, it would not be long
before beggars and the unemployed were sent there, thus reconstituting
the old hopitaux generaux of France or the workhouses of
England. In addition, there were petitions and letters, especially
after the law of 1844 - one petition, rejected by the Chambre de
Paris, ‘found inhuman that one should propose to apply murderers
and thieves to work that is today the lot of a few thousand workers’;
‘the Chambre preferred Barrabas to us* {JOAtelier, 4th year, no. 9,
June 1844 and 5th year, no. 7, April 1845; cf. also, of the same
period, La Democratie pacifique)\ typographical workers sent a
letter to the minister when they learnt that a printing-works was to
be set up in the prison at Melun: ‘You have decided between
reprobates justly punished by the law and citizens who sacrifice
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their days, in abstinence and probity, to the lives of their families and
to the wealth of their nation5(JUAtelier, 5th year, no. 6, March 1845).
The answers given by the government and the administration to
this whole campaign changed very little. Penal labour cannot be
criticized for any unemployment it may give rise to: with its limited
extent, and its low output, it cannot have a general effect on the
economy. It is intrinsically useful, not as an activity of production,
but by virtue of the effect it has on the human mechanism. It is a
principle of order and regularity; through the demands that it
imposes, it conveys, imperceptibly, the forms of a rigorous power;
it bends bodies to regular movements, it excludes agitation and
distraction, it imposes a hierarchy and a surveillance that are all the
more accepted, and which will be inscribed all the more deeply in
the behaviour of the convicts, in that they form part of its logic:
with work ‘the rule is introduced into a prison, it reigns there without
effort, without the use of any repressive and violent means.
By occupying the convict, one gives him habits of order and obedi*ence;
one makes the idler that he was diligent and active . . . with
time, he finds in the regular movement of the prison, in the manual
labours to which he is subjected . . . a certain remedy against the
wanderings of his imagination* (Berenger). Penal labour must be
seen as the very machinery that transforms the violent, agitated,
unreflective convict into a part that plays its role with perfect
regularity. The prison is not a workshop; it is, it must be of itself,
a machine whose convict-workers are both the cogs and the products;
it ‘occupies them continually, with the sole aim of filling their
moments. When the body is agitated, when the mind applies itself
to a particular object, importunate ideas depart, calm is born once
again in the soul* (Danjou, 180). If, in the final analysis, the work of
the prison has an economic effect, it is by producing individuals
mechanized according to the general norms of an industrial society:
4Work is the providence of the modern peoples; it replaces morality,
fills the gap left by beliefs and is regarded as the principle of all good.
Work must be the religion of the prisons. For a machine-society,
purely mechanical means of reform are required* (Faucher, 64; in
England the ‘treadmill’ and the pump provided a disciplinary
mechanization of the inmates, with no end product). The making
of machine-men, but also of proletarians; in effect, when one has
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only a ‘pair of arms for any good work’, one can live only ‘from
the product of one’s labour, through the practice of a profession or
from the product of the labour of others, by thieving’; but, although
the prison did not force offenders to work, it seems to have reintroduced
into its very institution and, obliquely, by means of taxation,
this levying by some on the labour of others: ‘The question of
idleness is the same as in society; it is from the labour of others that
the convicts live, if they do not exist from their own labour’ (Lucas,
II, 313-14). The labour by which the convict contributes to his
own needs turns the thief into a docile worker. This is the utility
of remuneration for penal labour; it imposes on the convict the
‘moral’ form of wages as the condition of his existence. Wages
inculcate the ‘love and habit’ of work (Lucas, II, 243); they give
those malefactors who do not know the difference between mine
and thine a sense of property - of ‘what one has earned by the sweat
of one’s brow’ (Danjou, 210 -n ; cf. also UAtelier, 6th year, no. 2,
November 1845); they so teach those who have lived in dissipation
the virtues of thrift and foresight (Lucas; a third of the prisoner’s
daily wages was set aside for the day when he left the prison); lastly,
by proposing a quantity of work to be carried out, they make it
possible to express quantitatively the convict’s zeal and the progress
ofhis improvement (Ducpetiaux, 30-31). The wages of penal labour
do not reward production; they function as a motive and measure
of individual transformation: it is a legal fiction, since it does not
represent the ‘free* granting of labour power, but an artifice that
is presumed to be effective in the techniques of correction.
What, then, is the use of penal labour? Not profit; nor even the
formation of a useful skill; but the constitution of a power relation,
an empty economic form, a schema o f individual submission and of
adjustment to a production apparatus.
The perfect image of prison labour was the women’s workshop
at Clairvaux; the silent precision of the human machinery is reminiscent
o f the regulated rigour of the convent: ‘On a throne, above
which is a crucifix, a sister is sitting; before her, arranged in two
rows, the prisoners are carrying out the task imposed on them, and,
as needlework accounts for almost all the work, the strictest silence
is constantly maintained. . . It seems that, in these halls, the very
air breathes penitence and expiation. One is carried back, as by a
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spontaneous movement, to the time of the venerable habits of this
ancient place, one remembers those voluntary penitents who shut
themselves up here in order to say farewell to the world*. Compare
this with the following; ‘Go into a cotton-mill; listen to the conversations
of the workers and the whistling of the machines. Is there
any contrast in the world more afflicting than the regularity and
predictability of these mechanical movements, compared with the
disorder of ideas and morals, produced by the contact of so many
men, women and children* (Faucher 20).
3. But prison goes beyond the mere privation of liberty in a
more important way. It becomes increasingly an instrument for the
modulation of the penalty; an apparatus which, through the execution
of the sentence with which it is entrusted, seems to have the
right, in part at least, to assume its principle. Of course, the prison
institution was not given this ‘right* in the nineteenth century or
even in the twentieth, except in a fragmentary form (through the
oblique way of release on licence, semi-release, the organization of
reformatories). But it should be noted that it was claimed very
early on by those responsible for prison administration, as the very
condition of the good functioning of a prison, and of its efficiency
in the task of reformation that the law itself had given it.
The same goes for the duration of the punishment; it makes it
possible to quantify the penalties exactly, to graduate them according
to circumstances and to give to legal punishment the more or less
explicit form of wages; but it also runs the risk of having no corrective
value, if it is fixed once and for all in the sentence. The length
of the penalty must not be a measurement of the ‘exchange value*
of the offence; it must be adjusted to the ‘useful’ transformation of
the inmate during his term of imprisonment. It is not a timemeasure,
but a time finalized. The form of the operation, rather
than the form of the wages. ‘Just as the prudent physician ends his
medication or continues it according to whether the patient has
or has not arrived at a perfect cure, so, in the first of these two
hypotheses, expiation ought to end with the complete reform of the
prisoner; for, in this case, all detention has become useless, and from
then on as inhuman to the reformed individual as it is vainly burdensome
for the State.’10 The correct duration of the penalty must be
calculated, therefore, not only according to the particular crime and
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its circumstances, but also according to the penalty itself as it takes
place in actual fact. This amounts to saying that, although the
penalty must be individualized, it is so not on the basis of the
individual-offender, the juridical subject of his act, the responsible
author of the offence, but on the basis of the individual punished,
the object of a supervised transformation, the individual in detention
inserted in the prison apparatus, modified by it or reacting to it. ‘It
is a question only of reforming the evil-doer. Once this reform has
come about, the criminal must return to society’ (C. Lucas, quoted
in the Gazette des tribunaux, 6 April 1837).
The quality and content of detention should no longer be determined
by the nature of the offence alone. The juridical gravity of a
crime does not at all have the value of a univocal sign for the
character of the convict, whether or not he is capable of reform. In
particular the crime-offence distinction, which the penal code
recognized in drawing the corresponding distinction between mere
imprisonment and imprisonment with hard labour, is not operational
in terms of reform. This was the almost universal opinion
expressed by the directors of the maisons centrales, during an inquiry
carried out by the ministry in 1836: ‘The minor offenders are generally
the most vicious. . . Among the criminals, one meets many
men who have given in to the Violence of their passions and to the
needs of a large family.’ ‘The behaviour of criminals is much better
than that of the minor offenders; the former are more submissive,
harder-working than the latter, who, in general, are pickpockets,
debauchees and idlers.’11 Hence the idea that punitive rigour must
not be in direct proportion to the penal importance of the offence nor
determined once and for all.
As an operation of correction, imprisonment has its own requirements
and dangers. It is its effects that must determine its stages, its
temporary increases, its successive reductions, in severity; what
Charles Lucas called the ‘mobile classification of moralities’. The
progressive system applied at Geneva since 1825 was often advocated
in France (Fresnel, 29-31). It took the form, for example, of
three areas: a trial area for prisoners in general, a punishment area
and a reward area for those who had embarked on the way of reform
(Lucas, II, 440). Or it took the form of four phases: a period of
intimidation (deprivation of work and of any internal or external
*45
Prison
relations); a period of work (isolation, but work which, after the
phase of forced idleness, would be welcomed as a benefit); a regime
of moralization (more or less frequent ‘lectures’ from the directors
and official visitors); a period of work in common (Duras). Although
the principle of the penalty was certainly a legal decision, its
administration, its quality and its rigours must belong to an autonomous
mechanism that supervises the effects of punishment within the
very apparatus that produces them. A whole regime of punishments
and rewards that is a way not simply of gaining respect for the prison
regulations, but of making the action of the prison on the inmates
effective. The legal authority itself came to accept this: ‘One should
not be surprised, said the supreme court of appeal, when consulted
on the subject of a bill concerning the prisons, at the idea of granting
rewards, which might consist either for the most part in money, or
in a better diet, or even in a reduction of the duration of the penalty.
If anything can awaken in the minds of convicts the notions of good
and evil, bring them to moral reflections and raise them to some
extent in their own eyes, it is the possibility of obtaining some
reward’ (Lucas, II, 441-2).
And it must be admitted that the legal authorities can have no
immediate control over all these procedures that rectify the penalty
as it proceeds. It is a question, in effect, of measures that by
definition can intervene only after the sentence and can bear only on
something other than the offences. Those who administer detention
must therefore have an indispensable autonomy, when it comes to
the question of individualizing and varying the application o f the
penalty: supervisors, a prison governor, a chaplain or an instructor
are more capable of exercising this corrective function than those
who hold the penal power. It is their judgement (understood as
observation, diagnosis, characterization, information, differential
classification) and not a verdict in the form of an attribution of guilt,
that must serve as a support for this internal modulation o f the
penalty - for its mitigation or even its interruption. When in 1846,
Bonneville presented his project of release on licence, he defined it
as ‘the right of the administration, with the previous approval of the
legal authority, to place in temporary liberty, after a sufficient period
of expiation, the completely reformed convict, on condition that he
will be brought back into prison on the slightest well-founded
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complaint’ (Bonneville, 5). All this ‘arbitrariness’ which, in the
old penal system, enabled the judges to modulate the penalty
and the princes to ignore it if they so wished, all this arbitrariness,
which the modem codes have withdrawn from the judicial power,
has been gradually reconstituted on the side of the power that
administers and supervises punishment. It is the sovereignty of
knowledge possessed by the warder: ‘He is a veritable magistrate
called upon to reign as sovereign in the prison . . . who, in order not
to fall short in his mission, must combine the most eminent virtue
with a profound knowledge of mankind’ (Berenger).
And so we arrive at a principle, clearly formulated by Charles
Lucas, which, although it marks the virtual beginning of modem
penal functioning, very few jurists would dare to accept today
without some hesitation; let us call it the Declaration of Carceral
Independence - in it is claimed the right to be a power that not only
possesses administrative autonomy, but is also a part of punitive
sovereignty. This affirmation of the rights of the prison posits as a
principle: that criminal judgement is an arbitrary unity; that it must
be broken down; that the writers of the penal codes were correct in
distinguishing the legislative level (which classifies the acts and attributes
penalties to them) and the judicial level (which passes the
sentences); that the task today is'to analyse in turn this later judicial
level; that one should distinguish in it what is properly judicial
(assess not so much acts as agents, measure ‘the intentionalities that
give human acts so many different moralities’, and therefore rectify
if it can the assessments of the legislator); and to give autonomy to
‘penitentiary judgement’, which is perhaps the most important; in
relation to it the assessment of the court is merely a ‘way of prejudging’,
for the morality of the agent can be assessed ‘only when
put to the test. The judge, therefore, requires in turn a compulsory
and rectifying supervision of his assessments; and this supervision
is that provided by the penitentiary prison* (Lucas, II, 418-22).
One may speak, therefore, of an excess or a series of excesses on
the part of imprisonment in terms of legal detention - of the ‘carceral*
in relation to the ‘judicial". Now this excess was observed very
early on, from the very birth of the prison, either in the form of real
practices, or in the form of projects. It did not come later, as a
secondary effect. The great carceral machinery was bound up with
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the very functioning of the prison. The sign o f this autonomy is
very apparent in the ‘useless* acts of violence perpettated by warders
or in the despotism of an administration that has all the privileges of
an enclosed community. Its roots lie elsewhere: precisely in the fact
that the prison is required to be ‘useful*, that the deprivation o f
liberty - that juridical levying on an ideal property - must, from
the outset, have exercised a positive technical role, operating transformations
on individuals. And, for this operation, the carceral
apparatus has recourse to three great schemata: the politico-moral
schema of individual isolation and hierarchy; the economic model
of force applied to compulsory work; the technico-medical model
of cure and normalization. The cell, the workshop, the hospital.
The margin by which the prison exceeds detention is filled in fact
by techniques of a disciplinary type. And this disciplinary addition
to the juridical is what, in short, is called the ‘penitentiary*.
This addition was not accepted easily. To begin with, there was
the question of principle: the penalty must be nothing more than
the deprivation of liberty; like our present rulers, but with all the
freshness of his language, Decazes says: ‘The law must follow the
convicted man into the prison where it has sent him* (Decazes). But
very soon - and this is a characteristic fact - these debates were to
become a battle for appropriating control of this additional penitentiary
element; the judges were to demand a right of inspection
over the carceral mechanisms: The moral enlightenment of the
inmates requires innumerable cooperators; it is only by visits of
inspection, commissions of surveillance and charity associations that
this may be accomplished. Auxiliaries, then, are needed and it is the
judges who must provide them* (Ferrus, viii; an ordinance of 1847
had set up commissions of surveillance). From this period, the
penitentiary order had become sufficiently well established for there
to be no question of dismantling it; the question was how to get
control of it. This gave rise to the figure of the judge obsessed by a
desire for prison. A century later, this was to give birth to a bastard,
yet deformed child: the magistrate entrusted with the determination
of penalties.
But, if the penitentiary, in so far as it went well beyond mere
detention, was able not only to establish itself, but to entrap the
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whole of penal justice and to imprison the judges themselves, it was
because it was able to introduce criminal justice into relations of
knowledge that have since become its infinite labyrinth.
The prison, the place where the penalty is carried out, is also the
place of observation of punished individuals. This takes two forms:
surveillance, of course, but also knowledge of each inmate, of his
behaviour, his deeper states of mind, his gradual improvement; the
prisons must be conceived as places for the formation of clinical
knowledge about the convicts; ‘the penitentiary system cannot be
an apriori conception; it is an induction of the social state. There are
moral diseases, as well as breakdowns in health, where the treatment
depends on the site and direction of the illness’ (Faucher, 6). This
involves two essential mechanisms. It must be possible to hold the
prisoner under permanent observation; every report that can be
made about him must be recorded and computed. The theme of the
Panopticon - at once surveillance and observation, security and
knowledge, individualization and totalization, isolation and transparency
- found in the prison its privileged locus of realization.
Although the panoptic procedures, as concrete forms of the exercise
of power, have become extremely widespread, at least in their less
concentrated forms, it was really only in the penitentiary institutions
that Bentham’s utopia could be fully expressed in a material
form. In the 1830s, the Panopticon became the architectural programme
of most prison projects. It was the most direct way of
expressing ‘the intelligence of discipline in stone’ (Lucas, I, 69); of
making architecture transparent to the administration of power;12
of making it possible to substitute for force or other violent constraints
the gentle efficiency of total surveillance; of ordering space
according to the recent humanization of the codes and the new
penitentiary theory: ‘The authorities, on the one hand, and the
architect, on the other, must know, therefore, whether the prisons
are to be based on the principle of milder penalties or on a system
of reforming convicts, in accordance with legislation which, by
getting to the root cause of the people’s vices, becomes a principle
that will regenerate thevirtues that they must practice’ (Baltard, 4-5)*
In short, its task was to constitute a prison-machine13 with a cell
of visibility in which the inmate will find himself caught as ‘in the
glass house of the Greek philosopher’ (Harou-Romain, 8) and a
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central point from which a permanent gaze may control prisoners
and staff. Around these two requirements, several variations were
possible: the Benthamite Panopticon in its strict form, the semicircle,
the cross-plan, the star shape. In the midst of all these discussions,
the Minister of the Interior in 1841 sums up the fundamental
principles: ‘The central inspection hall is the pivot of the
system. Without a central point of inspection, surveillance ceases
to be guaranteed, continuous and general; for it is impossible to
have complete trust in the activity, zeal and intelligence of the
warder who immediately supervises the cells.. . The architect must
therefore bring all his attention to bear on this object; it is a question
both of discipline and economy. The more accurate and easy the
surveillance, the less need will there be to seek in the strength of the
building guarantees against attempted escape and communication
between the inmates. But surveillance will be perfect if from a central
hall the director or head-warder sees, without moving and without
being seen, not only the entrances of all the cells and even the inside
of most of them when the unglazed door is open, but also the
warders guarding the prisoners on every floor... With the formula
of circular or semi-circular prisons, it would be possible to see from
a single centre all the prisoners in their cells and the warders in the
inspection galleries’ (Ducatel, 9).
But the penitentiary Panopticon was also a system of individualizing
and permanent documentation. The same year in which
variants of the Benthamite schema were recommended for the
building of prisons, the system of ‘moral accounting’ was made
compulsory: an individual report of a uniform kind in every prison,
on which the governor or head-warder, the chaplain and the
instructor had to fill in their observations on each inmate: ‘It is in a
way the vade mecum of prison administration, making it possible to
assess each case, each circumstance and, consequently, to know
what treatment to apply to each prisoner individually’ (Ducpetiaux,
56-7). Many other, much more complete, systems of recording were
planned or tried out (cf., for example, Gregory, i99ff; GrelletWammy,
23-5 and 199-203). The overall aim was to make the
prison a place for the constitution of a body of knowledge that
would regulate the exercise of penitentiary practice. The prison has
not only to know the decision of the judges and to apply it in terms
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Complete and austere institutions
of the established regulations: it has to extract unceasingly from the
inmate a body o f knowledge that will make it possible to transform
the penal measure into a penitentiary operation; which will make* of
the penalty required by the offence a modification o f the inmate that
will be of use to society. The autonomy o f the carceral regime and
the knowledge that it creates make it possible to increase the utility
of the penalty, which the code had made the very principle o f its
punitive philosophy: ‘The governor must not lose sight o f a single
inmate, because in whatever part of the prison the inmate is to be
found, whether he is entering or leaving, or whether he is staying
there, the governor must also justify the motives for his staying in
a particular classification or for his movement from one to another.
He is a veritable accountant. Each inmate is for him, in the sphere
of individual education, a capital invested with penitentiary interest*
(Lucas, II, 449-50). As a highly efficient technology, penitentiary
practice produces a return on the capital invested in the penal system
and in the building of heavy prisons.
Similarly, the offender becomes an individual to know. This
demand for knowledge was not, in the first instance, inserted into
the legislation itself, in order to provide substance for the sentence
and to determine the true degree o f guilt. It is as a convict, a$ a point
of application for punitive mechanisms, that the offender is constituted
himself as the object of possible knowledge.
But this implies that the penitentiary apparatus, with the whole
technological programme that accompanies it, brings about a
curious substitution: from the hands of justice, it certainly receives
a convicted person; but what it must apply itself to is not, of course,
the offence, nor even exactly the offender, but a rather different
object, one defined by variables which at the outset at least were not
taken into account in the sentence, for they were relevant only for
a corrective technology. This other character, whom the penitentiary
apparatus substitutes for the convicted offender, is the
delinquent.
