Discipline and Punish Part I

Foucault, Michel.  1975.  Discipline and Punish.  Penguin Books Ltd.

I must preface this by saying that this is the first time I've read any of Michel Foucault's work. While his use of language is incredibly poetic and beautiful, I must admit that it is incredibly difficult to digest. That said, here is my account of the first section of his book, Discipline and Punish.

In this portion of the book, Foucault juxtaposes the types of discipline and punishment that were practiced in the 18th century with those that emerged in the 19th century, some of which are still practiced today. He begins with a graphic account of torture that was inflicted upon a man accused of regicide in 1757 and goes on to describe the daily activities of prison life some eighty years later. Foucault's argument is that while we may believe one form of punishment to be more civilized than the other we are still exercising enormous amounts of control over those who we feel are deviants in our society. In fact we are showing even more control in scheduling out every aspect of their day year after year than we once did in inflicting upon them grave tortures in the public square.