Depending on the context, I have translated the word by ‘torture’, ‘public execution’ or ‘scaffold’. By extension the word can also refer to any prolonged torture, mental as well as physical. Here‘ supplice’ refers specifically to the public torture and execution of criminals that provided one of the most popular spectacles of eighteenth-century France. 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. In the end Foucault himself suggested Discipline and Punish, which relates closely to the book’s structure.Īnother problem was posed by the French word ‘ supplice’, which heads the first part of the book. ‘Observe’ is rather too neutral, though Foucault is aware of the aggression involved in any one-sided observation.

‘Supervise’ is perhaps closest of all, but again the word has different associations.

Jeremy Bentham used the term ‘inspect’ – which Foucault translates as ‘ surveiller’ – but the range of connotations does not correspond.

Our noun ‘surveillance’ has an altogether too restricted and technical use. More seriously the verb ‘ surveiller’ has no adequate English equivalent. To begin with, Foucault uses the infinitive, which, as here, may have the effect of an ‘impersonal imperative’. Andry, 1749.Īny closer translation of the French title of this book, Surveiller et punir, has proved unsatisfactory on various counts. Harou-Romain, 1840.Ħ Interior of the penitentiary at Stateville, United States, twentieth century.Ĩ Lecture on the evils of alcoholism in the auditorium of Fresnes prison.ĩ Steam machine for the ‘celeriferous’ correction of young boys and girls.ġ0 L’orthopédie ou l’art de prévenir et de corriger dans les enfants les difformités du corps (Orthopaedics or the art of preventing and correcting deformities of the body in children) by N. Bentham, 1843.Ĥ Plan for a penitentiary by N. At the time of his death in 1984, he held a chair at France’s most prestigious institution, the Collège de France.ġ Medal commemorating Louis XIV’s first military revue in 1668ģ Plan of the Panopticon by J.

He lectured in universities throughout the world served as the director at the Institut Français in Hamburg, Germany, and at the Institute de Philosophie at the Faculté des Lettres in the University of Clermont-Ferrand, France and wrote frequently for French newspapers and reviews. Michel Foucault was born in Poitiers, France, in 1926.

Discipline and punish foucault