The delinquent is to be distinguished from the offender by the
fact that it is not so much his act as his life that is relevant in characterizing
him. The penitentiary operation, if it is to be a genuine
re-education, must become the sum total existence o f the delinquent,
making o f the prison a sort of artificial and coercive theatre in which
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his life will be examined from top to bottom. The legal punishment
bears upon an act; the punitive technique on a life; it falls to this
punitive technique, therefore, to reconstitute all the sordid detail of
a life in the form of knowledge, to fill in the gaps of that knowledge
and to act upon it by a practice of compulsion. It is a biographical
knowledge and a technique for correcting individual lives. The
observation of the delinquent ‘should go back not only to the
circumstances, but also to the causes of his crime; they must be
sought in the story of his life, from the triple point of view of
psychology, social position and upbringing, in order to discover the
dangerous proclivities of the first, the harmful predispositions of the
second and the bad antecedents of the third. This biographical
investigation is an essential part of the preliminary investigation for
the classification of penalities before it becomes a condition for the
classification of moralities in the penitentiary system. It must
accompany the convict from the court to the prison, where the
governor’s task is not only to receive it, but also to complete, supervise
and rectify its various factors during the period of detention*
(Lucas, II, 440-42). Behind the offender, to whom the investigation
of the facts may attribute responsibility for an offence, stands the
delinquent whose slow formation is shown in a biographical
investigation. The introduction of the ‘biographical* is important
in the history of penality. Because it establishes the ‘criminal’ as
existing before the crime and even outside it. And, for this reason,
a psychological causality, duplicating the juridical attribution of
responsibility, confuses its effects. A t this point one enters the
‘criminological’ labyrinth from which we have certainly not yet
emerged: any determining cause, because it reduces responsibility,
marks the author of the offence with a criminality all the more formidable
and demands penitentiary measures that are all the more
strict. As the biography of the criminal duplicates in penal practice
the analysis of circumstances used in gauging the crime, so one sees
penal discourse and psychiatric discourse crossing each other’s
frontiers; and there, at their point of junction, is formed the notion
of the ‘dangerous* individual, which makes it possible to draw up a
network of causality in terms of an entire biography and to present
a verdict of punishment-correction.14
The delinquent is also to be distinguished from the offender in
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that he is not only the author of his acts (the author responsible in
terms of certain criteria of free, conscious will), but is linked to his
offence by a whole bundle of complex threads (instincts, drives,
tendencies, character). The penitentiary technique bears not on the
relation between author and crime, but on the criminars affinity with
his crime. The delinquent, the strange manifestation of an overall
phenomenon of criminality, is to be found in quasi-natural classes,
each endowed with its own characteristics and requiring a specific
treatment, what Marquet-Wasselot called in 1841 the‘ethnography
of the prisons*,• ‘The convicts are . . . another people within the
same people; with its own habits, instincts, morals’ (MarquetWasselot,
9). We are still very close here to the ‘picturesque*
descriptions of the world of the malefactors - an old tradition that
goes back a long way and gained new vigour in the early nineteenth
century, at a time when the perception of another form of life was
being articulated upon that of another class and another human
species. A zoology of social sub-species and an ethnology of the
civilizations of malefactors, with their own rites and language, was
beginning to emerge in a parody form. But an attempt was also
being made to constitute a new objectivity in which the criminal
belongs to a typology that is both natural and deviant. Delinquency,
a pathological gap in the human species, may be analysed as morbid
syndromes or as great teratological forms. With Ferrus*s classification,
we probably have one of the first conversions of the old
‘ethnography* of crime into a systematic typology of delinquents.
The analysis is slender, certainly, but it reveals quite clearly the
principle that delinquency must be specified in terms not so much
of the law as of the norm. There are three types of convict; there are
those who are endowed ‘with intellectual resources above the average
of intelligence that we haveestablished*, butwho have beenperverted
either by the ‘tendencies of their organization* and a ‘native predisposition’,
or by ‘pernicious logic*, an ‘iniquitous morality*, a
‘dangerous attitude to social duties*. Those that belong to this category
require isolation day and night, solitary exercise, and, when one
is forced to bring them into contact with the others, they should
wear ‘a light mask made of metal netting, of the kind used for stonecutting
or fencing*. The second category is made up of ‘vicious, stupid
or passive convicts, who have been led into evil by indifference to
*53
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either shame or honour, through cowardice, that is to say, laziness,
and because of a lack of resistance to bad incitements’; the regime
suitable to themis not so much that ofpunishment as ofeducation, and
if possible of mutual education: isolation at night, work in common
during the day, conversations permitted provided they are conducted
aloud, reading incommon, followed bymutual questioning, forwhich
rewards may be given. Lastly, there are the ‘inept or incapable
convicts’, who are ‘rendered incapable, by an incomplete organization,
of any occupation requiring considered effort and consistent
will, and who are therefore incapable of competing in work with
intelligent workers and who, having neither enough education to
know their social duties, nor enough intelligence to understand this
fact or to struggle against their personal instincts, are led to evil by
their very incapacity. For these, solitude would merely encourage
their inertia; they must therefore live in common, but in such a way
as to form small groups, constantly stimulated by collective
operations, and subjected to rigid surveillance* (Ferrus, i82ff and
278ff). Thus a ‘positive’ knowledge of the delinquents and their
species, very different from the juridical definition of offences and
their circumstances, is gradually established; but this knowledge is
also distinct from the medical knowledge that makes it possible to
introduce the insanity of the individual and, consequently, to efface
the criminal character of the act. Ferrus states the principle quite
clearly: ‘Considered as a whole, criminals are nothing less than
madmen; it would be unjust to the latter to confuse them with
consciously perverted men.’ The task of this new knowledge is to
define the act ‘scientifically’ qua offence and above all the individual
qua delinquent. Criminology is thus made possible.
The correlative of penal justice may well be the offender, but the
correlative of the penitentiary apparatus is someone other; this is the
delinquent, a biographical unity, a kernel of danger, representing a
type of anomaly. And, although it is true that to a detention that
deprives of liberty, as defined by law, the prison added the additional
element of the penitentiary, this penitentiary element introduced
in turn a third character who slipped between the individual
condemned by the law and the individual who carries out this law.
At the point that marks the disappearance of the branded, dismembered,
burnt, annihilated body of the tortured criminal, there
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Complete and austere institutions
appeared the body of the prisoner, duplicated by the individuality
of the ‘delinquent’, by the little soul of the criminal, which the very
apparatus of punishment fabricated as a point of application of the
power to punish and as the object of what is still called today
penitentiary science. It is said that the prison fabricated delinquents;
it is true that it brings back, almost inevitably, before the courts those
who have been sent there. But it also fabricates them in the sense
that it has introduced into the operation of the law and the offence,
the judge and the offender, the condemned man and the executioner,
the non-corporal reality of the delinquency that links them together
and, for a century and a half, has caught them in the same trap.
The penitentiary technique and the delinquent are in a sense twin
brothers. It is not true that it was the discovery of the delinquent
through a scientific rationality that introduced into our old prisons
the refinement of penitentiary techniques. Nor is it true that the
internal elaboration of penitentiary methods has finally brought to
light the ‘objective* existence o f a delinquency that the abstraction
and rigidity of the law were unable to perceive. They appeared
together, the one extending from die other, as a technological
ensemble that forms and fragments the object to which it applies its
instruments. And it is this delinquency, formed in the foundations
of the judicial apparatus, among the ‘basses ceuvres\ the servile tasks,
from which justice averts its gaze, out of the shame it feels in punishing
those it condemns, it is this delinquency that now comes to
haunt the untroubled courts and the majesty of the laws; it is this
delinquency that must be known, assessed, measured, diagnosed,
treated when sentences are passed. It is now this delinquency, this
anomaly, this deviation, this potential danger, this illness, this form
of existence, that must be taken into account when the codes are
rewritten. Delinquency is the vengeance of the prison on justice.
It is a revenge formidable enough to leave the judge speechless.
It is at this point that the criminologists raise their voices.
But we must not forget that the prison, that concentrated and
austere figure of all the disciplines, is not an endogenous element in
the penal system as defined at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. The theme of a punitive society and of a general
semio-technique of punishment that has sustained the ‘ideological’
*55
Prison
codes - Beccarian or Benthamite - did not itself give rise to the
universal use of the prison. This prison came from elsewhere —from
the mechanisms proper to a disciplinary power. Now, despite this
heterogeneity, the mechanisms and effects of the prison have spread
right through modern criminal justice; delinquency and the delinquents
have become parasites on it through and through. One must
seek the reason for this formidable ‘efficiency’ of the prison. But one
thing may be noted at the outset: the penal justice defined in the
eighteenth century by the reformers traced two possible but divergent
lines of objectification of the criminal: the first was the series
o f ‘monsters’, moral or political, who had fallen outside the social
pact; the second was that of the juridical subject rehabilitated by
punishment. Now the ‘delinquent’ makes it possible to join the two
lines and to constitute under the authority of medicine, psychology
or criminology, an individual in whom the offender o f the law and
the object of a scientific technique are superimposed - or almost one
upon the other. That the grip of the prison on the penal system
should not have led to a violent reaction of rejection is no doubt
due to many reasons. One of these is that, in fabricating delinquency,
it gave to criminal justice a unitary field of objects, authenticated
by the ‘sciences’, and thus enabled it to function on a general
horizon of ‘truth*.
The prison, that darkest region in the apparatus of justice, is the
place where the power to punish, which no longer dares to manifest
itself openly, silently organizes a field of objectivity in which
punishment will be able to function openly as treatment and the
sentence be inscribed among the discourses of knowledge. It is
understandable that justice should have adopted so easily a prison
that was not the offspring of its own thoughts. Justice certainly owed
the prison this recognition.
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2. Illegalities and delinquency
From the point of view of the law, detention may be a mere deprivation
of liberty. But the imprisonment that performs this function
has always involved a technical project. The transition from the
public execution, with its spectacular rituals, its art mingled with the
ceremony of pain, to the penalties of prisons buried in architectural
masses and guarded by the secrecy of administrations, is not a
transition to an undifferentiated, abstract, confused penality; it is the
transition from one art of punishing to another, no less skilful one.
It is a technical mutation. From this transition spring a symptom and
a symbol: the replacement, in 1837, of the chain-gang by the police
carriage.
The chain-gang, a tradition that went back to the time of the
galley slaves, was still surviving under the July monarchy. The
importance it seems to have assumed as a spectacle at the beginning
of the nineteenth century may be bound up with the fact that it
combined in a single manifestation the two modes of punishment:
the way to detention unfolded as a ceremonial of torture. (Faucher
remarked that the chain-gang was a popular spectacle ‘especially
since the scaffolds were almost entirely abolished’.) The accounts of
the ‘last chain-gangs’ —those that crossed France in the summer of
1836 —and of its scandals allow us to rediscover this functioning, so
alien to the rules of ‘penitentiary science*. It began with a scaffold
ritual: the fixing of iron collars and chains in the courtyard of
Bicetre prison. The convict’s neck was thrown back upon a block;
but this time the art of the executioner was to strike without crushing
the head - an inverted skill that knew how not to deliver the
death blow. ‘The courtyard of Bicetre displays its instruments of
torture: several rows of chains with their iron-collars. The artoupans
(head-warders), who serve as temporary blacksmiths, arrange the
*57
Prison
block and hammer. Around the bars of the wall walk are stuck all
those heads, wearing a gloomy or bold expression, which the operator
is to rivet. Higher up, at every storey of the prison, one sees legs
and arms dangling through the bars of the cells, as at some bazaar
of human flesh; these are the prisoners who have come to assist at
the toilet of their comrades of the day before. . . Here they are in
the attitude of sacrifice. They are stitting on the ground, coupled at
random by the waist; the chains they must carry, each weighing
eight pounds, rest heavily on their knees. The operator inspects
them, measuring heads and adapting the enormous inch-thick
collars. It takes three men to rivet an iron-collar; the first holds up
the block, the second holds the two branches of the iron-collar
together and, with his two outstretched arms, secures the patient’s
head; the third strikes with repeated blows and flattens the bolt'
under his huge hammer. Each blow shakes the head and the body.
. . . Indeed, one does not think of the danger that the victim might
face if the hammer missed its mark; this impression is nullified or
rather defaced before the profound impression of horror one
experiences in contemplating one of God’s creatures in such a state
of abasement.’1 It also had the dimension of a public spectacle;
according to the Gazette des tribunaux, over 100,000 people watched
the chain-gang leave Paris on 19 July: ‘The descent from the Courtille
to the Mardi Gras. . .’ Order and wealth came to watch from a
distance the passing of the great nomadic tribe that had been put in
chains, that other species, 'the race apart that has the privilege of
populating the convict-ships and prisons’. The spectators of the
lower classes, as at the time of the public executions, kept up their
ambiguous exchanges with the convicts, alternating insults, threats,
words of encouragement, blows, signs of hate or complicity. Something
violent aroused and accompanied the procession along its
entire course: anger against a justice that was too severe or too
indulgent; shouts against the detested criminals; movements in
favour of prisoners one knew and greeted; confrontations with the
police: 'During the whole journey from the Fontainebleau barrier,
groups of enraged spectators hurled insults at Delacollonge: Down
with the priest, they said, down with that hateful man; he should
have got his deserts. Without the energy and firmness of the municipal
guard, serious disorders could have taken place. At Vaugirard,
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Illegalities and delinquency
it was the women who were the most angry. They cried: Down with
the wicked priest! Down with the monster Delacollonge! The
police inspectors of Montrouge and Vaugirard and several mayors
and deputy-mayors ran the gauntlet in their attempt to enforce the
decision of the courts. Shortly before reaching Issy, Frangois,
recognizing M. Allard and the officers of the brigade, threw his
wooden bowl at them. It was then remembered that the families of
some of the former comrades of the convict lived at Ivry. From that
moment the police inspectors spread out along the route and followed
the convicts’ cart closely. Those of the Paris gang all threw
their wooden bowls at the heads of the police, some of whom were
struck. At that moment, the crowd reacted strongly. They started to
fight amongst themselves’ (Gazette des tribunauxy 20 July 1836).
Between Bicdtre and Sevres a considerable number of houses were
looted as the chain-gang passed by {La Phalange, 1 August 1836),
In this festival of the departing convicts, there was something of
the rites of the scapegoat that is struck as it is chased away, something
of the festival of fools, in which the reversal of roles is practised,
something of the old ceremonies of the scaffold, in which the
truth must burst forth in the full light of day, something, too, of
those popular spectacles, in which famous characters or traditional
types were recognized: the play'of truth and infamy, the procession
of notoriety and shame, invective against the guilty who have been
unmasked and, on the other hand, the joyous avowal of crimes. One
sought to rediscover the face of the criminals who had had their
glory; broadsheets recalled the crimes of those one saw pass; newspapers
provided their names and recounted their lives; sometimes
they provided a description of their persons and dress, so that their
identity might not pass unnoticed: like programmes for spectators.2
People also came to examine different types of criminals, trying to
decide, according to facial appearance or dress, the ‘profession’ of
the convict, whether he was a murderer or thief: it was a game of
masquerades and marionnettes, which was also, for more educated
eyes, something of an empirical ethnography of crime. From spectacles
on trestles to Gall’s phrenology, according to the milieu to
which one belonged, one practised the semiologies of crime at one’s
disposal: ‘Physiognomies are as varied as clothes: here a majestic
head, aMurillo face; there a vicious face, framed with thick eyebrows,
*59
Prison
which convey all the energy of the determined villain... Elsewhere
the head of a Fagin emerges from the body of an urchin. Here are
the smooth, feminine features of accomplices; there the glazed,
debauched faces of teachers/3 The convicts themselves responded
to this game, displaying their crimes and enacting their misdeeds:
this was one of the functions of tattooing, a vignette of their deeds
or their fate: ‘They bear the insignia of their crimes, either a guillotine
tattooed on their left arms, or on their chests a dagger plunged
into a bleeding heart.5As they passed, they mimed the scenes of their
crimes, mocking the judges or the police, boasting of as yet undiscovered
deeds ofwickedness. Francois, Lacenaire’sformer accomplice,
said that he had invented a method for killing a man without
making him cry out and without spilling a single drop of blood.
The great travelling fair of crime had its tumblers and its mummers,
irfwhich the comic affirmation of truth answered curiosity and invective.
A whole series of scenes, in this summer of 1836, took place
around Delacollonge: his crime (he had cut his pregnant mistress
into pieces) was made much more spectacular by the fact that he
was a priest; this fact had also saved him from the scaffold. It seems
that he aroused considerable hate among the people. Earlier, in the
cart that had brought him to Paris in June 1836, he had been insulted
and had been unable to hold back his tears; however, he had
expressed a wish not to be conveyed in a closed carriage, believing
that the humiliation formed part of his punishment. As he left
Paris, 'one cannot imagine the virtuous indignation, the moral anger
and base actions unleashed by the crowd on this man; he was
covered with earth and mud; stones and insults rained down upon
him from the furious bystanders. . . It was an explosion of unparalleled
rage; the women above all, like veritable furies, displayed
an unbelievable exaltation of hate* (La Phalange, 1 August 1836).
For his protection, his clothes had to be changed. Certain spectators
were misled by this and thought that Francois was he. Francois
entered into the spirit of the game and accepted the role; but, to the
comedy of the crime that he did not commit, he added that of the
priest that he was not; to the account of ‘his’ crime, he added the
prayers and broad gestures of blessing directed at the jeering crowd.
A few steps away, the real Delacollonge, ‘who seemed like a martyr",
was undergoing the double affront of the insults that he was not
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Illegalities and delinquency
receiving, but which were addressed to him, and the ridicule that
brought back, under the appearances o f another criminal, the priest
that he was and would have liked to have concealed. His passion
was laid out before his eyes, by a buffoon murderer to whom he was
chained.
In every town it passed through, the chain-gang brought its
festival with it; it was a saturnalia of punishment, a penalty turned
into a privilege. And, by a very curious tradition which seems to
have escaped the ordinary rites of the public execution, it aroused
in the convict not so much the compulsory marks of repentance as
the explosion of a mad joy that denied the punishment. T o the
ornaments of the collar and chain, the convicts themselves added
ribbons, braided straw, flowers or precious stuffs. The chain was the
round and the dance; it was also a coupling, a forced marriage in
forbidden love. Wedding, festival and rite in chains: ‘They ran in
front of the chains, bunches of flowers in their hands, ribbons or
straw tassels decorated their caps and the most skilful made crested
helmets. . . Others wore open-work stockings and clogs or a
fashionable waistcoat, under a workman’s smock.’4 And throughout
the evening that followed the riveting, the chain-gang formed a
great merry-go-round, which went round and round the courtyard
of Bicetre: ‘W oe betide the warders if the chain-gang recognized
them; they were enveloped and drowned in its rings; the prisoners
remained masters of the field of battle until nightfall/5 The convicts’
Sabbath corresponded to the ceremonial of justice through the
spectacle it invented. It inverted the splendours, the order of power
and its signs, the forms of pleasure. But something of the political
Sabbath was not far away. One would have had to be very deaf
indeed not to hear something of these new accents. The convicts
sang marching songs, which rapidly became famous and were
repeated everywhere for a long time after. No doubt an echo was
to be found in them of the complaints that the broadsheets attributed
to criminals - an affirmation of the crime, a black heroization, an
evocation of terrible punishments and of the general hate that
surrounded them: ‘Renown, let the trumpets blow for us. . .
Courage, children, let us submit without fear to the terrible fate
that hangs over our heads. . . Our chains are heavy, but we will
bear them. For the convicts, no voice rises to say: relieve them of
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their suffering/ Yet there was in those collective songs a totally new
tonality; the moral code, which most o f the old complaints obeyed,
was reversed. Instead of bringing remorse, torture sharpened pride;
the justice that brought the sentence was rejected, and the crowd
that came to witness what it believed to be repentance or humiliadon
was scorned: ‘So far from our homes, we sometimes moan. Our
stern brows will make our judges blench. . . Avid of misfortune
you turn your eyes upon us, hoping to find a blighted, humiliated,
tearful race. But there is pride in our eyes.’ One also finds the
assertion that the convict’s life with its companionship has pleasures
that liberty cannot know. ‘With time let us link our pleasures. Under
lock and key feast days will be bom. . . Pleasures are turncoats.
They will flee the executioners; they follow where the song leads/
And, above all, the present order will not last forever; not only will
the convicts be freed and resume their rights, but their accusers will
take their place. Between the criminals and their judges, the day of
the great reverse judgement will come: ‘The contempt of men
belongs to us convicts. The gold they worship is also ours. One day,
this gold will pass into our hands. W e will buy it with our lives.
Others will seize these chains that today you make us bear; they will
become slaves. As we break out of our shackles, the star of liberty
will shine for us. . . Farewell, for we brave both your chains and
your laws.’6 The pious theatre imagined by the broadsheets, in
which the convict exhorted the crowd never to imitate him, was
becoming a threatening scene in which the crowd was asked to
choose between the barbarity of the executioners, the injustice of the
judges and the misfortune of convicts who, though defeated today,
would triumph one day.
