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Penal Theories and Institutions

Lectures at the Collège de France, 1971-1972

Palgrave Macmillan

Authors:

  • Is the first English translation of Michel Foucault’s 1971-72 lectures at the Collège de France
  • Starts Foucault's analysis of power and penal practices which later led to another key work, Discipline and Punish, in 1975
  • Continues Foucault's organisation of history through a study of 'juridical-political frameworks'

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Table of contents (13 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxiv
  2. one: 24 NOVEMBER 1971

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 1-16
  3. two: 1 DECEMBER 1971

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 17-35
  4. three: 15 DECEMBER 1971

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 37-55
  5. four: 22 DECEMBER 1971

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 57-66
  6. five: 12 JANUARY 1972

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 67-83
  7. six: 19 JANUARY 1972

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 85-99
  8. seven: 26 JANUARY 1972

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 101-110
  9. 2 FEBRUARY 1972

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 111-125
  10. 9 FEBRUARY 1972

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 127-147
  11. ten: 16 FEBRUARY 1972

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 149-165
  12. eleven: 23 FEBRUARY 1972

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 167-182
  13. twelve: 1 MARCH 1972

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 183-195
  14. thirteen: 8 MARCH 1972

    • Graham Burchell
    Pages 197-227
  15. Back Matter

    Pages 229-322

About this book

“What characterizes the act of justice is not resort to a court and to judges; it is not the intervention of magistrates (even if they had to be simple mediators or arbitrators).  What characterizes the juridical act, the process or the procedure in the broad sense, is the regulated development of a dispute.  And the intervention of judges, their opinion or decision, is only ever an episode in this development.  What defines the juridical order is the way in which one confronts one another, the way in which one struggles. The rule and the struggle, the rule in the struggle, this is the juridical.”

- Michel Foucault

Penal Theories and Institutions is the title Michel Foucault gave to the lectures he delivered at the Collège de France from November 1971 to March 1972.

In these lectures Michel Foucault presents for the first time his approach to the question of power that will be the focus of his research up to the writing of Disciplineand Punish (1975) and beyond.  His analysis starts with a detailed account of Richelieu’s repression of the Nu-pieds revolt (1639-1640) and then goes on to show how the apparatus of power developed by the monarchy on this occasion breaks with the system of juridical and judicial institutions of the Middle Ages and opens out onto a “judicial State apparatus”, a “repressive system”, whose function is focused on the confinement of those who challenge its order.

Michel Foucault systemizes the approach of a history of truth on the basis of the study of “juridico-political matrices” that he had begun in the previous year’s lectures (Lectures on the Will to Know) and which is at the heart of the notion of “knowledge-power”.

In these lectures Foucault develops his theory of justice and penal law.

The appearance of this volume marks the end of the publication of the series Foucault’s courses at the Collège de France (the first volume of which was published in 1997).



Authors and Affiliations

  • Paris, France

    Michel Foucault

About the author

Michel Foucault is acknowledged as the pre-eminent French philosopher of the 1970s and 1980s. He continues to have enormous impact throughout the world, and across many disciplines.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access