Foucault on Torture

Foucault, Michel. 1975. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Random House Publishers.

Part one of this book, entitled "Torture" is broken into two sections, one entitled "The body of the condemned" and the other "The spectacle of the scaffolding."

We start with a place and date... France, March 2, 1757. The (attempted!) regicide, a.k.a. "king killer," Damiens, is condemened. His body is subject to a host of grisley rituals of torture: Think hot pincers pulling your flesh away from the bone, being tied to six horses as the draw you into quarters, which doesn't work, so they end up hacking away at your joints until you are nothing but a still breathing torso that is then burned alive....

Why does Foucault regail us with this lovely french tale? He's showing us the difference a democracy makes of course!! (More on that in just a minute...) During the 1750's in France and indeed, much of the rest of Europe, torture was the perfect way to deal with the "condemened." It was an artform! Great men in positions of affluence in society sat around and designed ways to "subdivide" death into a"thousand deaths" (p. 34). Here was the perfect way to make condemned criminals pay debt for their crimes against society and involve the public in two ways...

1. National Holiday! "Hey Public! Come, sneer and throw tomatos at the criminals! Watch as they writhe in agony, suspended in a place between life and death! Come and judge for yourself these men, these vile men (and women) who commit crimes against society! Feel sanctified in the knowledge that you are good people who follow order and law!"

Or a little more insidious.....

2. "Hey Public! Come and watch this morbid show. When you go home, please remember to think of the welfare of society. Please excuse us as we enter your domestic space and personal conversations, but we would like to remind you to never forget: It could be you next, so walk the straight and narrow. Thank you- The management."

How tidy. Not really. Enter the period of the enlightenment... Ahh, the enlightenment. A period of great importance and consequence in the recent history of our current global society. Great men (of affluence and means of course), building on old ideas, finding out about natural laws like gravity! Yea! A turning of the tides in which blind faith is pushed back a bit and science comes into the foreground of great thought. The birth of great nations, democracy, constitutions, human rights for the individual!