The great spectacle of the chain-gang was linked with the old
tradition of the public execution; it was also linked with that multiple
representation of crime that gave rise at the time to newspapers,
broadsheets, mountebanks and street theatres;7 but it was also linked
with the confrontations and struggles whose first rumblings it conveyed;
it gave them a kind of symbolic outlet: though vanquished
by the law, the army of disorder promised to return; what the
violence of order had driven away would overthrow that order and
bring liberty on its return. ‘I was horrified to see so many sparks
reappear in those ashes* (Le Dernier jour d’un condamne). The
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Illegalities and delinquency
agitation that had always surrounded the public executions now
found an echo in precise threats. One can see why the July monarchy
decided to abolish the chain-gang for the same - but more pressing reasons
that brought about, in the eighteenth century, the abolition
of the public executions: ‘It is no part of our morality to treat men
in this way; one must avoid providing in the towns that the convoy
passes through so hideous a spectacle, which, in any case, teaches
the population nothing* (Gazette des tribuneaux, 19 July 1836). It
was necessary, therefore, to break with these public rites; to subject
the movements of convicts to the same mutation as the punishments
themselves; and to bring them, too, under the veil of administrative
decency.
But what, in June 1837, was adopted’to replace the chain-gang was
not the simple covered cart, which had been suggested at one time,
but a machine that had been very meticulously designed: a carriage
conceived as a moving prison, a mobile equivalent ofthe Panopticon.
A central corridor divided it along its entire length: on either side
were six cells in which the two rows of convicts sat facing one
another. Their feet were placed in rings that were lined on the inside
with wool and linked together by chains eighteen inches long; the
legs were secured in metal knee-guards. The convict sat on a kind
of ‘zinc and oak funnel that emptied onto the public way\ The cell
had no window onto the outside; it was completely lined with sheet
iron; only a ventilator, also of sheet-iron, with holes pierced in it,
allowed a ‘suitable flow of air\ On the corridor side, the door of
each cell was provided with a hatch, divided into two compartments:
one for food, the other, covered by a grill, for surveillance. ‘The
opening and the oblique direction of the hatches were so arranged
that the warders had the prisoners constantly in view and heard
every word they spoke, though the prisoners themselves were
unable to see or hear one another/ In this way, ‘the same carriage
may, without the slightest inconvenience, contain at one and the
same time a convict and a simple offender, men and women, children
and adults* Whatever the length of the journey, all would be
brought to their destination without having been able to perceive
one another or to speak to one another/ Lastly, the constant surveillance
of the two warders, who were each armed with a small oak
club, ‘with thick nails of crushed diamond1 made it possible to
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operate a whole system of punishments in conformity with the
internal regulation of the carriage: a diet of bread and water, thumbscrews,
lack of a cushion that would allow one to sleep, chains on
both arms. ‘Any reading other than that of books of morality is
forbidden.’
If only for its mildness and speed, this machine ‘would have done
honour to the sensibility of its author’; but its merit lay in the fact
that it was a veritable penitentiary carriage. By its external effects,
it had a quite Benthamite perfection: ‘In the rapid passage of this
mobile prison which, on its dark, silent flanks, bears no other
inscription than the following words - Transport of Convicts there
is something mysterious and gloomy, which Bentham requires
in the carrying out of criminal sentences and which leaves in the
minds of onlookers a more salutary and lasting impression than the
sight of those cynical and joyous travellers’ (Gazette des trihunaux,
15 June 1837). It also had internal effects; even in a journey lasting
only a few days (during which the inmates had not been detached
for a single moment), it functioned as an apparatus of correction.
One emerged from it astonishingly calm: ‘From a moral point of
view, this transportation,, which lasts no more than seventy-two
hours, is a terrible torture whose effects on the prisoner seem to be
lasting.’ The convicts themselves support this view: ‘In the cell
carriage, when you don’t sleep, you can only think. And when I
thought, I came to regret what I had done; in the end, you see, I
would have been afraid to mend my ways and I don’t want to.’8
The panoptic carriage had only a short history. Yet the way in
which it replaced the chain-gang and the reasons for this replacement
recapitulated the whole process by which in eighty years penal
detention replaced public execution as a calculated technique for
altering individual behaviour. The cell-carriage was an apparatus of
reform. What replaced the public execution was not a massive
enclosure, it was a carefully articulated disciplinary mechanism - at
least in principle.
For the prison, in its reality and visible effects, was denounced at
once as the great failure of penal justice. In a very strange way, the
history of imprisonment does not obey a chronology in which one
sees, in orderly succession, the establishment of a penality of deten­
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tion, then the recognition of its failure; then the slow rise of projects
of reform, seeming to culminate in the more or less coherent
definition of penitentiary technique; then the implementation of this
project; lastly, the recognition of its successes or its failure. There
was in fact a telescoping or in any case a different distribution of
these elements. And, just as the project of a corrective technique
accompanied the principle of punitive detention, the critique of the
prison and its methods appeared very early on, in those same years
1820-45; indeed, it was embodied in a number of formulations
which - figures apart - are today repeated almost unchanged.
- Prisons do not diminish the crime rate: they can be extended,
multiplied or transformed, the quantity of crime and criminals
remains stable or, worse, increases: 'In France, one calculates at
about 108,000 the number ofindividuals who are in a state of flagrant
hostility to society. The means of repression at one’s disposal are;
the scaffold, the iron-collar, three convict-ships, 19 maisonscentrales,
86 maisons de justice, 362 maisons diarret, 2,800 cantonal prisons,
2,238 cells in police stations. Despite all these, vice goes unchecked.
The number of crimes is not diminishing. . . the number of recidivists
is increasing, rather than declining’ (La Fraterniti, no. 10,
February 1842).
- Detention causes recidivism; those leaving prison have more
chance than before of going back to it; convicts are, in a very high
proportion, former inmates; 38 per cent of those who left the maisons
centrales were convicted again and 33 per cent of those sent to convict-ships
(a figure given by G. de Rochefoucauld during the debate
on the reform of the penal code, 2 December 1831, Archives parlementaires,
LXXII, 209-10); between 1828 and 1834, out of almost
35,000 convicted of crime, about 7,400 were recidivists (that is,
1 out of 4*7 of those convicted); out of over 200,000 correcdonels,
or petty offenders, almost 35,000 were also recidivists (1 out of 6);
in all, one recidivist out of 5*8of those convicted (Ducpetiaux, 1837,
276ff); in 1831, out of 2,174 of those condemned for recidivism, 350
had been in convict-ships, 1,682 in maisons centrales, 142 in four
maisons de correction that followed the same regime as the centrales
(Ducpetiaux, 1837, 276ff). And the diagnosis became even more
severe during the July monarchy: in 1835, out of 7,223 convicted
criminals, 1,486 were recidivists; in 1839, 1,749 out° f 7,858; in 1844,
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1,821 out of 7,195. Among the 980 prisoners at Loos, there were 570
recidivists and, at Melun, 745 out of 1,008 prisoners (Ferrus, 363-7).
Instead of releasing corrected individuals, then, the prison was
setting loose a swarm of dangerous delinquents throughout the
population: ‘7,000 persons handed back each year to society . . . they
are 7,000 principles of crime or corruption spread throughout the
social body. And, when one thinks that this population is constantly
increasing, that it lives and moves around us, ready to seize every
opportunity of disorder, to avail itself of every crisis in society to
try out its strength, can one remain unmoved by such a spectacle?*
(Beaumont and Tocqueville, 22-3).
- The prison cannot fail to produce delinquents. It does so by
the very type of existence that it imposes on its inmates: whether
they are isolated in cells or whether they are given useless work,
for which they will find no employment, it is, in any case, not ‘to
think of man in society; it is to create an unnatural, useless and dangerous
existence’; the prison should educate its inmates, but can a
system of education addressed to man reasonably have as its object
to act against the wishes of nature? (Lucas, I, 127 and 130). The
prison also produces delinquents by imposing violent constraints
on its inmates; it is supposed to apply the law, and to teach respect
for it; but all its functioning operates in the form of an abuse of
power. The arbitrary power of administration: 'The feeling of injustice
that a prisoner has is one of the causes that may make his
character untamable. When he sees himself exposed in this way to
suffering, which the law has neither ordered nor envisaged, he
becomes habitually angry against everything around him; he sees
every agent of authority as an executioner; he no longer thinks that
he was guilty: he accuses justice itself’ (Bigot Preameneu). Corruption,
fear and the inefficiency of the warders: ‘Between 1,000 and
1,500 convicts live under the surveillance of between thirty and
forty supervisors, who can preserve some kind of security only by
depending on informers, that is to say, on the corruption that they
carefully sow themselves. Who are these warders? Retired soldiers,
men uninstructed in their task, making a trade of guarding malefactors*
(La Fraternity March 1842). Exploitation by penal labour,
which can in these conditions have no educational character: 4One
inveighs against the slave-trade. But are not our prisoners sold,
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like the slaves, by entrepreneurs and bought by manufacturers. . .
Is this how we teach our prisoners honesty? Are they not still more
demoralized by these examples of abominable exploitation?*9
—The prison makes possible, even encourages, the organization
of a milieu of delinquents, loyal to one another, hierarchized, ready
to aid and abet any future criminal act: ‘Society prohibits associations
of more than twenty persons .. . and it constitutes for itself
associations of 200, 500, 1,200 convicts in the maisons centrales,
which are constructed for them ad hoc, and which it divides up for
their greater convenience into workshops, courtyards, dormitories,
refectories, where they can all meet together. . . And it multiplies
them across France in such a way that, where there is a prison,
there is an association . ♦. and as many anti-social clubs* (MoreauChristophe,
7). And it is in these clubs that the education of the
young first offender takes place: ‘The first desire that is born within
him will be to learn from his cleverer seniors how to escape the
rigours of the law; the first lesson will be derived from the strict
logic of thieves who regard society as an enemy; the morality will
be the informing and spying honoured in our prisons; the first
passion to be aroused in him will be to frighten the young mind by
these monsters that must have been born in the dungeon and which
the pen refuses to name. . . Henceforth he has broken with everything
that has bound him to society* (Z*Almanack populaire de
France, 49-56)’. Faucher spoke of ‘barracks of crime*.
- The conditions to which the free inmates are subjected necessarily
condemn them to recidivism: they are under the surveillance
of the police; they are assigned to a particular residence, or forbidden
others; ‘they leave prison with a passport that they must show everywhere
they go and which mentions the sentence that they have
served* (Barbe Marbois, 17). Being on the loose, being unable to find
work, leading the life of a vagabond are the most frequent factors in
recidivism. The Gazette des tribunaux, but also the workers* newspapers,
regularly cited cases like that of the worker convicted of
theft, placed under surveillance at Rouen, caught again for theft,
and whom no lawyers would defend; so he took it upon himself to
speak before the court, told the story of his life, explained how, on
leaving prison and forced to reside in a particular place, he was
unable to take up his trade as a gilder, since as an ex-convict he was
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turned down wherever he went; the police refused him the right to
seek work elsewhere: he found himself unable to leave Rouen, with
nothing to do but die of hunger and poverty as a result of this
terrible surveillance* He went to the town hall and asked for work;
for eight days he was given work in the cemeteries for fourteen sous
a day: ‘But/ he said, ‘I am young, I have a good appetite, I eat more
than two pounds of bread a day at five sous a pound; what can I do
with fourteen sous to feed myself, wash my clothes and find lodging?
I was driven to despair, I wanted to become an honest man again;
the surveillance plunged me back into misfortune. I became disgusted
with everything; it was then that I met Lemaitre, who was
also a pauper; we had to live and wicked thoughts of thieving came
back to us.’ 10
- Lastly, the prison indirectly produces delinquents by throwing
the inmate’s family into destitution: ‘The same order that sends the
head of the family to prison reduces each day the mother to destitution,
the children to abandonment, the whole family to vagabondage
and begging. It is in this way that crime can take root’ (Lucas, II, 64).
It should be noted that this monotonous critique of the prison
always takes one of two directions: either that the prison was insufficiently
corrective, and that die penitentiary technique was still
at the rudimentary stage; or that in attempting to be corrective it
lost its power as punishment,11 that the true penitentiary technique
was rigour,12 and that prison was a double economic error: directly,
by its intrinsic cost and, indirectly, by the cost of the delinquency
that it did not abolish.13 The answer to these criticisms was invariably
the same: the reintroduction of the invariable principles of penitentiary
technique. For a century and a half the prison had always been
offered as its own remedy: the reactivation of the penitentiary
techniques as the only means of overcoming their perpetual failure;
the realization of the corrective project as the only method of overcoming
the impossibility of implementing it.
This is shown conclusively in the fact that the prisoners* revolts
of recent weeks* have been attributed to the fact that the reforms
proposed in 1945 never really took effect; that one must therefore
return to the fundamental principles of the prison. But these
* A series of uprisings in French prisons, between 1972 and 1974, in
protest against living conditions.
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Illegalities and delinquency
principles, of which such wonderful results are still expected today,
are well enough known: for the past 150 years they have constituted
the seven universal maxims of the good ‘penitential condition*.
1. Penal detention must have as its essential function the transformation
of the individual’s behaviour: ‘The reform of the convict
as the principal aim of the penalty is a sacred principle whose formal
appearance in the domain of science and above all in that of legislation
is quite recent* (‘Congres penitentiaire de Bruxelles*, 1847).
And the Amor commission, of May 1945, faithfully repeats: ‘The
penalty that deprives of liberty has as its essential aim the reformation
and social rehabilitation of the convict/ The principle of
correction.
2. Convicts must be isolated or at least distributed according to
the penal gravity of their act, but above all according to age, mental
attitude, the technique of correction to be used, the stages of their
transformation. ‘One must take into account, in using methods for
altering the great physical and moral differences to be found in the
characters of convicts, their degree of perversity, the unequal
opportunities for correction that they may offer* (February, 1850).
1945: ‘The distribution in the penitentiary establishments of individuals
serving a light sentence of up to one year is based on sex,
personality and the degree ofperversion of the delinquent/ Theprinciple
ofclassification.
3. It must be possible to alter the penalties according to the
individuality of the convicts, the results that have been obtained,
progress or relapses. ‘Since the principal aim of the penalty is the
reform of the convict, it is desirable that any convict whose moral
regeneration is sufficiently assured should be set free* (Lucas, 1838),
1945: ‘A progressive regime is applied . . . with a view to adapting
the treatment of the prisoner to his attitude and to his degree of
improvement. This regime stretches from solitary confinement to
semi-liberty. . . The benefit of parole is extended to all penalties
involving a term of imprisonment/ The principle of the modulation
ofpenalties.
4. Work must be one of the essential elements in the transformation
and progressive socialization of convicts. Penal labour ‘must
not be regarded as the complement and as it were an aggravation
of the penalty, but as a mitigation, of which it is no longer possible
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to deprive the prisoner*. It must enable him to learn or to practise a
trade, and to provide the prisoner and his family with a source of
income (Ducpetiaux, 1857). 1945: 'Every common-law prisoner is
obliged to work. . . No prisoner may be forced to remain unoccupied.’
The principle of work as obligation and right.
5. The education of the prisoner is for the authorities both an
indispensable precaution in the interests of society and an obligation
to the prisoner. ‘Education alone may serve as a penitentiary
instrument. The question of penitentiary imprisonment is a question
of education* (Lucas, 1838). 1945: ‘The treatment meted out to the
prisoner, outside any corrupting promiscuity . .. must be directed
principally to his general and professional instruction and to his
improvement.* The principle ofpenitentiary education.
<5. The prison regime must, at least in part, be supervised and
administered by a specialized staff possessing the moral qualities and
technical abilities required of educators. In 1850, on the subject of
prison medicine, Ferrus remarked: ‘It is a useful addition to all
forms of imprisonment . . . no one could possess more intimately
than a physician the trust of the prisoners, know their characters
better, influence their mental attitudes more effectively, while relieving
their physical ills and, by this means, reprimand or encourage
as he thinks fit.* 1945: ‘In every penitentiary establishment, there
functions a social and medico-psychological service.* The principle
ofthe technical supervision ofdetention.
7. Imprisonment mustbe followed by measures of supervision and
assistance until the rehabilitation of the former prisoner is complete.
Not only must he be placed under surveillance on leaving prison,
‘but he must be given help and support* (Boulet and Benquot at the
Chambre de Paris). 1945: ‘Assistance is given to prisoners during
and after imprisonment with a view to facilitating their rehabilitation.*
The principle ofauxiliary institutions.
Word for word, from one century to the other, the same fundamental
propositions are repeated. They reappear in each new, hardwon,
finally accepted formulation of a reform that has hitherto
always been lacking. The same sentences or almost the same could
have been borrowed from other ‘fruitful* periods of reform: the end
of the nineteenth century and the ‘movement of social defence*; or
again, the last few years, with the prisoners* revolts.
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Illegalities and delinquency
One must not, therefore, regard the prison, its ‘failure* and its
more or less successful reform as three successive stages. One
should think rather of a simultaneous system that historically has
been superimposed on the juridical deprivation of liberty; a fourfold
system comprising: the additional, disciplinary element of the prison
—the element of ‘super-power*; the production of an objectivity, a
technique, a penitentiary ‘rationality* - the element of auxiliary
knowledge; the de facto reintroduction, if not actual increase, of a
criminality that the prison ought to destroy - the element of inverted
efficiency; lastly, the repetition of a ‘reform* that is isomorphic,
despite its ‘idealism*, with the disciplinary functioning of the
prison - the element of utopian duplication. It is this complex
ensemble that constitutes the ‘carceral system*, not only the institution
of the prison, with its walls, its staff, its regulations and its
violence. The carceral system combines in a single figure discourses
and architectures, coercive regulations and scientific propositions,
real social effects and invincible utopias, programmes for correcting
delinquents and mechanisms that reinforce delinquency. Is not the
supposed failure part of the functioning of the prison? Is it not to
be included among those effects of power that discipline and the
auxiliary technology of imprisonment have induced in the apparatus
of justice, and in society in general, and which may be grouped
together under the name of ‘carceral system*? If the prison-institution
has survived for so long, with such immobility, if the principle
of penal detention has never seriously been questioned, it is no
doubt because this carceral system was deeply rooted and carried
out certain very precise functions. As evidence of this strength and
immobility, let us take a recent fact: the model prison opened at
Fleury-Merogis in 1969 simply took over in its overall plan the
panoptic star-shape that made such a stir in 1836 at the PetiteRoquette.
It was the same machinery of power that assumed a real
body and a symbolic form. But what role was it supposed to play?
If the law is supposed to define offences, if the function of the
penal apparatus is to reduce them and if the prison is the instrument
of this repression, then failure has to be admitted. Or rather - for in
order to establish it in historical terms, one must be able to measure
the effects of the penality of detention on the overall level of
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criminality - one should be surprised that for the past 1 50 years the
proclamation of the failure of the prison has always been accompanied
by its maintenance. The only alternative actually envisaged
was deportation, which England abandoned at the beginning of the
nineteenth century and which France took up under the Second
Empire, but rather as a rigorous and distant form of imprisonment.
But perhaps one should reverse the problem and ask oneselfwhat
is served by the failure of the prison; what is the use of these different
phenomena that are continually being criticized; the maintenance of
delinquency, the encouragement of recidivism, the transformation of
the occasional offender into a habitual delinquent, the organization
of a closed milieu of delinquency. Perhaps one should look for what
is hidden beneath the apparent cynicism of the penal institution,
which, after purging the convicts by means of their sentence, continues
to follow them by a whole series o f‘brandings' (a surveillance
that was once de jure and which is today defacto; the police record
that has taken the place of the convict’s passport) and which thus
pursues as a ‘delinquent* someone who has acquitted himself of his
punishment as an offender? Can we not see here a consequence
rather than a contradiction? If so, one would be forced to suppose
that the prison, and no doubt punishment in general, is not intended
to eliminate offences, but rather to distinguish them, to distribute
them, to use them; that it is not so much that they render docile
those who are liable to transgress the law, but that they tend to
assimilate the transgression of the laws in a general tactics of subjection.
Penality would then appear to be a way of handling illegalities,
of laying down the limits of tolerance, of giving free rein to some,
of putting pressure on others, of excluding a particular section, of
making another useful, of neutralizing certain individuals and of
profiting from others. In short, penality does not simply ‘check*
illegalities; it ‘differentiates* them, it provides them with a general
‘economy*. And, if one can speak of justice, it is not only because
the law itself or the way of applying itserves the interests of a class, it
is also because the differential administration of illegalities through
the mediation of penality forms part of those mechanisms ofdomination.
Legal punishments are to be resituated in an overall strategy
of illegalities. The ‘failure’ of the prison may be understood on this
basis.
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Illegalities and delinquency
The general schema of penal reform had taken shape at the end of
the eighteenth century in the struggle against illegalities: a whole
equilibrium of tolerance, mutual support and interests which, under
the Ancien Regime, had maintained the illegalities of different social
strata side by side, was disturbed. There then emerged the utopia of
a universally and publicly punitive society in which ceaselessly
active penal mechanisms would function without delay, mediation
or uncertainty; one law, doubly ideal because perfect in its calculations
and engraven on the minds of each citizen would stop, at their
very origin, all practices of illegality. Now, at the turn of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and against the new codes, the
danger of a new popular illegality arose. Or, to be more precise,
perhaps the popular illegalities began to develop according to new
dimensions: those that were introduced by the movements which,
from the 1780s to the Revolutions of 1848, linked together social
conflicts, the struggles against the political regimes, the resistance
to the movement of industrialization, the effects of the economic
crises. Broadly speaking, there were three characteristic processes.
