A review by thevampiremars
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault

challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

Incredibly long-winded and dense and sometimes difficult to parse. Still, I think it’s well worth reading for Foucault’s keen insights not only on the origin/evolution of punishment but on its context within society, its connections to psychiatry, pedagogy/the education system, military discipline, etc. A couple of concepts that stood out to me as I was reading were 1) the idea that criminals (and madmen and perverts) are individualised and deemed distinct from a collective Normal People, and 2) that power produces reality rather than acting negatively (ie: limiting, destroying, negating). I’d like to read Foucault’s writings on madness/mental illness.

Another reviewer (modestothemouse) said “reading Foucault is like being hit in the head with a sledgehammer wrapped in velvet” and, having now finished this book, I totally understand what they meant. I need a lie down.