starts getting real good in Part III: Docile Bodies. Much more readable than other Foucault I've been exposed to (Archaeology of Knowledge). Also is giving me a newfound appreciation for that AMAZING first paragraph of Baudrillard's otherwise sub-par "Forget Foucault", where he says "Foucault's writing mirrors the powers it describes", which is very true: the schematizing technologies of discipline are analogous to Foucault's descriptions, which are often numbered and always seek to lay down a table so that digestion of his concepts is easier, just as discipline seeks to control bodies through isolation in cells. ( )

Prison is the symbol of a certain idea of society and of the mechanics of power inside it.

From the excessive and bloody justice of the ancien régime to a disciplinary society in which ongoing examinations take place every time and the judges-controllers are a lot more than we think.

Foucault gives to the prison also a political contingence but tells us also that soon or later it will not be necessary anymore, for the widening of punish/reward connections with the consequent fainting of punishments' intensity will make detrimental to mantain structures for the total submission and recostruction of individuals such as jails.

The only problem of this intelligent and challenging book is that Foucault seems shy to share his opinion on the issue; nearly as if he's afraid of 'abuse' of his power and influence over the reader. ( )

un livre fondateur ( )

Is the Panopticon a Phallus?

Pity that there is not so much Foucault in Finnish. He really is quite difficult to read in French, at least for the uninitiated, who are prone to take a joke seriously or a profound remark as a joke

Amazing ( )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_F...
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fou... ( )

not the easiest read, I grant you, but indispensible history (both social and as a business) of "corrections" ( )

Foucault relates developments in prisons and punishment with larger trends in culture and civilization. He argues that ancient regime punishment of the body evolved into punishment of the mind or spirit. He relates these changes to capitalism. ( )