First, the development o f the political dimension of the popular
illegalities. This occurred in two ways: hitherto localized practices,
limited in some sense to themselves (like the refusal to pay taxes and
rents or to comply with conscription; the violent confiscation of
hoarded goods; the looting of shops and the forced selling of products
at a ‘fair price’; confrontations with the representatives of
power), were able during the Revolution to lead to directly political
struggles, whose aim was not simply to extract concessions from the
state or to rescind some intolerable measure, but to change the
government and the very structure of power. On the other hand,
certain political movements were explicitly based on existing forms
of illegality (for example, the royalist agitation of the west and south
of France used the peasants’ rejection of the new laws on property,
religion and conscription); this political dimension of illegality was
to become more complex and more marked in the relations between
the workers’ movement and the republican parties in the nineteenth
century, in the passage from the workers’ struggles (strikes, prohibited
coalitions, illegal associations) to political revolution. In any
case, on the horizon of these illegal practices - which multiplied with
ever more restrictive legislation - there emerged struggles of a
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strictly political kind; the possible overthrow of power was not
present in all of them, far from it; but a good many were able to turn
themselves to account in overall political struggles and sometimes
even to lead directly to them.
On the other hand, through the rejection of the law or other
regulations, it is easy enough to recognize the struggles against those
who set them up in their own interests: people were no longer
fighting against the tax farmers, financiers, the king’s agents, prevaricating
magistrates or bad ministers - all the agents of injustice but
against the law itself and the justice whose task it was to apply
it; against local landowners who introduced new rights; against
employers who worked together, but forbade workers' coalitions;
against entrepreneurs who introduced more machines, lower wages
and longer working hours, and made the factory regulations more
and more strict. It was against the new regime of landed property set
up by a bourgeoisie that profited from the Revolution - that a
whole peasant illegality developed. This no doubt assumed its most
violent forms between Thermidor and the Consulate, but it did not
disappear then; it was against the new system of the legal exploitation
of labour that workers’ illegalities at the beginning of the nineteenth
century developed: from the most violent such as machinebreaking,
or the most lasting such as the formation of associations,
to the most everyday, such as absenteeism, abandoning work,
vagabondage, pilfering raw materials, deception as to the quantity
and quality of the work completed. A whole series of illegalities
was inscribed in struggles in which those struggling knew that
they were confronting both the law and the class that had imposed
it.
Lastly, although it is true that, during the eighteenth century,
criminality tended towards more specialized forms, inclining more
and more to the skilful theft, and became, to some extent, the practice
of men on the fringes of society, isolated from a population that
was hostile to them - one sees, in the last years of the eighteenth
century, the reconstitution of certain links or the establishment of
new relations; not, as contemporaries said, that the leaders of popular
agitation had been criminals, but because the new forms of law,
the rigours of the labour regulations, the demands either of the
state, or of the landowners, or of the employers, and the mos:
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detailed techniques of surveillance, increased the occasions of
offences, and threw to the other side of the law many individuals, who,
in other conditions, would not have gone over to specialized
criminality; it is against thebackground of the newlaws of property,
against the background, too, of unacceptable conscription that a
peasant illegality developed in the last years of the Revolution, with
a consequent increase in violence, acts of aggression, thefts, looting
and even the greater forms of ‘political brigandage1; it was also
against a background of legislation or very heavy regulations (concerning
the livret, or service certificate, rents, hours, absences from
work) that a workers’ vagabondage developed that often crossed
the boundary into actual delinquency. A whole series of illegal
practices, which during the previous century had tended to remain
isolated from one another, now seemed to come together to form a
new threat.
There was a threefold diffusion of popular illegalities at the turn
of the century (quite apart from1a quantitative extension that is
problematic and still uncalculated): their insertion in a general
political outlook; their explicit articulation on social struggles; a
communication between different forms and levels of offences.
These processes may not have reached their full development;
certainly there did not develop'at the beginning of the nineteenth
century a massive movement of illegality that was both political and
social. But, in their emerging form and despite their dispersal, they
were sufficiently marked to serve as a support for the ‘great fear’
of a people who were believed to be criminal and seditious as a
whole, for the myth of a barbaric, immoral and outlaw class which,
from the empire to the July monarchy, haunted the discourse of
legislators, philanthropists and investigators into working-class life.
It is these processes that are to be found behind a whole series of
affirmations that are quite alien to the penal theory of the eighteenth
century: that crime is not a potentiality that interests or passions
have inscribed in the hearts of all men, but that it is almost exclusively
committed by a certain social class; that criminals, who were
once to be met with in every social class, now emerged ‘almost all
from the bottom rank of the social order’ (Comte, 49); that ‘nine
tenths of murderers, thieves and idlers come from what we have
called the social base’ (Lauvergne, 337); that it is not crime that
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alienates an individual from society, but that crime is itselfdue rather
to the fact that one is in society as an alien, that one belongs to that
‘bastardized race', as Target called it, to that ‘class degraded by
misery whose vices stand like an invincible obstacle to the generous
intentions that wish to combat it’ (Bure, 39 1); that, this being the
case, it would be hypocritical or naive to believe that the law was
made for all in the name of all; that it would be more prudent to
recognize that it was made for the few and that it was brought to
bear upon others; that in principle it applies to all citizens, but that
it is addressed principally to the most numerous and least enlightened
classes; that, unlike political and civil laws, their application
does not concern everybody equally (Rossi, I, 32); that in the courts
society as a whole does not judge one of its members, but that a
social category with an interest in order judges another that is
dedicated to disorder: ‘Visit the places where people are judged,
imprisoned or executed. . . One thing will strike you everywhere;
everywhere you see two quite distinct classes of men, one of which
always meets on the seats of the accusers and judges, the other on
the benches of the accused*, which is explained by the fact that the
latter, for lack of resources and education, do not know ‘how to
remain within the limits of legal probity* (Lucas, II, 82); so that the
language of the law, which is supposed to be universal, is, in this
respect, inadequate; it must, if it is to be effective, be the discourse
of one class to another, which has neither the same ideas as it nor
even the same words: ‘How are we, with our prudish, contemptuous
languages, overloaded with formality, to make ourselves understood
by those who have never heard anything but the crude, poor,
irregular, but lively, frank, picturesque dialect of the market, the
tavern and the fair. . . What language, what method should we use
when drawing up laws that will act effectively on the uneducated
minds of those less capable of resisting the temptations of crime?*
(Rossi, I, 33). Law and justice do not hesitate to proclaim their
necessary class dissymmetry.
If this is the case, the prison, apparently ‘failing*, does not miss
its target; on the contrary, it reaches it, in so far as it gives rise to
one particular form of illegality in the midst of others, which it is
able to isolate, to place in full light and to organize as a relatively
enclosed, but penetrable, milieu. It helps to establish an open illegal­
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ity, irreducible at a certain level and secretly useful, at once refractory
and docile; it isolates, outlines, brings out a form of illegality
that seems to sum up symbolically all the others, but which makes it
possible to leave in the shade those that one wishes to - or must tolerate.
This form is, strictly speaking, delinquency. One should
not see in delinquency the most intense, most harmful form of
illegality, the form that the penal apparatus must try to eliminate
through imprisonment because of the danger it represents; it is
rather an effect of penality (and of the penality of detention) that
makes it possible to differentiate, accommodate and supervise
illegalities. No doubt delinquency is a form of illegality; certainly
it has its roots in illegality; but it is an illegality that the 'carceral
system', with all its ramifications, has invested, segmented, isolated,
penetrated, organized, enclosed in a definite milieu, and to which it
has given an instrumental role in relation to the other illegalities.
In short, although the juridical opposition is between legality and
illegal practice, the strategic opposition is between illegalities and
delinquency.
For the observation that prison fails to eliminate crime, one should
perhaps substitute the hypothesis that prison has succeeded extremely
well in producing delinquency, a specific type, a politically
or economically less dangerous - and, on occasion, usable - form
of illegality; in producing delinquents, in an apparently marginal,
but in fact centrally supervised milieu; in producing the delinquent
as a pathologized subject. The success of the prison, in the struggles
around the law and illegalities, has been to specify a ‘delinquency'.
We have seen how the carceral system substituted the ‘delinquent'
for the offender, and also superimposed upon juridical practice a
whole horizon of possible knowledge. Now this process that constitutes
delinquency as an object of knowledge is one with the
political operation that dissociates illegalities and isolates delinquency
from them. The prison is the hinge of these two mechanisms;
it enables them to reinforce one another perpetually, to objectify the
delinquency behind the offence, to solidify delinquency in the movement
of illegalities. So successful has the prison been that, after a
century and a half of ‘failures’, the prison still exists, producing the
same results, and there is the greatest reluctance to dispense
with it.
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The penality of detention seems to fabricate - hence no doubt its
longevity —an enclosed, separated and useful illegality. The circuit
of delinquency would seem to be not the sub-product of a prison
which, while punishing, does not succeed in correcting; it is rather
the direct effect of a penality which, in order to control illegal
practices, seems to invest certain of them in a mechanism o f‘punishment-reproduction’,
of which imprisonment is one of the main
parts. But why and how is the prison called upon to participate in
the fabrication of a delinquency that it is supposed to combat?
The establishment of a delinquency that constitutes something
like an enclosed illegality has in fact a number of advantages. To
begin with, it is possible to supervise it (by locating individuals,
infiltrating the group, organizing mutual informing): for the vague,
swarming mass of a population practising occasional illegality, which
is always likely to spread, or again for those loose bands of vagabonds,
recruiting as they move from place to place, and according
to circumstances, from the unemployed, beggars, ‘bad characters’
of all kinds, which sometimes reach such proportions - as we saw at
the end of the eighteenth century - as to form formidable forces for
looting and rioting, is substituted a relatively small and enclosed
group of individuals on whom a constant surveillance may be kept.
Moreover, it is possible to divert this self-absorbed delinquency to
forms of illegality that are less dangerous: maintained by the pressure
of controls on the fringes of society, reduced to precarious
conditions of existence, lacking links with the population that would
be able to sustain it (as was once the case with smugglers or certain
forms of bandits - cf. Hobsbawm), delinquents inevitably fell back
on a localized criminality, limited in its power to attract popular
support, politically harmless and economically negligible. Now this
concentrated, supervised and disarmed illegality is directly useful.
It may be useful in relation to other illegalities: isolated from them,
turned inwards upon its own internal organization, dedicated to a
violent criminality, of which the poorer classes are often the first
victims, hemmed in on every side by the police, exposed to long
prison sentences, followed by a permanently ‘specialized* life delinquency
- this alien, dangerous and often hostile world obstructs
or at least maintains at a sufficiently low level everyday illegal
practices (petty thefts, minor acts of violence, routine acts of law-
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breaking); it prevents them from leading to broader, more obvious
forms, rather as though the exemplary effect once expected of the
spectacle of the scaffold was now sought not so much in the rigour
of the punishments, as in the visible, branded existence of delinquency
itself: while differentiating itself from other popular illegalities,
delinquency serves to keep them in check.
But delinquency has other direct uses. The example of colonization
comes to mind. Yet it is not the most convincing example;
indeed, although the deportation of criminals was demanded on
several occasions under the Restoration, either by the Chamber of
Deputies or by the General Councils, this was essentially in order
to lighten the financial burdens imposed by the whole apparatus of
detention; and, despite all the projects that were drawn up under the
July monarchy for delinquents, undisciplined soldiers, prostitutes
and orphans to take part in the colonization of Algeria, that colony
was formally excluded, by the law of 1854, from becoming one of
the overseas penal colonies; in fact, deportation to Guiana or later
to New Caledonia had no real economic importance, despite the
obligation imposed on the convicts to remain in the colony where
they had served their sentence for a number of years equal to their
time of detention (in certain cases, they even had to spend the rest
of their lives there).14 In fact, the use of delinquency as a milieu
that was both separate and manipulable took place above all on the
fringes of legality, that is to say, a sort of subordinate illegality was
also set up in the nineteenth century whose organization as delinquency,
with all the surveillance that this implies, provided a guarantee
of docility. Delinquency, controlled illegality, is an agent for the
illegality of the dominant groups. The setting up of prostitution
networks in the nineteenth century is characteristic in this respect:15
police checks and checks on the prostitutes’ health, their regular
stay in prison, the large-scale organization of the maisons closes, or
brothels, the strict hierarchy that was maintained in the prostitution
milieu, its control by delinquent-informers, all this made it possible
to canalize and to recover by a whole series of intermediaries the
enormous profits from a sexual pleasure that an ever-more insistent
everyday moralization condemned to semi-clandestinity and naturally
made expensive; in setting up a price for pleasure, in creating a
profit from repressed sexuality and in collecting this profit, the
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delinquent milieu was in complicity with a self-interested puritanism:
an illicit fiscal agent operating over illegal practices.16 Arms
trafficking, the illegal sale of alcohol in prohibition countries, or
more recently drug trafficking show a similar functioning of this
‘useful delinquency’: the existence of a legal prohibition creates
around it a field of illegal practices, which one manages to supervise,
while extracting from it an illicit profit through elements, themselves
illegal, but rendered manipulable by their organization in delinquency.
This organization is an instrument for administering and
exploiting illegalities.
It is also an instrument for the illegality with which the very
exercise of power surrounds itself. The political use of delinquents as
informers and agents provocateurs - was a fact well before the
nineteenth century.17 But, after the Revolution, this practice
acquired quite different dimensions: the infiltration of political
parties and workers' associations, the recruitment of thugs against
strikers and rioters, the organization of a sub-police - working
directly with the legal police and capable if necessary of becoming a
sort of parallel army - a whole extra-legal functioning of power was
partly assured by the mass of reserve labour constituted by the
delinquents: a clandestine police force and standby army at the
disposal of the state. It seems that, in France, it was around the
Revolution of 1848 and Louis Napoleon's seizure of power that
these practices reached their height (Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire . . .,
63—5). Delinquency, solidified by a penal system centred upon the
prison, thus represents a diversion of illegality for the illicit circuits
of profit and power of the dominant class.
The organization ofan isolated illegality, enclosed in delinquency,
would not have been possible without the development of police
supervision. General surveillance of the population, ‘silent, mysterious,
unperceived vigilance . . . it is the eye of the government ceaselessly
open and watching without distinction over all citizens, yet
without subjecting them to any measure of coercion whatever... It
does not need to be written into the law' (Bonneville, 1847, 397-9).
Surveillance of individuals, envisaged by the code of 1810, of exconvicts
and of all those who, having appeared before the courts on
serious charges, were legally presumed to represent a new threat to
the peace of society. But surveillance, too, of milieux and groups
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Illegalities and delinquency
regarded as dangerous by informers, almost all of whom were
former delinquents, supervised as such by the police: delinquency,
an object among others of police surveillance, is also one of its
privileged instruments. All these surveillances presuppose the
organization of a hierarchy, partly official, partly secret (in the Paris
police, this was essentially the ‘security service’, which comprised,
apart from its ‘open agents’ - inspectors and sergeants - its ‘secret
agents’ and informers, who were motivated by fear of punishment
or the prospect of reward: cf. Fregier, I, 142-8). They also presuppose
the setting up of a documentary system, the heart of which
would be the location and identification of criminals: compulsory
description of the criminal combined with arrest warrants issued by
theassizecourts, a description included in prison committal registers,
copies of the registers of assize courts and courts of summary
jurisdiction sent each month to the Ministries of Justice and of
General Police, the organization a little later at the Ministry of the
Interior of a criminal records office with an alphabetical index containing
summaries of these registers, the use in about 1833, according
to the method o f‘naturalists, librarians, merchants, businessmen’ of
a system of individual cards or reports, which facilitated the integration
of new data and, at the same time, together with the name of the
individual under investigation, all the information that might concern
him (Bonneville, 1844,92-3) - the appearance of the card-index
and the constitution of the human sciences are another invention
that historians have taken little note of). Delinquency, with the
secret agents that it procures, but also with the generalized policing
that it authorizes, constitutes a means of perpetual surveillance of
the population: an apparatus that makes it possible to supervise,
through the delinquents themselves, the whole social field. Delinquency
functions as a political observatory. In their turn, the statisticians
and the sociologists have made use of it, long after the police.
But this surveillance has been able to function only in conjunction
with the prison. Because the prison facilitates the supervision of
individuals when they are released, because it makes possible the
recruiting of informers and multiplies mutual denunciations, because
it brings offenders into contact with one another, it precipitates the
organization of a delinquent milieu, closed in upon itself, but easily
supervised: and all the results of non-rehabilitation (unemployment,
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prohibitions on residence, enforced residences, probation) make it
all too easy for former prisoners to carry out the tasks assigned
to them. Prison and police form a twin mechanism; together they
assure in the whole field of illegalities the differentiation, isolation
and use of delinquency. In the illegalities, the police-prison system
segments a manipulable delinquency* This delinquency, with its
specificity, is a result of the system; but it also becomes a part and
an instrument of it. So that one should speak of an ensemble whose
three terms (police-prison-delinquency) support one another and
form a circuit that is never interrupted. Police surveillance provides
the prison with offenders, which the prison transforms into delinquents,
the targets and auxiliaries of police supervisions, which
regularly send back a certain number of them to prison.
There is no penal justice intended to prosecute all illegal practices
which, to do so, would use the police as an auxiliary and prison as a
punitive instrument, and not leave in its wake the unassimilable
residue of ‘delinquency’. One should regard this justice as an instrument
for the differential supervision of illegalities. In relation to this
instrument, criminal justice plays the role of legal surety and principle
of transmission. It is a relay in a general economy of illegalities,
whose other elements are (not below it, but beside it) the police, the
prison and delinquency. Police encroachment on justice and the
force of inertia that the carceral institution opposes to justice are not
new, nor are they the result of a sclerosis or of a gradual shift in
power; it is a structural feature that characterizes punitive mechanisms
in modern societies. The magistrates can say what they like;
penal justice, with all its theatrical apparatus, is intended to respond
to the daily demand of an apparatus of supervision half submerged
in the darkness in which police and delinquency are brought together.
Judges are the scarcely resisting employees of this apparatus.18
They assist as far as they can in the constitution ofdelinquency,
that is to say, in the differentiation of illegalities, in the supervision,
colonization and use of certain of these illegalities by the illegality
of the dominant class.
Two figures stand out as representative of this process, which
developed in the first thirty or forty years of the nineteenth century.
First, there was Vidocq (cf. his Memoires and Histoire de Vidocq
racontee par lui-meme). He was a man of the old illegalities, a Gil
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Bias of the other end of the century, who soon took a turn for the
worse: disturbances, adventures, swindlings, of which he was
usually himself the victim, brawls and duels; successive enlistments
and desertions, contacts with prostitution, gambling, pickpocketing
and soon large-scale brigandage. But the almost mythical importance
that he assumed in the eyes of his contemporaries was based not on
this, perhaps embellished past; it was not even based on the fact that,
for the first time in history, a former inmate of a convict-ship,
redeemed or quite simply bought, became a chief of police, but
rather on the fact that, in him, delinquency visibly assumed its
ambiguous status as an object and instrument for a police apparatus
that worked both against it and with it. Vidocq marks the moment
when deliquency, detached from other illegalities, was invested by
power and turned inside out. It was then that the direct, institutional
coupling of police and delinquency took place: the disturbing
moment when criminality became one of the mechanisms of power.
A figure had haunted earlier times, that of the monstrous king, the
source of all justice and yet besmirched with crime; another fear
now appeared, that of some dark, secret understanding between
those who enforced the law and those who violated it. The Shakespearian
age when sovereignty confronted abomination in a single
character had gone; the everyday melodrama of police power and of
the complicities that crime formed with power was soon to begin.
Opposite Vidocq stood his contemporary, Lacenaire. His presence,
assured for ever in the paradise of the aesthetes of crime, is
surprising enough: despite all his good will, his neophyte’s zeal, he
was only able to commit, and even then with a singular lack of skill,
no more than a few minor crimes; he was so strongly suspected of
being a police spy that the administration had to protect him against
his fellow prisoners, who tried to kill him (the charge was formally
taken up by Canler, 15), and it was the fashionable society of LouisPhilippe’s
Paris that gave him, before his execution, a feast beside
which many a later literary resurrection has been little more than
academic homage. His fame owed nothing either to the extent of his
crimes or to the art of their conception; it was their ineptitude that
gave cause for surprise. But it did owe a great deal to the visible
play, in what he did and what he said, between illegality and delinquency.
Swindling, desertion, petty theft, imprisonment, the revival
2%J
Prison
of friendships made in prison, mutual blackmail, recidivism, up to
the last, failed attempt at murder - Lacenaire is the typical ‘delinquent’.
