ARTSSCI 2A06 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Prison Reform, Pillory, Body Politic
15 Sep 2017
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Document Summary
Foucault begins by comparing a public execution from 1757 to an account of prison rules from 1837. The shifts between the two reveal how new codes of law and order developed. One important feature is the disappearance of torture; the body of the criminal disappeared from view. Punishment as spectacle disappeared; the exhibition of- prisoners, the pillory and the public execution ended. Now, the certainty of punishment, and not its horror, deters one from committing a crime. Conviction marks the prisoner; publicity shifts towards the trial and the sentence. Sentences are now intended to correct and improve. A sense of shame about punishment develops along with this. If it did, it was only to get at something beyond the body: the soul. New figures took over from the executioner, such as doctors, psychiatrists, chaplains and warders. The elimination of pain and the end of spectacle were linked.
