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The Punitive Society

Lectures at the Collège de France, 1972-1973

Michel Foucault; Edited by Bernard E. Harcourt; General Editors: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana; English Series Editor: Arnold I. Davidson; Translated by Graham Burchell

Picador

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ISBN10: 1250183936
ISBN13: 9781250183934

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352 Pages

$21.00

CA$28.50

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These thirteen lectures on the 'punitive society,' delivered at the Collège de France in the first three months of 1973, examine the way in which the relations between justice and truth that govern modern penal law were forged, and question what links them to the emergence of a new punitive regime that still dominates contemporary society.

Reviews

Praise for The Punitive Society

“[Foucault] has an alert and sensitive mind that can ignore the familiar surfaces of established intellectual coded and ask new questions. [He] gives dramatic quality to the movement of culture.”The New York Review of Books

“Delivered shortly after the dissolution of Group d’Information sur les Prisons, Foucault’s third lecture course at the Collège de France coincided with a significant change in his thinking about prisons, as he began to reflect on the disciplinary power at work in prisons and in society more generally.”—A. D. Schrift, Choice, Vol. 53 (9), May, 2016

“[Editor Bernard Harcourt] provides us with countless erudite references to Foucault’s unacknowledged as well as acknowledged sources and supplies a clear, fair-minded and modest commentary.”—Mariana Valverdem, British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 57 (1), January, 2017

“Ideas spark off nearly every page of this book, as Foucault manages to reinvigorate questions of power and violence that might have seemed well-worn. The words may have been spoken in 1976, but they seem as alive and relevant as if they had been written yesterday.”Bookforum

“These lectures offer important insights into the evolution of the primary focus of Foucault's later work the relationship between power and knowledge.”Library Journal

Reviews from Goodreads

About the author

Michel Foucault; Edited by Bernard E. Harcourt; General Editors: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana; English Series Editor: Arnold I. Davidson; Translated by Graham Burchell

Michel Foucault acknowledged as the preeminent philosopher of France in the 1970s and 1980s, continues to have enormous impact throughout the world in many disciplines. He died in 1984.