But he brought with him, at least potentially, a horizon of
illegalities that had, until quite recently, represented a threat: this
ruined petty bourgeois, of good education, would, a generation
earlier, have been arevolutionary, aJacobin, aregicide;19had he been
a contemporary of Robespierre, his rejection of the law would have
taken a directly political form. Born in 1800, at more or less the
same time as Stendhal’s Julien Sorel, his character bears the trace
of these possibilities; but they took the form of theft, murder and
denunciation. All these potentialities became a delinquency of no
great moment: in this sense, Lacenaire is a reassuring character.
And if these potentialities reappear, it is in what he says about the
theory of crime. At the moment of his death, Lacenaire manifested
the triumph of delinquency over illegality, or rather the figure of an
illegality, on the one hand, dragged down into delinquency, and,
on the other, displaced towards an aesthetics of crime, that is to say,
towards an art of the privileged classes. There is a symmetry between
Lacenaire and Vidocq, who in the same period, made it
possible to turn delinquency in upon itself by constituting it as an
enclosed, observable milieu and by displacing towards police techniques
a whole delinquent practice that was becoming the licit
illegality of power. That the Parisian bourgeoisie should have
feasted Lacenaire, that his cell should have been open to famous
visitors, that he should have been showered with praise during the
last days of his life, he whose death his plebeian fellow prisoners had
demanded before his judges had done so, he who had done everything,
in court, to bring his accomplice Francois to the scaffold,
there was a reason for all this: what was being celebrated was the
symbolic figure of an illegality kept within the bounds of delinquency
and transformed into discourse - that is to say, made doubly
inoffensive; the bourgeoisie had invented for itself a new pleasure,
which it has still far from outgrown. It should not be forgotten that
Lacenaire’s celebrated death succeeded in muffling the echoes of
Fieschi’s attempt on the life of Louis-Philippe; Fieschi, one of the
most recent of the regicides, represented the converse figure of a
petty criminality leading to political violence. Nor should we forget
that it took place a few months before the departure of the last
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chain-gang and the scandalous demonstrations that accompanied it.
These two festivals overlapped in history; and, indeed, Francis,
Lacenaire’s accomplice, was one of the best-known characters in the
chain-gang of 19 July.20The one extended the ancient rituals of the
public execution at the risk of reactivating popular illegalities around
the criminals. It was to be prohibited, for the criminal was no longer
to occupy any other space than that appropriate to delinquency.
The other inaugurated the theoretical play of an illegality of the
privileged; or rather it marked the moment when the political and
economic illegalities actually practised by the bourgeoisie were to
be duplicated in theoretical and aesthetic representation: the ‘Metaphysics
ofcrime', a term often associated with Lacenaire. The French
translation of De Quincey’s Murder Considered as One o f the Fine
Arts was published in 1849.
This production of delinquency and its investment by the penal
apparatus must be taken for what they are: not results acquired once
and for all, but tactics that shift according to how closely they reach
their target. The split between delinquency and other illegalities, the
way in which it is turned back upon them, its colonization by the
dominant illegality —these all appear clearly in the way in which the
police-prison system functions; yet they have always met with
resistance; they have given rise to struggles and provoked reaction.
Erecting the barrier to separate delinquents from all the lower strata
of the population from which they sprang and with which they
remained linked has been a difficult task, especially no doubt in
urban milieux.21 It has been a long and arduous undertaking. It has
involved the use of the general principles of the ‘moralization* of the
poorer classes that elsewhere has had such crucial importance both
from an economic and a political point of view (the acquisition of
what might be called a ‘basic legalism’, which was indispensable
from the time when custom was replaced by the system of the code;
learning the elementary rules of property and thrift; training in
docility at work, in stability of residence and of the family, etc.).
More specific methods were used to maintain the hostility of the
poorer classes to delinquents (the use of ex-convicts as informers,
police spies, strike-breakers or thugs). There has been a systematic
confusion between offences against common law and those offences
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against the severe legislation concerning the livret (work record),
strikes, coalitions, associations,22 for which the workers demanded
political status. Workers’ action was regularly accused of being
animated, if not manipulated, by mere criminals (cf., for example,
Monfalcon, 142). Verdicts were often more severe against workers
than against thieves (cf. VAtelier, October 1840, or La Fraterniti,
July-August 1847). The two categories of convict were mixed in
the prisons and preferential treatment given to common-law
offenders, while convicted journalists and politicians usually enjoyed
the right to separate treatment. In short, a whole tactic of confusion
aimed at maintaining a permanent state of conflict.
To this was added a patient attempt to impose a highly specific
grid on the common perception of delinquents: to present them as
close by, everywhere present and everywhere to be feared. This was
the function of thefait clivers, which invaded a part of the press and
which began to have its own newspapers.23 The criminalfait divers,
by its everyday redundancy, makes acceptable the system of judicial
and police supervisions that partition society; it recounts from day
to day a sort of internal battle against the faceless enemy; in this war,
it constitutes the daily bulletin of alarm or victory. The crime novel,
which began to develop in the broadsheet and in mass-circulation
literature, assumed an apparently opposite role. Above all, its function
was to show that the delinquent belonged to an entirely different
world, unrelated to familiar, everyday life. This strangeness was first
that of the lower depths of society (Les Mysteres de Paris, Rocambole),
then that of madness (especially in the latter half of the century)
and lastly that of crime in high society (Ars£ne Lupin). The
combination of thefait divers and the detective novel has produced
for the last hundred years or more an enormous mass of ‘crime
stories’ in which delinquency appears both as very close and quite
alien, a perpetual threat to everyday life, but extremely distant in its
origin and motives, both everyday and exotic in the milieu in which
it takes place. Through the importance attributed to it and the
surfeit of discourse surrounding it, a line is traced round it which,
while exalting it, sets it apart. In such a formidable delinquency,
coming from so alien aclime, what illegality could recognize itself?...
This multiple tactic had its effect: this is proved by the campaign
of the workers’ newspapers against penal labour;24against the ‘com­
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fort of the prisons’ and for giving prisoners the hardest and most
dangerous work; against the excessive interest shown by philanthropists
in the delinquents; against the literature that exalts crime;25
it is also proved by the general mistrust felt throughout the workers’
movement for former common-law convicts, ‘At the dawn of the
twentieth century/ writes Michele Perrot, ‘surrounded by contempt,
the highest of walls, the prison finally closed in on an unpopular
people’ (Perrot).
Yet it certainly cannot be said that this tactic triumphed or that
it brought about a total break between the delinquents and the lower
classes. The relations between the poorer classes and illegality, the
reciprocal position of the proletariat and the urban plebs has yet to
be studied. But one thing is certain: delinquency and repression
were regarded, in the workers’ movements of the years 1830-50,
as an important issue. There was no doubt hostility towards the
delinquents; but it was a battle around penality. The workers’ newspapers
often proposed a political analysis of criminality that contradicted
term by term the description familiar to the philanthropists
(poverty - dissipation - laziness —drunkenness -* vice - theft crime).
They assigned the origin of delinquency not to the individual
criminal (he was merely the occasion or the first victim), but
to society: ‘The man who kills you is not free not to kill you. It is
society or, to be more precise, bad social organization that is
responsible’ (Z ’Humanitaire, August 1841). This is so either because
society is incapable of providing its fundamental needs, or because
it destroys or effaces in him possibilities, aspirations or needs that
later emerge in crime: ‘Bad education, unused aptitudes and forces,
the intelligence and the heart crushed by forced labour at too tender
an age’ {La Fraternite, November 1845). But this criminality of need
or of repression masks, by the attention paid to it and the disapprobation
surrounding it, another criminality that is sometimes its
cause and always its extension. This is the delinquency from above,
a scandalous example, the source of misery and the principle of
revolt for the poor. ‘While misery strews your streets with corpses,
and fills your prisons with thieves and murderers, where are the
swindlers of the fashionable world? .. . The most corrupting
examples, the most revolting cynicism, the most shameless robbery.
. .. Are you not afraid that the poor man put into the dock for
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snatching a piece of bread from a baker’s stall will not, one day,
become so enraged that stone by stone he will demolish the Stock
Exchange, a wild den where the treasure of the state and the fortune
of families are stolen with impunity?’ (La Ruche populaire, November
1842). But this delinquency of wealth is tolerated by the laws,
and, when it does find its way into the courts, it can depend upon
the indulgence of the judges and the discretion of the press.26Hence
the idea that criminal trials may become the occasion for a political
debate, that advantage should be taken of controversial trials or
proceedings instituted against workers to denounce the general
functioning of penal justice: The courts are no longer as they once
were a place for the exhibition of the miseries and wounds of the
time, a kind of branding in which the sad victims of our social disorder
are displayed side by side; it is an arena that echoes with the
cry of combatants’ (La Fraternity November 1841). Hence, too, the
idea that political prisoners, since they have, like delinquents, a
direct experience of the penal system, but, unlike them, are in a
position to be heard, have a duty to be the spokesmen of all prisoners;
it is their task to enlighten ‘the good bourgeois of France,
who has never known the penalties inflicted through the pompous
indictments of a public prosecutor’ (Almanack populaire de la
France, 1839, 50).
In this reappraisal of penal justice and of the frontier that it
carefully traces around delinquency, the tactic of what might be
called the ‘counter-^/cuV divers' is characteristic. What the workers’
newspapers do is to reverse the use that was made of crimes or trials
in the newspapers which, like the Gazette des tribunaux, ‘gorge
themselves with blood’, ‘feed on prison’ and provide a daily ‘repertoire
of melodrama’ (Pauvre Jacques, 1st year, no. 3). The counterfait
divers systematically stresses the facts of delinquency in the
bourgeoisie, showing that it is the class affected by ‘physical degeneration’
and ‘moral decay’; for the accounts of crimes committed
by ordinary people it substitutes descriptions of the misery into
which their exploiters plunge them and who, literally, starve and
murder them;27 it points out in the criminal trials of workers what
share of responsibility must be attributed to the employers and to
society as a whole. In short, a whole effort was being made to
reverse this monotonous discourse on crime, which sought both to
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isolate it as a monstrosity and to depict it as the work of the poorest
class.
In the course of this anti-penal polemic, the Fourierists no doubt
went further than any of the others. They were perhaps the first to
elaborate a political theory which, at the same time, places a positive
value on crime. Although, in their view, crime is a result of'civilization',
it is also, and by that very fact, a weapon against it. It bears
within it a figure and a future. 'The social order dominated by
the fatality of its repressive principle continues to kill through the
executioner or through the prisons those whose natural robustness
rejects or disdains its prescriptions, those who, too strong to remain
enclosed within its tight swaddling-clothes, break from them and
tear them to pieces, men who do not wish to remain children* {La
Phalange, 10 January 1837). There is not, therefore, a criminal
nature, but a play of forces which, according to the class to which
individuals belong,28 will lead them to power or to prison: if born
poor, today's magistrates would no doubt be in the convict-ships;
and the convicts, if they had been well bom, 'would be presiding
in the courts and dispensing justice' {La Phalange, 1 December
1838). At bottom, the existence of crime manifests 'a fortunate
irrepressibility of human nature’; it should be seen not so much as
a weakness or a disease, as an ehergy that is reviving, an ‘outburst
of protest in the name of human individuality’, which no doubt
accounts for its strange power of fascination. 'Without crime, which
awakens in us a mass of torpid feelings and half distinguished
passions, we would remain still longer in disorder, in weakness'
{La Phalange, 10 January 1837). It may be, therefore, that crime
constitutes a political instrument that could prove as precious for
the liberation of our society as it has been for the emancipation of
the Negroes; indeed, will such an emancipation take place without
it? ‘Poison, fire-raising and sometimes even revolt are evidence of
the terrible miseries of the social condition’ {La Phalange, 10
January 1837). And what of the prisoners, ‘the most unfortunate
and most oppressed part of mankind’? La Phalange sometimes
shared the contemporary aesthetic of crime, but in a very different
cause.
Hence a use offait divers that was intended not only to turn the
reproach of immorality back upon the adversary, but to reveal the
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play of opposing forces. La Phalange analyses penal affairs as a
confrontation coded by ‘civilization’, the great crimes not as
monstrosities, but as the fatal return and revolt ofwhat is repressed,29
the minor illegalities not as the necessary margins of society, but as
a rumbling from the midst of the battle-field.
After Vidocq and Lacenaire, a third character must be introduced.
He made only a short appearance; his notoriety lasted hardly more
than a day. He was merely the passing figure of minor illegalities: a
child of thirteen, without home or family, charged with vagabondage
and whom a two-year sentence had no doubt long placed in the
circuits of delinquency. He would certainly have passed without
trace, had he not opposed to the discourse of the law that made him
delinquent (in the name of the disciplines, even more than in the
terms of the code) the discourse of an illegality that remained resistant
to these coercions and which revealed indiscipline in a systematically
ambiguous manner as the disordered order of society and as the
affirmation of inalienable rights. All the illegalities that the court
defined as offences the accused reformulated as the affirmation of a
living force: the lack of a home as vagabondage, the lack of a master
as independence, the lack ofwork as freedom, the lackof a time-table
as the fullness of days and nights. This confrontation of illegality
with the discipline-penality-delinquency system was perceived by
contemporaries or rather by the journalist who happened to be there
as the comic effect of the criminal law at grips with the petty details
of indiscipline. And it was true: the affair itself and the verdict that
followed represented the heart of the problem of legal punishment
in the nineteenth century. The irony with which the judge tried to
envelop indiscipline in the majesty of the law and the insolence
with which the accused reinscribed indiscipline among the fundamental
rights represent for penality an exemplary scene.
This, no doubt, is the value of the account published in the
Gazette des tribunaux for August 1840: ‘The judge: One must sleep
at home. - Beasse: Have I got a home? - You live in perpetual vagabondage.
- I work to earn my living. - What is your station in
life? - My station: to begin with, Pm thirty-six at least; I don’t work
for anybody. Fve worked for myself for a long time now. I have my
day station and my night station. In the day, for instance, I hand out
leaflets free of charge to all the passers-by; I run after the stage­
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coaches when they arrive and carry luggage for the passengers; I
turn cart-wheels on the avenue de Neuilly; at night there are the
shows; I open coach doors, I sell pass-out tickets; Fve plenty to do.
- It would be better for you to be put into a good house as an
apprentice and learn a trade. - Oh, a good house, an apprenticeship,
it’s too much trouble. And anyway the bourgeois .. . always
grumbling, no freedom. - Does not your father wish to reclaim you?
-Haven’t got no father. - And your mother? - No mother neither,
no parents, no friends, free and independent.’ Hearing his sentence
of two years in a reformatory, Beasse ‘pulled an ugly face, then,
recovering his good humour, remarked: “ Two years, that’s never
more than twenty-four months. Let’s be off, then.” *
It was this scene that La Phalange took up. And the importance
that the newspaper gave it, the extremely slow, careful analysis,
shows that the Fourierists saw in such an everyday affair a play of
fundamental forces. On the one hand, that of ‘civilization’, represented
by the judge, ‘living legality, the spirit and letter of the law\
It had its own system of coercion, which seemed to be the code,
but which in fact was discipline. There had to be a place, a location,
a compulsory insertion: ‘One sleeps at home, said the judge, because
in fact, for him, everything must have a home, some dwelling, however
magnificent or mean; his task is not to provide one, but to
force every individual to live in one.’ Moreover, one must have a
station in life, a recognizable identity, an individuality fixed once
and for all: ‘What is your station? This question is the simplest
expression of the established order in society; such vagabondage is
repugnant to it, disturbs it; one must have a stable, continuous longterm
station, thoughts of the future, of a secure future, in order to
reassure it against all attacks.’ In short, one should have a master,
be caught up and situated within a hierarchy; one exists only when
fixed in definite relations of domination: ‘Who do you work with?
That is to say, since you are not a master, you must be a servant,
whatever your station; it is not a question of your satisfactoriness as
an individual; it is a question of order to be maintained.’ Confronted
with discipline on the face of the law, there is illegality, which puts
itself forward as a right; it is indiscipline, rather than the criminal
offence, that causes the rupture. An indiscipline of language:
incorrect grammar and the tone of the replies ‘indicate a violent
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split between the accused and society, which, through the judge,
addresses him in correct terms’. An indiscipline that is the indiscipline
of native, immediate liberty: ‘He is well aware that the apprentice,
the worker is a slave and that slavery is sad. . . This liberty,
this need of movement that possesses him, he is well aware that he
would no longer enjoy it in a life of ordinary order. . . He prefers
liberty; what does he care if others see it as disorder? It is liberty,
that is to say, the most spontaneous development of his individuality,
a wild development and, consequently, brutal and limited, but a
natural, instinctive development/ Indiscipline in family relations;
it does not matter whether this lost child was abandoned or freed
himself voluntarily, for ‘he would have been unable to bear the
slavery of education either at his parents’ or with strangers*. And
through all these minute disciplines it is ultimately ‘civilization* as a
whole that is rejected and ‘wildness* that emerges: ‘It is work, it is
laziness, it is thoughtlessness, it is debauchery: it is everything except
order; the difference in occupations and debauches aside, it is the
life of the savage, living from day to day and with no tomorrow*
(La Phalange, 15 August 1840).
No doubt the analyses of La Phalange cannot be regarded as
representative of the discussions that took place in the workers’ press
at this time on crime and penality. Nevertheless, they are situated in
the context of this polemic. The lessons of La Phalange were not
quite wasted. They found an echo when, in the second half of the
nineteenth century, taking the penal apparatus as their point of
attack, the anarchists posed the political problem of delinquency;
when they thought to recognize in it the most militant rejection of
the law; when they tried not so much to heroize the revolt of the
delinquents as to disentangle delinquency from the bourgeois legality
and illegality that had colonized it; when they wished to re-establish
or constitute the political unity of popular illegalities.
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3. The carceral
Were I to fix the date of completion of the carceral system, I would
choose not 1810 and the penal code, nor even 1844, when the law
laying down the principle of cellular internment was passed; I might
not even choose 1838, when books on prison reform by Charles
Lucas, Moreau-Christophe and Faucher were published. The date I
would choose would be 22 January 1840, the date of the official
opening of Mettray. Or better still, perhaps, that glorious day,
unremarked and unrecorded, when a child in Mettray remarked as
he lay dying: ‘What a pity I left the colony so soon’ (Ducpetiaux,
1852, 383). This marked the death of the first penitentiary saint.
Many of the blessed no doubt went to join him, if the former
inmates of the penal colonies are to be believed when, in singing
the praises of the new punitive policies of the body, they remarked:
‘We preferred the blows, but the cell suits us better.'
Why Mettray? Because it is the disciplinary form at its most
extreme, the model in which are concentrated all the coercive
technologies of behaviour. In it were to be found ‘cloister, prison,
school, regiment’. The small, highly hierarchized groups, into which
the inmates were divided, followed simultaneously five models: that
of the family (each group was a ‘family* composed o f‘brothers' and
two ‘elder brothers'); that of the army (each family, commanded by
a head, was divided into two sections, each of which had a second
in command; each inmate had a number and was taught basic
military exercises; there was a cleanliness inspection every day, an
inspection of clothing every week; a roll-call was taken three times
a day); that of the workshop, with supervisors and foremen, who
were responsible for the regularity of the work and for the apprenticeship
of the younger inmates; that of the school (an hour or an
hour and a half of lessons every day; the teaching was given by the
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instructor and by the deputy-heads); lastly, the judicial model (each
day ‘justice* was meted out in the parlour; ‘The least act of disobedience
is punished and the best way of avoiding serious offences
is to punish the most minor offences very severely: at Mettray, a useless
word is punishable1; the principal punishment inflicted was
confinement to one's cell; for ‘isolation is the best means ofacting on
the moral nature of children; it is there above all that the voice of
religion, even if it has never spoken to their hearts, recovers all its
emotional power’ - Ducpetiaux, 1852, 377); the entire parapenal
institution, which is created in order not to be a prison, culminates
in the cell, on the walls of which are written in black letters: ‘God
sees you/
This superimposition of different models makes it possible to
indicate, in its specific features, the function of ‘training’. The chiefs
and their deputies at Mettray had to be not exactly judges, or
teachers, or foremen, or non-commissioned officers, or ‘parents’,
but something of all these things in a quite specific mode of intervention.
