Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.In this brilliant work, the most influential philosopher since Sartre suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner’s body to his soul.

Dustin Wortham

Aiora

Milad Houshmandzadeh

nick

Santi

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Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

an alternate cover for this edition can be found  here .   Barely two hundred and fifty years ago a man condemned of attempting to assassinate the King of France was drawn and quartered in a grisly spectacle that suggested an unmediated duel between the violence of the criminal and the violence of the state. This groundbreaking book by the most influential philosopher since Sartre compels us to reevaluate our assumptions about all the ensuing reforms in the penal institutions of the West. For as he examines innovations that range from the abolition of torture to the institution of forced labor and the appearance of the modern penitentiary, Michel Foucault suggests that punishment has shifted its focus from the prisoner's body to the soul — and that our very concern with rehabilitation encourages and refines criminal activity.  Lucidly reasoned and deftly marshaling a vast body of research,  Discipline and Punish  is a genuinely revolutionary book, whose implications extend beyond the prison to the minute power relations of our society.

Foucault explores the shift from public torture to modern prisons, focusing on power and discipline.

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