They were in a sense technicians of behaviour: engineers
of conduct, orthopaedists of individuality. Their task was to produce
bodies that were both docile and capable; they supervised the nine
or ten working hours of every day (whether in a workshop or in
the fields); they directed the orderly movements of groups of inmates,
physical exercises, military exercises, rising in the morning,
going to bed at night, walks to the accompaniment of bugle and
whistle; they taught gymnastics;1 they checked cleanliness, supervised
bathing. Training was accompanied by permanent observation;
a body of knowledge was being constantly built up from the
everyday behaviour ofthe inmates; it was organized as an instrument
of perpetual assessment: ‘On entering the colony, the child is subjected
to a sort of interrogation as to his origins, the position of his
family, the offence for which he was brought before the courts and
all the other offences that make up his short and often very sad
existence. This information is written down on a board on which
everything concerning each inmate is noted in turn, his stay at the
colony and the place to which he is sent when he leaves’ (Ducpetiaux,
1851, 61). The modelling of the body produces a knowledge
of the individual, the apprenticeship of the techniques induces modes
of behaviour and the acquisition of skills is inextricably linked with
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the establishment of power relations; strong, skilled agricultural
workers are produced; in this very work, provided it is technically
supervised, submissive subjects are produced and a dependable
body of knowledge built up about them. This disciplinary technique
exercised upon the body had a double effect: a ‘soul* to be known
and a subjection to be maintained. One result vindicated this work of
training: in 1848, at a moment when ‘the fever of revolution fired the
imagination of all, when the schools at Angers, La Fleche, Alfort,
even the boarding schools, rose up in rebellion, the inmates of
Mettray were calmer than ever’ (Ferrus).
Where Mettray was especially exemplary was in the specificity
that it recognized in this operation of training. It was related to
other forms of supervision, on which it was based: medicine, general
education, religious direction. But it cannot not be identified absolutely
with them. Nor with administration in the strict sense. Heads
or deputy-heads of ‘families’, monitors and foremen, had to live in
close proximity to the inmates; their clothes were ‘almost as humble’
as those of the inmates themselves; they practically never left their
side, observing them day and night; they constituted among them
a network of permanent observation. And, in order to train them
themselves, a specialized school had been organized in the colony.
The essential element of its programme was to subject the future
cadres to the same apprenticeships and to the same coercions as the
inmates themselves: they were ‘subjected as pupils to the discipline
that, later, as instructors, they would themselves impose’. They were
taught the art of power relations. It was the first training college in
pure discipline: the ‘penitentiary* was not simply a project that
sought its justification in ‘humanity* or its foundations in a ‘science*,
but a technique that was learnt, transmitted and which obeyed
general norms. The practice that normalized by compulsion the
conduct of the undisciplined or dangerous could, in turn, by
technical elaboration and rational reflection, be ‘normalized*. The
disciplinary technique became a ‘discipline* which also had its
school.
It so happens that historians of the human sciences date the birth
of scientific psychology at this time: during these same years, it
seems, Weber was manipulating his little compass for the measurement
of sensations. What took place at Mettray (and in other
*95
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European countries sooner or later) was obviously of a quite different
order. It was the emergence or rather the institutional specification,
the baptism as it were, of a new type of supervision - both
knowledge and power —over individuals who resisted disciplinary
normalization. And yet, in the formation and growth of psychology,
the appearance of these professionals of discipline, normality and
subjection surely marks the beginning of a new stage. It will be said
that the quantitative assessment of sensorial responses could at least
derive authority from the prestige of the emerging science of
physiology and that for this alone it deserves to feature in the
history of the sciences. But the supervision of normality was firmly
encased in a medicine or a psychiatry that provided it with a sort
of ‘scientificity*; it was supported by a judicial apparatus which,
directly or indirectly, gave it legal justification. Thus, in the shelter
of these two considerable protectors, and, indeed, acting as a link
between them, or a place of exchange, a carefully worked out
technique for the supervision of norms has continued to develop
right up to the present day. The specific, institutional supports of
these methods have proliferated since the founding of the small
school at Mettray; their apparatuses have increased in quantity and
scope; their auxiliary services have increased, with hospitals, schools,
public administrations and private enterprises; their agents have
proliferated in number, in power, in technical qualification; the
technicians of indiscipline have founded a family. In the normalization
of the power of normalization, in the arrangement of a powerknowledge
over individuals, Mettray and its school marked a new
era.
But why choose this moment as the point of emergence of the
formation of an art of punishing that is still more or less our own?
Precisely because this choice is somewhat 'unjust*. Because it
situates the ‘end’ of the process in the lower reaches of criminal law.
Because Mettray was a prison, but not entirely; a prison in that it
contained young delinquents condemned by the courts; and yet
something else, too, because it also contained minors who had been
charged, but acquitted under article 66 of the code, and boarders
held, as in the eighteenth century, as an alternative to paternal
correction. Mettray, a punitive model, is at the limit of strict
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penality. It was the most famous of a whole series of institutions
which, well beyond the frontiers of criminal law, constituted what
one might call the carceral archipelago.
Yet the general principles, the great codes and subsequent legislation
were quite clear on the matter: no imprisonment ‘outside the
law*, no detention that had not been decided by a qualified judicial
institution, no more of those arbitrary and yet widespread confinements.
Yet the very principle of extra-penal incarceration was in
fact never abandoned. (A whole study remains to be done of the
debates that took place during the Revolution concerning family
courts, paternal correction and the right of parents to lock up their
children.) And, if the apparatus of the great classical form of confinement
was partly (and only partly) dismantled, it was very soon
reactivated, rearranged, developed in certain directions. But what is
still more important is that it was homogenized, through the mediation
of the prison, on the one hand with legal punishments and, on
the other, with disciplinary mechanisms. The frontiers between
confinement, judicial punishment and institutions of discipline,
which were already blurred in the classical age, tended to disappear
and to constitute a great carceral continuum that diffused penitentiary
techniques into the most innocent disciplines, transmitting
disciplinary norms into the vefy heart of the penal system and
placing over the slightest illegality, the smallest irregularity, deviation
or anomaly, the threat of delinquency. A subtle, graduated
carceral net, with compact institutions, but also separate and diffused
methods, assumed responsibility for the arbitrary, widespread,
badly integrated confinement of the classical age.
I shall not attempt here to reconstitute the whole network that
formed first the immediate surroundings of the prison, then spread
farther and farther outwards. However, a few references and dates
should give some idea of the breadth and precocity of the phenome­
non.
There were agricultural sections in the maisons centrales (the first
example of which was Gaillon in 1824, followed laterby Fontevrault,
Les Douaires, Le Boulard); there were colonies for poor, abandoned
vagrant children (Petit-Bourg in 1840, Ostwald in 1842); there were
almshouses for young female offenders who ‘recoiled before the idea
of entering a life of disorder’, for ‘poor innocent girls whose
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mothers’ immorality has exposed to precocious perversity’, or for
poor girls found on the doorsteps of hospitals and lodging houses.
There were penal colonies envisaged by the law of 1850: minors,
acquitted or condemned, were to be sent to these colonies and
‘brought up in common, under strict discipline, and trained in
agricultural work and in the principal industries related to it;’ later,
they were to be joined by minors sentenced to hard labour for life
and Vicious and insubordinate wards of the Public Assistance' (on
all these institutions, cf. Gaillac, 99-107). And, moving still farther
away from penality in the strict sense, the carceral circles widen and
the form of the prison slowly diminishes and finally disappears
altogether: the institutions for abandoned or indigent children, the
orphanages (like Neuhof or Mesnil-Firmin), the establishments for
apprentices (like the Bethleem de Reims or the Maison de Nancy);
still farther away the factory-convents, such as La Sauvagere,
Tarare and Jujurieu (where the girl workers entered about the age of
thirteen, lived confined for years and were allowed out only under
surveillance, received instead of wages pledged payment, which
could be increased by bonuses for zeal and good behaviour, which
they could use only on leaving). And then, still farther, there was a
whole series of mechanisms that did not adopt the ‘compact’ prison
model, but used some of the carceral methods: charitable societies,
moral improvement associations, organizations that handed out
assistance and also practised surveillance, workers5 estates and
lodging houses - the most primitive of which still bear the all too
visible marks of the penitentiary system.2 And, lastly, this great
carceral network reaches all the disciplinary mechanisms that function
throughout society.
We have seen that, in penal justice, the prison transformed the
punitive procedure into a penitentiary technique; the carceral archipelago
transported this technique from the penal institution to the
entire social body. With several important results.
1. This vast mechanism established a slow, continuous, imperceptible
gradation that made it possible to pass naturally froip disorder
to offence and back from a transgression of the law to a slight
departure from a rule, an average, a demand, a norm. In the classical
period, despite a certain common reference to offence in general,3
the order of the crime, the order of sin and the order of bad conduct
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remained separate in so far as they related to separate criteria and
authorities (court, penitence, confinement). Incarceration with its
mechanisms of surveillance and punishment functioned, on the
contrary, according to a principle of relative continuity* The continuity
of the institutions themselves, which were linked to one
another (public assistance with the orphanage, the reformitory, the
penitentiary, the disciplinary battalion, the prison; the school with
the charitable society, the workshop, the almshouse, the penitentiary
convent; the workers’ estate with the hospital and the prison).
A continuity of the punitive criteria and mechanisms, which on the
basis of a mere deviation gradually strengthened the rules and
increased the punishment. A continuous gradation of the established,
specialized and competent authorities (in the order of knowledge
and in the order of power) which, without resort to arbitrariness,
but strictly according to the regulations, by means of observation
and assessment hierarchized, differentiated, judged, punished and
moved gradually from the correction of irregularities to the punishment
of crime. The ‘carceral’ with its many diffuse or compact
forms, its institutions of supervision or constraint, of discreet surveillance
and insistent coercion, assured the communication of
punishments according to quality and quantity; it connected in
series or disposed according to subtle divisions the minor and the
serious penalties, the mild and the strict forms of treatment, bad
marks and light sentences. You will end up in the convict-ship, the
slightest indiscipline seems to say; and the harshest of prisons says
to the prisoners condemned to life: I shall note the slightest irregularity
in your conduct. The generality of the punitive function that
the eighteenth century sought in the ‘ideological’ technique of
representations and signs now had as its support the extension, the
material framework, complex, dispersed, but coherent, of the various
carceral mechanisms. As a result, a certain significant generality
moved between the least irregularity and the greatest crime; it was no
longer the offence, the attack on the common interest, it was the
departure from the norm, the anomaly; it was this that haunted
the school, the court, the asylum or the prison. It generalized in
the sphere of meaning the function that the carceral generalized in the
sphere of tactics. Replacing the adversary of the sovereign, the
social enemy was transformed into a deviant, who brought with him
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the multiple danger of disorder, crime and madness. The carceral
network linked, through innumerable relations, the two long,
multiple series of the punitive and the abnormal.
2. The carceral, with its far-reaching networks, allows the recruitment
of major ‘delinquents’. It organizes what might be called
‘disciplinary careers’ in which, through various exclusions and
rejections, a whole process is set in motion. In the classical period,
there opened up in the confines or interstices of society the confused,
tolerant and dangerous domain of the ‘outlaw’ or at least of that
which eluded the direct hold of power: an uncertain space that was
for criminality a training ground and a region of refuge; there
poverty, unemployment, pursued innocence, cunning, the struggle
against the powerful, the refusal of obligations and laws, and organized
crime all came together as chance and fortune would dictate;
it was the domain of adventure that Gil Bias, Sheppard or Mandrin,
each in his own way, inhabited. Through the play of disciplinary
differentiations and divisions, the nineteenth century constructed
rigorous channels which, within the system, inculcated docility and
produced delinquency by the same mechanisms. There was a sort of
disciplinary ‘training’, continuous and compelling, that had something
of the pedagogical curriculum and something of the professional
network. Careers emerged from it, as secure, as predictable,
as those of public life: assistance associations, residential apprenticeships,
penal colonies, disciplinary battalions, prisons, hospitals,
almshouses. These networks were already well mapped out at the
beginning of the nineteenth century: ‘Our benevolent establishments
present an admirably coordinated whole by means of which
the indigent does not remain a moment without help from the cradle
to the grave. Follow the course of the unfortunate man: you will
see him born among foundlings; from there he passes to the nursery,
then to an orphanage; at the age of six he goes off to primary school
and later to adult schools. If he cannot work, he is placed on the list
of the charity offices of his district, and if he falls ill he may choose
between twelve hospitals. . . Lastly, when the poor Parisian
reaches the end of his career, seven almshouses await his age and
often their salubrious regime has prolonged his useless days well
beyond those of the rich man’ (Moreau de Jonnes, quoted in
Touquet).
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The carceral network does not cast the unassimilable into a confused
hell; there is no outside- It takes back with one hand what it
seems to exclude with the other. It saves everything, including what
it punishes. It is unwilling to waste even what it has decided to
disqualify. In this panoptic society of which incarceration is the
omnipresent armature, the delinquent is not outside the law; he is,
from the very outset, in the law, at the very heart of the law, or at
least in the midst of those mechanisms that transfer the individual
imperceptibly from discipline to the law, from deviation to offence.
Although it is true that prison punishes delinquency, delinquency
is for the most part produced in and by an incarceration which,
ultimately, prison perpetuates in its turn. The prison is merely the
natural consequence, no more than a higher degree, of that hierarchy
laid down step by step. The delinquent is an institutional
product. It is no use being surprised, therefore, that in a considerable
proportion of cases the biography of convicts passes through
all these mechanisms and establishments, whose purpose, it is widely
believed, is to lead away from prison. That one should find in them
what one might call the index of an irrepressibly delinquent ‘character’:
the prisoner condemned to hard labourwas meticulously produced
by a childhood spent in a reformatory, according to the lines
of force of the generalized carceral system. Conversely, the lyricism
of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the ‘outlaw’, the
great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened
order. But it is not on the fringes of society and through successive
exiles that criminality is born, but by means of ever more
closely placed insertions, under ever more insistent surveillance, by
an accumulation of disciplinary coercion. In short, the carceral
archipelago assures, in the depths of the social body, the formation
ofdelinquency on thebasis ofsubtle illegalities, theoverlapping ofthe
latter by the former and the establishment of a specifiedcriminality.
3. But perhaps the most important effect of the carceral system
and of its extension well beyond legal imprisonment is that it succeeds
in making the power to punish natural and legitimate, in
lowering at least the threshold of tolerance to penality. It tends to
efface what may be exorbitant in the exercise of punishment. It does
this by playing the two registers in which it is deployed - the legal
register of justice and the extra-legal register of discipline - against
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one another. In effect, the great continuity of the carceral system
throughout the law and its sentences gives a sort of legal sanction
to the disciplinary mechanisms, to the decisions and judgements
that they enforce. Throughout this network, which comprises so
many ‘regional’ institutions, relatively autonomous and independent,
is transmitted, with the ‘prison-form*, the model of justice itself.
The regulations of the disciplinary establishments may reproduce
the law, the punishments imitate the verdicts and penalties, the
surveillance repeat the police model; and, above all these multiple
establishments, the prison, which in relation to them is a pure form,
unadulterated and unmitigated, gives them a sort of official sanction.
The carceral, with its long gradation stretching from the convictship
or imprisonment with hard labour to diffuse, slight limitations,
communicates a type of power that the law validates and that justice
uses as its favourite weapon. How could the disciplines and the
power that functions in them appear arbitrary, when they merely
operate the mechanisms of justice itself, even with a view to mitigating
their intensity? When, by generalizing its effects and transmitting
it to every level, it makes it possible to avoid its full rigour?
Carceral continuity and the fusion of the prison-form make it
possible to legalize, or in any case to legitimate disciplinary power,
which thus avoids any element of excess or abuse it may entail.
But, conversely, the carceral pyramid gives to the power to
inflict legal punishment a context in which it appears to be free of all
excess and all violence. In the subtle gradation of the apparatuses of
discipline and of the successive ‘embeddings’ that they involve, the
prison does not at all represent the unleashing of a different kind of
power, but simply an additional degree in the intensity of a mechanism
that has continued to operate since the earliest forms of legal
punishment. Between the latest institution of ‘rehabilitation', where
one is taken in order to avoid prison, and the prison where one is
sent after a definable offence, the difference is (and must be) scarcely
perceptible. There is a strict economy that has the effect of rendering
as discreet as possible the singular power to punish. There is
nothing in it now that recalls the former excess of sovereign power
when it revenged its authority on the tortured body of those about
to be executed. Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it,
a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on
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each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline. By
means of a carceral continuum, the authority that sentences infiltrates
all those other authorities that supervise, transform, correct,
improve. It might even be said that nothing really distinguishes
them any more except the singularly ‘dangerous' character of the
delinquents, the gravity of their departures from normal behaviour
and the necessary solemnity of the ritual. But, in its function, the
power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or
educating. It receives from them, and from their lesser, smaller task,
a sanction from below; but one that is no less important for that,
since it is the sanction of technique and rationality. The carceral
‘naturalizes* the legal power to punish, as it ‘legalizes* the technical
power to discipline. In thus homogenizing them, effacing what may
be violent in one and arbitrary in the other, attenuating the effects of
revolt that they may both arouse, thus depriving excess in either of
any purpose, circulating the same calculated, mechanical and discreet
methods from one to the other, the carceral makes it possible
to carry out that great ‘economy* of power whose formula the
eighteenth century had sought, when the problem of the accumulation
and useful administration of men first emerged.
By operating at every level of the social body and by mingling
ceaselessly the art of rectifying and the right to punish, the universality
of the carceral lowers the level from which it becomes natural
and acceptable to. be punished. The question is often posed as to
how, before and after the Revolution, a new foundation was given
to the right to punish. And no doubt the answer is to be found in
the theory of the contract. But it is perhaps more important to ask
the reverse question: how were people made to accept the power to
punish, or quite simply, when punished, tolerate being so. The
theory of the contract can only answer this question by the fiction
of a juridical subject giving to others the power to exercise over him
the right that he himself possesses over them. It is highly probable
that the great carceral continuum, which provides a communication
between the power of discipline and the power of the law, and
extends without interruption from the smallest coercions to the
longest penal detention, constituted the technical and real, immediately
material counterpart of that chimerical granting of the right to
punish.
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4. With this new economy of power, the carceral system, which
is its basic instrument, permitted the emergence of a new form of
‘law*: a mixture of legality and nature, prescription and constitution,
the norm. This had a whole series of effects: the internal dislocation
of the judicial power or at least of its functioning; an increasing
difficulty in judging, as if one were ashamed to pass sentence; a
furious desire on the part of the judges to judge, assess, diagnose,
recognize the normal and abnormal and claim the honour of curing
or rehabilitating. In view of this, it is useless to believe in the good
or bad consciences of judges, or even of their unconscious. Their
immense ‘appetite for medicine’ which is constantly manifested from
their appeal to psychiatric experts, to their attention to the
chatter of criminology - expresses the major fact that the power
they exercise has been ‘denatured’; that it is at a certain level governed
by laws; that at another, more fundamental level it functions as a
normative power; it is the economy of power that they exercise,
and not that of their scruples or their humanism, that makes them
pass ‘therapeutic* sentences and recommend ‘rehabilitating’ periods
of imprisonment. But, conversely, if the judges accept ever more
reluctantly to condemn for the sake of condemning, the activity of
judging has increased precisely to the extent that the normalizing
power has spread. Borne along by the omnipresence of the mechanisms
of discipline, basing itself on all the carceral apparatuses, it has
become one of the major functions of our society. The judges of
normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the
teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ‘social
worker’-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative
is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects
to it his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements.
The carceral network, in its compact or disseminated forms,
with its systems of insertion, distribution, surveillance, observation,
has been the greatest support, in modem society, of the normalizing
power.
5. The carceral texture of society assures both the real capture
of the body and its perpetual observation; it is, by its very nature,
the apparatus of punishment that conforms most completely to the
new economy of power and the instrument for the formation of
knowledge that this very economy needs. Its panoptic functioning
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enables it to play this double role* By virtue of its methods of fixing,
dividing, recording, it has been one of the simplest, crudest, also
most concrete, but perhaps most indispensable conditions for the
development of this immense activity of examination that has objectified
human behaviour. If, after the age of ‘inquisitorial* justice, we
have entered the age of ‘examinatory* justice, if, in an even more
general way, the method of examination has been able to spread so
widely throughout society, and to give rise in part to the sciences
of man, one of the great instruments for this has been the multiplicity
and close overlapping of the various mechanisms of incarceration.
I am not saying that the human sciences emerged from the prison.
But, if they have been able to be formed and to produce so many
profound changes in the episteme, it is because they have been
conveyed by a specific and new modality of power: a certain policy
of the body, a certain way of rendering the group of men docile and
useful. This policy required the involvement of definite relations of
knowledge in relations of power; it called for a technique of overlapping
subjection and objectification; it brought with it new procedures
of individualization. The carceral network constituted one
of the armatures of this power-knowledge that has made the human
sciences historically possible. Knowable man (soul, individuality,
consciousness, conduct, whatever it is called) is the object-effect
of this analytical investment, of this domination-observation.
6. This no doubt explains the extreme solidity of the prison, that
slight invention that was nevertheless decried from the outset. If it
had been no more than an instrument of rejection or repression in
the service of a state apparatus, it would have been easier to alter its
more overt forms or to find a more acceptable substitute for it. But,
rooted as it was in mechanisms and strategies of power, it could
meet any attempt to transform it with a great force of inertia. One
fact is characteristic: when it is a question of altering the system of
imprisonment, opposition does not come from the judicial institutions
alone; resistance is to be found not in the prison as penal sanction,
but in the prison with all its determinations, links and extrajudicial
results; in the prison as the relay in a general network of
disciplines and surveillances; in the prison as it functions in a panoptic
regime. This does not mean that it cannot be altered, nor that it
is once and for all indispensable to our kind of society. One may, on
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the contrary, site the two processes which, in the very continuity of
the processes that make the prison function, are capable of exercising
considerable restraint on its use and of transforming its internal
functioning. And no doubt these processes have already begun to a
large degree. The first is that which reduces the utility (or increases
its inconveniences) of a delinquency accommodated as a specific
illegality, locked up and supervised; thus the growth of great
national or international illegalities directly linked to the political
and economic apparatuses (financial illegalities, information services,
arms and drugs trafficking, property speculation) makes it clear that
the somewhat rustic and conspicuous work force of delinquency is
proving ineffective; or again, on a smaller scale, as soon as the
economic levy on sexual pleasure is carried out more efficiently by
the sale of contraceptives, or obliquely through publications, films
or shows, the archaic hierarchy of prostitution loses much of its
former usefulness. The second process is the growth of the disciplinary
networks, the multiplication of their exchanges with the
penal apparatus, the ever more important powers that are given
them, the ever more massive transference to them of judicial functions;
now, as medicine, psychology, education, public assistance,
‘social work' assume an ever greater share of the powers of supervision
and assessment, the penal apparatus will be able, in turn, to
become medicalized, psychologized, educationalized; and by the
same token that turning-point represented by the prison becomes
less useful when, through the gap between its penitentiary discourse
and its effect of consolidating delinquency, it articulates the penal
power and the disciplinary power. In the midst of all these mechanisms
of normalization, which are becoming ever more rigorous in
their application, the specificity of the prison and its role as link are
losing something of their purpose.
If there is an overall political issue around the prison, it is not
therefore whether it is to be corrective or not; whether the judges,
the psychiatrists or the sociologists are to exercise more power in it
than the administrators or supervisors; it is not even whether we
should have prison or something other than prison. At present, the
problem lies rather in the steep rise in the use of these mechanisms
of normalization and the wide-ranging powers which, through the
proliferation of new disciplines, they bring with them.
306
The carceral
In 1836, a correspondent wrote to La Phalange: ‘Moralists,
philosophers, legislators, flatterers of civilization, this is the plan of
your Paris, neatly ordered and arranged, here is the improved plan
in which all like things are gathered together. At the centre, and
within a first enclosure: hospitals for all diseases, almshouses for
all types of poverty, madhouses, prisons, convict-prisons for men,
women and children. Around the first enclosure, barracks, courtrooms,
police stations, houses for prison warders, scaffolds, houses
for the executioner and his assistants. At the four corners, the
Chamber of Deputies, the Chamber of Peers, the Institute and the
Royal Palace. Outside, there are the various services that supply
the central enclosure, commerce, with its swindlers and its bankruptcies;
industry and its furious struggles; the press, with its
sophisms; the gambling dens; prostitution, the people dying of
hunger or wallowing in debauchery, always ready to lend an ear
to the voice of the Genius of Revolutions; the heartless rich. . .
Lastly the ruthless war of all against air {La Phalange, 10 August
1836).
I shall stop with this anonymous text. We are now far away from
the country of tortures, dotted with wheels, gibbets, gallows,
pillories; we are far, too, from that dream of the reformers, less
than fifty years before: the city bf punishments in which a thousand
small theatres would have provided an endless multicoloured representation
of justice in which the punishments, meticulously produced
on decorative scaffolds, would have constituted the permanent
festival of the penal code. The carceral city, with its imaginary
‘geo-politics*, is governed by quite different principles. The extract
from La Phalange reminds us of some of the more important ones:
that at the centre of this city, and as if to hold it in place, there is,
not the ‘centre of power*, not a network of forces, but a multiple
network of diverse elements - walls, space, institution, rules, discourse;
that the model of the carceral city is not, therefore, the body
of the king, with the powers that emanate from it, nor the contractual
meeting of wills from which a body that was both individual
and collective was born, but a strategic distribution of elements of
different natures and levels. That the prison is not the daughter of
laws, codes or the judicial apparatus; that it is not subordinated to
the court and the docile or clumsy instrument of the sentences that
307
Prison
it hands out and of the results that it would like to achieve; that it is
the court that is external and subordinate to the prison. That in the
central position that it occupies, it is not alone, but linked to a whole
series of ‘carceral* mechanisms which seem distinct enough —since
they are intended to alleviate pain, to cure, to comfort - but which
all tend, like the prison, to exercise a power of normalization. That
these mechanisms are applied not to transgressions against a ‘centraP
law, but to the apparatus of production - ‘commerce* and ‘industry*
- to a whole multiplicity of illegalities, in all their diversity of nature
and origin, their specific role in profit and the different ways in
which they are dealt with by the punitive mechanisms. And that
ultimately what presides over all these mechanisms is not the unitary
functioning of an apparatus or an institution, but the necessity of
combat and the rules of strategy. That, consequently, the notions of
institutions of repression, rejection, exclusion, marginalization, are
not adequate to describe, at the very centre of the carceral city, the
formation of the insidious leniencies, unavowable petty cruelties,
small acts of cunning, calculated methods, techniques, ‘sciences’
that permit the fabrication of the disciplinary individual. In this
central and centralized humanity, the effect and instrument of complex
power relations, bodies and forces subjected by multiple
mechanisms of ‘incarceration’, objects for discourses that are in
themselves elements for this strategy, we must hear the distant roar
of battle.
At this point I end a book that must serve as a historical background
to various studies of the power of normalization and the
formation of knowledge in modem society.
308
Notes
P A R T ONE T OR T U R E
I The body of the condemned
1 The public execution of traitors described by William Blackstone,
Commentaries on the Laws of England\ vol. 4, 1766 9, 89. Since the
French translation was intended to bring out the humaneness of
English legislation, in contrast with the old ordinance of 1760, the
French translator adds the following note: 'In this form of execution,
which is so terrifying to see, theguilty man does not suffer much pain,
or for long.'
2 In any case, I could give no notion by references or quotations what
this book owes to Gilles Deleuze and thework he is undertaking with
F61ix Guattari. I should also have quoted a number of pages from
R. CastelFs Psychanalysme and say how much I am indebted to
Pierre Nora.
3 I shall study the birth of the prison only in the French penal system.
Differences in historical developments and institutions would make a
detailed comparative examination too burdensome and any attempt to
describe the phenomenon as a whole too schematic.
2 The spectacle of the scaffold
1 The name given to two fortresses in old Paris, the Grand and the
Petit Chatelet. The first, demolished in 1802, was situated on the
right bank of the Seine. It was the seat of the criminal jurisdiction of
the viscounty and provostry of Paris. The second, on the left bank,
near the H6tel-Dieu, served as a prison [Tr.J.
2 In the catalogues of judicial proofs, the confession appears in about
the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Bernard of Pavia does not refer
to it, but it is mentioned by Hostiemis. Crater’s definition is characteristic:
*Aut legitime convictus aut sponte confessus/
309
Notes
In medieval law, the confession was valid only when made by an
adult and before the adversary. Cf. Levy.
3 The Gazette tribunaux, 6 July 1837, reports, from a Gloucester newspaper,
the ‘atrocious and disgusting’ conduct of an executioner who
after hanging a condemned man ‘took the corpse by the shoulders,
violently turned it round and struck it several times saying: “Are you
dead enough now?” then, turning towards the crowd, laughing and
jeering, he made several indecent remarks’.
4 Argenson, 241. Cf also Barbier, 455. One of the first episodes of this
affair was very typical of popular agitation concerning penal justice in
the eighteenth century. The lieutenant-general of police, Berryer, had
seized ‘libertine children without confession’; the guards agreed to
hand them back to their parents ‘onlywhen given money*; it was said
that the children were intended to provide for the king’s pleasure.
The crowd, having discovered an informer, killed him ‘with an
inhumanity carried to the farthest excess’ and ‘dragged him after his
death, a rope around his neck, to M. Berryer’s door*. Now, this
informer was a thief who would have been broken on the wheel with
his accomplice Raffiat, had he not agreed to act as an informer; he was
greatly appreciated by the police on account of his knowledge of all
the intricacies of the plot; and he was ‘highly regarded in his new
trade’. We have an example here that is interesting on a number of
counts: a movement of revolt triggered off by a relatively new means
of repression, which was not penal justice, but the police; a case of that
technical collaboration between delinquents and police, which was to
become normal from the eighteenth century onwards; a riot in which
people took it upon themselves to torture a condemned man who had
unjustly escaped the scaffold.
5 Those whom R, Mandrou calls the two great ones: Cartouche and
Mandrin, to whom one should add Guilleri (Mandrou, 112). In England,
Jonathan Wild, Jack Sheppard and Claude Duval played a somewhat
similar role.
6 This title is to be found not only in the Bibliotheque de Troyes, but
also in the Bibliotheque de Normandie (cf. Helot).
7 Cf., for example, Lacretelle: Tn order to satisfy this need for strong
emotion, in order to deepen the impression of a great example, one
allows these terrible stories to circulate. The poets of the people take
them up and spread their fame to every part of the land. One day a
family hears at its door the story in song of the crime and execution
of its sons’ (Lacretelle, 106).
310
Notes
P A R T TWO P UN I S H M E N T
I Generalisedpunishment
1 Mogensen, 326. The author shows that in Auge crimes of violence
were four times less numerous on theeve ofthe Revolution than at the
end of the reign of Louis XIV. Generally speaking, the work directed
by Pierre Chaunu on criminality in Normandy shows the same rise in
fraud at the expense of violence. Cf. articles by B. Boutelet, J. C.
Gdgot and V. Boucheron in the Annales de Normandie of 1962, 1966
and 1971. For Paris, cf. Petrovitch. The same phenomenon, it seems,
took place in England: cf. Hibbert, 72 and Tobias, 37ff.
2 Le Roy-Ladurie, 1973. Cf. also Farge who confirms this tendency:
between 1750 and 175 5, 5 per cent of those convicted for stealing food
were sent to the galleys, but 15 per cent between 1775 and 1790: ‘The
courts became more severe as time went on.. . The values useful to a
society that wished to be ordered and respectful of property were
under threat’ (Farge, 130-42).
3 On this criticism of ‘excessive power’ and of its bad distribution in the
judicial apparatus, cf. in particular Dupaty, 1788, Lacretelle and
Target.
4 Cf. N. Bergasse on the judicial power: ‘Deprived of any kind of
activity against the political regime of the State and having no influence
on the wills that come together to form that regime or to maintain
it, it must have at its disposal, in order to protect all individuals and all
rights, such a force that, all-powerful in defending and assisting that
regime, it should become absolutely nil as soon as its destination is
changed in any attempt to use it to oppress’ (Bergasse, 11-12).
5 Rousseau, 28. It should be noted that these ideas of Rousseau’s were
used in the Constituent Assembly by certain deputies who wished to
maintain a system of very strict penalties. And, curiously enough, the
principles of the Social Contract could be used to support the old
correspondence of atrocity between crime and punishment. ‘The protection
due to citizens requires that penalties be measured according
to theatrocity of the crimes and not sacrifice, in the name of humanity,
humanity itself’ (Mougins de Roquefort, who quotes this passage from
the Social Contract: cf. Mougins, 637).
6 Duport, Archives parlementaires, X, 744. One might also cite in
support the different competitions proposed at the end of the eighteenth
century by learned societies and academies: ‘How is the mildness
of these investigations and penalties to be reconciled with the
certainties of aprompt and exemplary punishment, so that civil society
31 1
Notes
finds the greatest possible security for liberty and humanity?’ (Economic
Society of Berne, 1777). Marat responded with his Plan de
Legislation criminelle. ‘What are the means of alleviating the rigour of
the penal laws in France without damage to public safety?* (Acad^mie
de Chalons-sur-Mame, 1780; the winners were Brissot and Bemardi);
‘does theextreme severity of the laws tend to diminish the number and
enormity of crimes in a depraved nation?* (Acad6mie de Marseille,
1786; the winner was Eymar).
7 G. Target, Observations sur le projet du Code pinal, in Locr6, 7-8. It
is to be found in an inverted form in Kant.
8 ‘Society does not see in the punishments it inflicts the barbarous
pleasure of making a human being suffer; it sees it as a necessary
precaution to prevent similar crimes, to protect society from the evils
with which murder threatens it’ (Baniave, 9).
9 Beccaria, 26. Cf. also Brissot: ‘If pardon is equitable, the law is bad;
when legislation is good, pardons are only crimes against the law*
(Brissot, 200).
10 Mably, 327. Cf. also Vattel: ‘It is not so much the atrocity of the
penalties as the exactitude with which they are carried out that keeps
everybody within his duty* (Mably, 163).
11 Contrary to what Carnot or Helie and Chauveau say, recidivism was
very clearly punished in a number of laws under the Ancien Regime.
The ordinance of 1549 declares that the malefactor who repeats his
crime is an ‘execrable, infamous being, eminently pernicious to the
commonwealth*; recidivism for blasphemy, theft, vagabondage, etc.,
were subject to special penalties.
12 Le Peletier, 321-2. The following year, Bellart made what may be
regarded as the first defence of a crime passioneL This was the Gras
affair. Cf. Annales du barreau moderne, 1823, III, 34.
2 The gentle way inpunishment
1 Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau. The authors who abandoned the death
penalty envisaged some definite penalties: Brissot, 29-30. Dufriche de
Valaz£, 344: perpetual imprisonment for those who have been judged
‘irremediably wicked*.
2 Masson, 139. Yet the objection made against penal labour was that it
implied a recourse to violence (Le Peletier) or that it represented a
profanation of the sacred character of work (Duport). Rabaud Saintfitienne
got the term ‘forced labour* adopted in contra-distinction to
‘free labour that belongs exclusively to free men* (Archives ParlementairesyXXVI,
71off).
312
Notes
3 Part of this code was translated in the introduction to the French
translation of Colquhoun, 1807, I, 84.
4 This explains the numerous prison regulations concerning the exactions
of the warders>the security of the premises and the inability of
prisoners to communicate among themselves. For example, the
judgement of the Dijon Parlement of 21 September 1706. Cf. also
Serpillon, 601-47.
5 This is repeatedexactly in the declaration of 4March 1724 on recidivist
thieves or that of 18 July 1724 concerning vagabondage. A boy, who
was too young to go to the galleys, remained in a prison until he was
old enough to be sent there, sometimes to serve the whole of his
sentence. Cf. Crime et criminalite en France sous VAncien Regime, 266ff.
6 Phalaris, tyrant of the Greek town of Agrigentum in Sicily, reigned
about 560 B.C. He is said to have roasted men alive in a brazen bull.
His name is used here to typify tyrants in general [Tr.].
7 Briey, 'Tiers fitat*, quoted in Desjardin, 484. Cf. Goubert and Denis,
203. One also finds in the cahiers demands for the maintenance of
houses of detention that families might use.
8 Cf. Thorsten Sellin, Pioneering in Penology, 1944, which gives an
exhaustive study ofthe Rasphuis and theSpinhuis ofAmsterdam. One
may leave to one side another ‘model*, often cited in the eighteenth
century. This is the one proposed by Mabillon in the Reflexions sur les
prisons des ordres religieux, republished in 1845. ^ seems that this work
was exhumed in the nineteenth century at a time when the Catholics
were disputing with the Protestants the place they had taken up in the
philanthropic movement and in certain administrative bodies. Mabillon*s
work, which seems to have remained relatively unknown and
uninfluential, sets out to show that ‘the first thought of the American
penitentiary system* is *aquite monastic and French thought, whatever
one might say by way of giving it a Genevan or Pennsylvanian
origin' (L. Faucher).
9 Vilan XIV, 64; this memoir, which is bound up with the foundation of
the prison at Ghent, remained unpublished until 1841. The frequency
of the penalty of banishment emphasized still further the relations
between crime and vagabondage. In 1771, the States of Flanders
remarked that ‘penalties of banishment imposed on beggars remained
ineffectual, in view of the fact that the States send to one another
subjects that they find pernicious at home. As a result, a beggar,
chased in this way from place to place, will finally get himself hanged,
whereas, if he had been given the habit of work, he would not have
embarked on his evil path* (Stoobant, 228).
3*5
Notes
10 The Quakers certainly also knew the Rasphuis and Spinhuis of
Amsterdam. Cf. Sellin, 109-10. In any case, Walnut Street Prison was
a continuation of the Almshouse opened in 1767 and of the penal
legislation that the Quakers had wished to impose despite the English
administration.
11 On the disorders caused by this law, cf. Rush, 5-9 and Vaux, 45. It
should be noted that in the report by J. L. Siegel, which had inspired
the Rasphuis ofAmsterdam, it was envisaged that penalties would not
be proclaimed publicly, that prisoners would be brought into the
prison at night, that warders would swear not to reveal their identity
and that no visits would be permitted (Sellin, 27-8).
12 B. Rush, who was one of the inspectors, notes after a visit to Walnut
Street: ‘Moral cares: preaching, reading of good books, cleanliness of
clothes and rooms, baths; one does not raise one’s voice, little wine,
as little tobacco as possible, little obscene or profane conversation.
Constant work: the gardens taken care of; it is beautiful: 1,200 head of
cabbage* (in Teeters, 1935, 50).
13 Rush, 14. This idea of an apparatus for transforming human beings
is already to be found in Hanway’s project for a ‘reformatory’: ‘The
idea of a hospital and that of a malefactor are incompatible; but let us
try to make the prison an authentic and effective reformatory, instead
of it being like the others a school of vice’ (Hanway, 52).
14 Cf. the criticism made by Rush of punitive spectacles, in particular
those imagined by Dufriche du Valaz£ (Rush, 5-9).
P A R T T H R EE D I S C I P L I N E
i Docile bodies
1 I shall choose examples from military, medical, educational and
industrial institutions. Other examples might have been taken from
colonization, slavery and child rearing.
2 Cf. what La M6therie wrote after a visit to Le Creusot: ‘The buildings
for so fine an establishment and so large a quantity of different work
should cover a sufficient area, so that there will be no confusion among
the workers during working time’ (La Metherie, 66).
3 J.-B. de la Salle, Conduite des ecoles chritiennesyB.N. Ms. 11759, 248~9*
A little earlier Batencour proposed that classrooms should be divided
into three parts: ‘The most honourable for those who are learning
Latin. . . It should be stressed that there are as many places at the
tables as there will be writers, in order to avoid the confusion usually
causedby the lazy.* In another, thosewho are learning to read: abench
3M
Notes
for the rich and a bench for the poor ‘so that vermin will not be passed
on\ A third section for newcomers: ‘When their ability has been
recognized, they will be given a place* (M.I.D.B., 5<S-7).
4 The success of the Prussian troops can only be attributed to the
‘excellence of their discipline and their exercise; the choice of exercise
is not therefore a matter of indifference; in Prussia the subject has been
studied for forty years with unremitting application* (Saxe, II,
249).
5 Writing exercise: .. 9: Hands on the knees. This command is conveyed
by one ring on the bell; 10: hands on the table, head up; n:
clean the slates: everyone cleans his slate with a little saliva, or better
still with a piece of rag; 12: show the slates; 13: monitors, inspect.
They inspect the slates with their assistants and then those of their
own bench. The assistants inspect thoseof their own benchand everyone
returns to his own place.’
6 This mixture appears clearly in certain classes of the apprenticeship
contract: the master is obliged to give his pupil - in exchange for his
money and his labour - all his knowledge, without keeping any secret
from him; otherwise, he is liable to a fine. Cf., for example, Grosrenaud,
62.
7 F. de la Noue recommended the creation of military academies at the
end of the sixteenth century, suggesting that one should learn in them
‘how to handle horses, to practisewith the dagger, with and without
shield, to fence, to perform on horseback, to jump; if swimming and
wrestling were added, it would be to the good, for all this makes the
person robust and more subtle’ (Noue, 181-2).
8 Through the schools at Liege, Devenport, Zwolle, Wesel; and thanks
also to Jean Sturm and his memorandum of 1538 for the organization
of a gymnasium at Strasburg. Cf. Bulletin de la societe d'kistoire du
protestantisme, XXV, 499—505.
It should be noted that the relations between the army, religious
organization and education are very complex. The ‘decury’, the unit of
the Roman army, is to be found in Benedictine monasteries, as the
unit of work and no doubt of supervision. The Brothers of the Common
Life borrowed it and adapted it to their own education organization:
the pupils were grouped in.tens. It was this unit that the Jesuits
took up in the scenography of their schools, thus reintroducing a
military model. But the decury was replaced in turn by an even more
military schema, with ranks, columns, lines.
9 Guibert, 18. In fact, this very old problem came into the forefront
once more in the eighteenth century, for the economic and technical
3*5
Notes
reasons that we are about to see; and the ‘prejudice* in question had
been discussed very often by others besides Guibert himself(followers
of Folard, Pirch, Mesnil-Durand).
10 In the sense in which this termwas used after 1759.
11 The movement that brought the rifle into widespread use may be
roughly dated from the battle of Steinkirk, 1699.
12 On this importance of geometry, see J. de Beausobre: ‘The science of
war is essentially geometrical. . . The arrangement of a battalion and
a squadron on a whole front and at so much height is alone the effect
of an as yet unknown, but profound geometry' (Beausobre, 307).
13 Journalpour Vinstruction elementaire, April 1816. Cf. Tronchot, who
has calculated that pupils must have been given over 200 commands a
day (without counting exceptional orders); for the morning alone
twenty-six commands communicated by the voice, twenty-three by
signs, thirty-seven by rings of the bell, and twenty-four by whistle,
which means a blow on the whistle or a ring on the bell every three
minutes.
2 The means ofcorrect training
1 RkglementpourVinfanterieprussienne, Fr. trans., Arsenal, MS. 4067, fo.
144. For older plans see Praissac, 27-8 and Montgommery, 77. For the
new plans, cf. Beneton de Morange, Histoire de la guerre, J741, 61—4
and Dissertations sur les Tentes; cf. also the many regulations such as
the Instruction sur le service des reglements de Cavalerie dans les camps,
29 June 1753.
2 Arch. nat. MM 666-9. Jeremy Bentham recounts that it was while
visiting the £cole Militaire that his brother first had the idea of the
Panopticon.
3 Demia, 27-9. One might note a phenomenon of the same kind in the
organization of schools; for a long time ‘prefects* were, independently
of theteachers, entrusted with themoral responsibility for small groups
of pupils. After 1762, above all, one sees the appearance of a new
type of supervision, which was more administrative and more integrated
into the hierarchy; supervisors, maitres de quartier, maitres
subalternes. Cf. Dupont-Ferrier, 254 and 476.
3 Panopticism
1 Archives militaires de Vincennes, A 1,516 91 sc. Piece. This regulation
is broadly similar to a whole series of others that date from the
same period and earlier.
316
Notes
2 In the Postscript to the Panopticon, 1791, Bentham adds dark inspection
galleries painted in black around the inspector’s lodge, each
making it possible to observe two storeys of cells.
3 In his first version of the Panopticon, Bentham had also imagined an
acoustic surveillance, operated by means of pipes leading from the
cells to the central tower. In the Postscript he abandoned the idea,
perhaps because he could not introduce into it the principle of dissymmetry
and prevent the prisoners from hearing theinspector as well
as the inspector hearing them, Julius tried to develop a system of dissymmetrical
listening (Julius, 18).
4 Imagining this continuous flow of visitors entering the central tower
by an underground passage and then observing the circular landscape
of the Panopticon, was Bentham aware of the Panoramas that Barker
was constructing at exactly the same period (the first seems to have
dated from 1787) and in which the visitors, occupying the central
place, saw unfolding around them a landscape, a city or a battle. The
visitors occupied exactly the place of the sovereign gaze.
5 In the second half of the eighteenth century, it was often suggested
that thearmy should be used for thesurveillance and general partitioning
of the population. The army, as yet to undergo discipline in the
seventeenth century, was regarded as a force capable of instilling it.
Cf, for example, Servan, Le Soldat citoyen, 1780.
6 Arsenal, MS. 2565, Under this number, one also finds regulations for
charity associations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
7 Le Maire in a memorandum written at the request of Sartine, in
answer to sixteen questions posed by Joseph II on the Parisian police.
This memorandum was published by Gazier in 1879.
P A R T F O U R P R I S O N
I Complete and austere institutions
1 The play between the two ‘natures’ of the prison still continues. A few
days ago [summer 1974] the head of state recalled the ‘principle’ that
detention ought to be no more thana ‘deprivation ofliberty’ - thepure
essence of imprisonment, freed of the reality of prison; and added that
the prison could be justified only by its ‘corrective’ or rehabilitating
effects.
2 Treilhard, 8-9. The same theme is often to be found in the years
immediately prior to this: ‘The penalty of detention pronounced by
thelaw has above all the object ofcorrecting individuals, that is to say,
of making them better, of preparing them by trials of shorter or longer
3*7
Notes
duration, to take up their place once more in society without abusing
it. . . The surest ways of making individuals better are work and
education.’ Education consists not only in reading and arithmetic, but
also in reconciling the prisoners with ‘ideas of order, morality, respect
for themselves and for others’ (Beugnot, prefect of Seine-Inferieure,
order issued Frimaire, Year X). In the reports that Chaptal demanded
from the General Councils of the departements, over a dozen asked for
prisons in which the inmates could be made to work.
3 The most important were no doubt those proposed by Lucas, MarquetWasselot,
Faucher, Bonneville, and a little later by Ferrus. It should
be noted that most of them were not philanthropists, criticizing the
carceral institution from the outside, but were bound up, in one way or
another, with the administration of the prisons. They were official
technicians.
4 In Germany, Julius directed theJahrbiicherfur Strafs-und Besserungs
Anstalten.
5 Although these newspapers were above all organs of defence on the
part of those in prison for debt and had on several occasions dissociated
themselves from delinquents as such, one finds the statement that
‘the columns of Pauvre Jacques are not devoted to an exclusive
speciality. The terrible law of constraint by body and its disastrous
application will not be the only target of the journalist prisoner. . .
Pauvre Jacques will draw the attention of its readers to places of
reclusion and detention, prisons and almshouses; it will not keep silent
on places where the guilty man is handed over to torture when the law
condemns him only to work . . . ’ {Pauvre Jacques, ist year, no. 7).
Similarly, the Gazette de Sainte-Pelagie campaigned for a penitentiary
systemwhose aimwould be ‘the amelioration of the species’, any other
being ‘the expression of a still barbarous society’ (21 March 1833).
6 The discussion that began in France about 1830 was still continuing in
1850; Charles Lucas, the advocate of Auburn, was the inspiration
behind the order of 1839 on the running of the maisons centrales (work
in common and absolute silence). The wave of revolt that followed
and perhaps the general agitation in the country in the years 1842-3
resulted in the adoption in 1844 of the Pennsylvanian regime of
absolute isolation, advocated by Demetz, Blouet and Tocqueville. But
the second penitentiary congress in 1847 opted against this method.
7 ‘Every man’, said Fox, ‘is illuminated by the divine light and I have
seen it shine through every man.’ It was in the spirit of the Quakers
and ofWalnut Street that the prisons of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh and
Cherry Hill were organized from 1820.
318
Notes
8 Abbe Petigny, Allocution adressee aux prisonniers, a Voccasion de
I*inauguration des batiments cellulaires de la prison de Versailles. Cf.,
a few years later, in The Count ofMonte Cristo, a very clearly Christological
version of resurrection after incarceration; in this case prison
teaches not docility to the law, but the power, acquired through a
secret knowledge, to dispense justice beyond the injustice of the
magistrates.
9 G. A. Real, Before this, several instructions from the Ministry of the
Interior had stressed the need for providing work for prisoners: 5
Fructidor Year VI, 3 Messidor Year VIII, 8 Pluviose and 28 Ventose
Year IX, 7 Brumaire YearX. Immediately after the codes of 1808 and
1810, one still finds new instructions:. 20 October 1811, 8 December
1812; or again the long order of 1816: ‘It is of the greatest importance
to keep prisoners occupied as much as possible. One must instil in
them a desire to work, distinguishing between the fate of those who
are occupied and that of prisoners who wish to remain idle. The first
will be better fed and have more comfortable beds than the second/
Melun and Clairvaux were very soon organized into great workshops.
10 Bonneville, 1846, 6. Bonneville proposed measures of ‘preparatory
liberty', but also of ‘afflictive additions’ or an extension of imprisonment
if it was shown that ‘the penal prescription, fixed approximately
according to the probable degree of the prisoners obduracy was not
enough to produce the effect expected ofit\ This extension was not to
exceed one eighth of the original penalty; preparatory liberty could
begin after three quarters of the sentence had been served (Traitd des
diverses institutions complementaires, 25iff).
11 In Gazette des tribunaux%Cf. also Marquet-Wasselot, 1832, 74-5.
Lucas notes that minor offenders ‘are generally recruited among the
urban populations’ and that ‘the majority of those sentenced to hard
labour come from the agricultural populations’ (Lucas, I, 46-50).
12 ‘If one treats of the administrative question by abstracting the question
of buildings, one runs the risk of drawing up principles that are based
on no reality; whereas, with a sufficient knowledge of administrative
needs, an architect may accept a particular system of imprisonment
that theory may have dismissed as Utopian’ (Blouet, 1).
13 ‘The English reveal their genius for mechanics in everything they
do . .. and they want their buildings to function as a machine subject
to the action of a single motor’ (Baltard, 18).
14 One should study how tjie practice ofbiography became widespread at
about the same time as the constitution of the individual delinquent in
the punitive mechanisms: thebiography or autobiography of prisoners
3! 9
Notes
in Appert; the drawing up of biographical files on the psychiatric
model; the use of biography in the defence of accused persons. On
the last point one might compare the great justificatory memoirs of
thelate eighteenthcentury written for the three men condemnedto the
wheel, or for Jeanne Salmon - and the defences of criminals in the
period of Louis Philippe. Chaix d’Est-Ange pleaded for La Ronctere:
‘If long before the crime, long before the charge is laid, you can
scrutinize the defendant’s life, penetrate into his heart, find its most
hidden comers, lay bare all his thoughts, his entire soul. ..’ (Discours
etplaidoyerty III, 166).
2 Illegalities and delinquency
1 Revue de Paris, 7 June 1836. This part of the spectacle, in 1836, was
no longer public; only a few privileged spectators were admitted to it.
The account of the riveting of the convicts' chains to be found in the
Revue de Paris corresponds exactly - to the point even of using the
same words - with that of the Dernierjour dyun condamne, 1829.
2 The Gazette des tribunaux regularly published these lists and these
‘criminal’ notices. From the following description people would be
able to recognize Delacollonge: ‘Old cloth trousers over a pair of
boots, a peaked cap of the same stuff and a grey overall. . . A coat of
blue stuff’ (6June 1836). Later, it was decided to disguise Delacollonge
in order to protect him from the violence of the crowd. The Gazette
des tribunaux immediately described the disguise: ‘Striped trousers,
blue linen overalls, a straw hat’ (20 July).
3 Revue de Paris, June 1836. Cf. Claude Gueux: ‘Feel all those heads ...
each of these fallen men has below him his own bestial type. . . Here
is the lynx, here the cat, here the monkey, here the vulture, here the
hyena.’
4 Revue de Paris, 7 June 1836. According to the Gazette des tribunaux,
Thorez, who commanded the chain-gang of 19 July, wished to
remove theseornaments: ‘It isnot fittingthat, as you go to the convictship
to expiate your crimes, you should push effrontery so far as to
decorate your hair, as if you were going to your wedding.’
5 Revue de Paris, 7 June 1836. On this date, the chain-gang had been
shortened in order to prevent this merry-go-round and soldiers had
been commanded to maintain order up to the departure of the chaingang.
The convicts’ Sabbath is described in the Dernier jour d'un
condamnd: ‘Society was represented thereby the gaolers and the horrified
and curious bystanders. The criminal defined the intentions of
society and made of this horrible punishment a family festival.’
320
Notes
6 A song of the same kind is quoted by the Govern des tribunaux of
10 April 1836. It was sung to the tune of the *Marseillaise*. The
patriotic war song clearly became the song of the social war: ‘What do
these stupid people want of us, do they come to insult us in our misfortune?
They stare at us calmly. Our butchers do not horrify them/
7 There is a class of writers who ‘have striven to glorify the crimes of
certain exceptionally skilled malefactors, give them the leading roles
and expose the agents of authority to their sallies, their jeers and their
ill-disguised mockery. Whoever has seen a performance ofAuberge des
Adrets or Robert Macaireya drama celebrated among the people, will
recognize without difficulty the correctness of my observations. It is
the triumph, the apotheosis, of audacity and crime. Honest folk and
the forces ofpublic order are ridiculed frombeginning to end* (Fregier,
II, 187-8).
8 Gazette des tribunaux, 23 July 1837. On 9August, the Gazette reported
that the carriage had overturned on the outskirts of Guingamp:
instead of mutinying, the prisoners, ‘helped their guardians to put
their common vehicle back on its wheels'. Yet on 30 October, it noted
an escape at Valence.
9 Text addressed to L'Atelier, October 1842, by a worker imprisoned
for joining a workers’ association. It was able to note this protest at a
time when the same newspaper was waging a campaign against competition
from penal labour. The same issuecarrieda letter from another
worker on the same subject. Cf. also La Fraternity March 1842,
1st year, no. 10.
10 Gazette des tribunaux, 3 December 1829. Cf. also Gaiette des tribunaux,
19 July 1839; the Ruche populaire, August 1840; La Fraternity JulyAugust
1847.
11 This campaign was very vigorous before and after the passing of new
regulations for the maisons centrales in 1839. The regulations were
severe (silence, abolition of wine and tobacco, reduction in food) and
they were followed by revolts. On 3 October 1840, Le Moniteur
wrote: ‘It was scandalous to see prisoners gorging themselves with
wine, meat, game, delicacies of all kinds and treating prison as a
convenient hostelry where they could procure all the comforts that
the state of liberty often refused them.’
12 In 1826, many of the General Councils demanded that deportation be
substituted for constant and ineffective incarceration. In 1842, the
General Council of the Hautes-Alpes demanded that the prisons
become ‘truly expiatory*; those of Dr6me, Eure-et-Loir, Nievre,
Rhone and Seine-et-Oise made similar demands.
321
Notes
13 According to an investigation carried out in 1839 among the directors
ofthe maisons centrales. The director of the maison centrale of Embrun
remarked: The excessive comfort in the prisons probably contributes
a great deal to the terrible increase in the number of recidivists/ While
the director at Eysses remarked: ‘The present regime is not severe
enough, and if one thing is certain it is that for many of the inmates
prison hasits attractions andthat they findin prison depraved pleasures
that are entirely to their liking/ The director at Limoges: ‘The
present regimeof themaisons centrales which, for the recidivists, are in
fact little more than boarding houses, is in no way repressive" (Cf.
Moreau-Christophe, 1840, 86). Compare these remarks with declarations
made, in July 1974, by the leaders of the union of prison workers
concerning the effects of liberalization in prisons.
14 On the problem of deportation, cf. Barbe-Marbois and the discussion
between Blosseville and La Pilorgerie (on the subject of Botany Bay).
Bur<e, Marengo and L. de Carn£, among others, drew up plans for the
colonization of Algeria with delinquents.
15 One of thefirst episodes was the organization under police supervision
of the maisons de tolerance (1823), which went well beyond the provisions
of the law of 14 July 1791, concerning surveillance in brothels.
Cf. on this subject the manuscripts collected by the Prefecture of
police (20-26). In particular, the following circular from the Prefect of
police, dated 14 June 1823: ‘The establishment of houses of prostitution
ought naturally to be regarded with displeasure by any man who
is concerned with public morality; I am not surprised that the Commissioners
of police oppose to the utmost of their powers the establishment
of houses in their various quarters. . . The police believed
that they had done much towards public order if they had succeeded
in enclosing prostitution within tolerated houses over which its action
may be constant and uniform and which would not be able to escape
surveillance/
16 The book by Parent-Duchatelet on Prostitution a Paris, 1836, may be
read as evidence of this link, encouraged by the police and penal
institutions, between the delinquent milieu and prostitution. The case
of the Italian Mafia transplanted to the United States and used both to
extract illicit profits and for political ends is a fine example of the
colonization of an illegality of popular origin.
17 On this role of delinquents for police and especially political surveillance,
cf. the memorandum written by Lemaire: 'Informers* are people
who ‘expect indulgence for themselves*; they are usually ‘bad subjects
who expose others who are worse still. Furthermore, it is enough for
322
Notes
someone to have his name in the police register for him never to be
lost sight of/
18 Of the resistance of lawyers to participating in this functioning, there
is abundant evidence from as early as the Restoration (which proves
that it is in no way a recent phenomenon). In particular the liquidation
or rather the re-utilization of the Napoleonic police posed certain
problems. But the difficulties continued. Cf. Belleyme’s first speech
after his appointment in 1825, in which he sought to differentiate
himselffrom his predecessors: ‘Legal ways are open to us... Brought
up in the school of law, educated in the school of so worthy a magistrature__we
are the auxiliaries ofjustice . . (Belleyme); see also the
very interesting pamphlet by Molene, De la liberte.
19 For contemporary views of Lacenaire, see the dossier drawn up by
M. Lebailly in his edition of Lacenaire's Memoires, 1968, 297-304.
20 The circle of the years 1835-6: Fieschi, who served the penalty common
to parricides and regicides, was one of the reasons why Riviere,
the parricide, was condemned to death despite a memorandumwhose
astonishing character was no doubt muffled by the brilliance of
Lacenaire, of his trial, and of his writings, which were.published
thanks to the head of the Surete (censored to some extent), at the
beginning of 1836, some months before his accomplice Francois was
to provide, with the chain-gang of Brest, one of the last great circus
shows of crime. A circle of illegalities and delinquencies, the circle of
discourse of crime and on crime.'
21 At the end of the eighteenth century Colquhoun gave some idea of the
difficulty of the task for acity like London (Colquhoun, 27-9; 293-4)*
22 ‘No other class is subjected to a surveillance of this kind; it is exercised
almost in the same way as that of released prisoners; it seems to place
the workers in the category that we now call the dangerous class of
society* (L yAtelier, 5th year, no. 6, March 1845).
23 Apart from the Gazette des tribunaux and the Courrier des tribunaux,
theJournal des concierges.
24 Cf. LAtelier, June 1844, petition to the Chambre de Paris that
prisoners should be made to do ‘unhealthy and dangerous work*; in
April 1845, the newspapers quoted a case in Brittany where a large
number of military convicts died of fever while working on canalbuilding.
Why were the prisoners not working with mercury or whitelead
in November 1845? • ■• Cf. also the Democratie politique of the
years 1844-5.
25 In VAtelier, of November 1843, there was an attack against the
Mysteres de Paris because they showed the delinquents in too good a
323
Notes
light, stressing their picturesqueness, their vocabulary, and because
there was too much emphasis on the fatal character of a proclivity to
crime. In La Ruche populaire similar attacks on the theatre are to be
found.
26 Cf. In La Ruche populaire (December 1839) Vin^ard replied to an
article by Balzac published in Le Si&cle. Balzac had said that a charge
oftheftwas tobemadewith prudenceanddiscretionwhen it concerned
a rich man whose slightest dishonesty immediately became known:
‘Say, Monsieur, with your hand on your conscience, whether the contrary
does not occur every day whether, with a great fortune and an
elevated rank in society, one does not find a thousand solutions, a
thousand means to hush up some unfortunate affair/
27 In La Fraternity March 1847, there is a discussion of the Drouillard
affair and reference is made to thefts in the naval administration at
Rochefort. In June 1847, there was an article on the Boulmy trial and
on the Cubiere-Pellaprat affair; and, in July-August 1847, on the
Benier-Lagrange-Jussieu affair, which involved misappropriation of
public funds.
28 ‘Licensed prostitution, direct material theft, house-breaking, murder,
brigandage for the lower classes; while skilful spoliation, indirect,
refined theft, clever exploitation of human cattle, carefully planned
and brilliantly executed betrayals, transcendent pieces ofsharp practice
in short, all the truly elegant vices and lucrative crimes which the law
is far too polite to interrupt remain the monopoly of the upper classes’
(1 December 1838).
29 Cf., for example, what La Phalange said of Delacollonge or of Elirabide
on 1 August 1836 and 2 October 1840.
3 The carceral
1 ‘Anything that helps to tire the body helps to expel bad thoughts; so
care is taken that games consist of violent exercise. At night, they fall
asleep the moment they touch the pillow* (Ducp£tiaux, 1854, 375-6).
2 Cf., forexample, thefollowing descriptionofworkers* accommodation
built at Lille in the mid-nineteenth century: ‘Cleanliness is the order
of the day. It is the heart of the regulations. There are a number of
severe provisions against noise, drunkenness, disorders of all kinds.
A serious offence brings expulsion. Brought back to regular habits of
order and economy, the workers no longer desert the workshops on
Mondays. . . The children are better supervised and are no longer a
cause of scandal. . „ Prizes are given for the upkeep of the dwellings,
3*4
Notes
for good behaviour, for signs of devotion and each year these prizes
are competed for by a large number of competitors* (Houz6 de
TAulnay, 13-15)*
3 Crime was explicitly defined by certain jurists such as Muyart de
Vouglans, 1767, 108 and 1780, 3, or Rousseaud de la Combe, 1-2.
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