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I'm an early modern historian of science so I'm sympathetic to arguments about Foucault's ahistorical tendencies. My biggest gripe with him is that he tends to

I'm an early modern historian of science so I'm sympathetic to arguments about Foucault's ahistorical tendencies. My biggest gripe with him is that he tends to conflate "the world" or "the West" with what often seems to be Paris and its environs, when you look at what he's actually citing. But then again, that's a complaint you can lob against many 20th century French historians. On the other hand, he really is an excellent historian of ideas and of early modern science; maybe a little less empirically grounded than historians from the "Anglo-Saxon" world like me might prefer, but you can't deny the usefulness of his ideas. He's also quite a good prose stylist in many passages, much more lively and original than the other names (like Derrida, who I find opaque and boring) with whom he's often lumped together. His opening description of Las Meninas by Velazquez in The Order of Things is one of the passages that made me want to study what I do. To get a little pedantic though (because I'm enjoying this discussion), more recent historians of violence and executions basically support the specific claim you call into question (that executions typically didn't frighten early modern audiences). People like Edward Muir at Northwestern have done great original work in Italian archives to show just how different attitudes toward public violence were in the premodern world. [1] An execution was literally something you'd take your kids to and buy refreshments at, like a play. I don't see the conflict between that claim, which is quite robust on an empirical level, and Foucault describing gory details that shock his modern audience - just because we find it frightening doesn't mean our great-great-great-great-grandparents did. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=zlULqJ70bDUC&q=executions#v=snippet&q=executions&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=zlULqJ70bDUC&q=executions#...

tjradcliffe 12y ago
And just because people took their kids doesn't mean they didn't find it frightening. The two claims have literally nothing to do with each other. It's like saying people pay good money to see horror movies so they aren't scared of being hacked to bits by psychopaths. Native peoples in the Great Lakes region mostly enjoyed torturing prisoners of war to death in variously fairly horrible ways, often over days. The whole tribe participated and it had something of the carnivalesque atmosphere the link you provide mentions. Yet there is also evidence that fear of capture loomed very large in the minds of warriors because of the fate that awaited them. One of the things the post-structuralists (especially Derida, who is really nothing but a troll) are good at is distraction and indirection. Foucault's bloodthirsty descriptions of torture in D&P have no scholarly value and could easily be replaced by a one-or-two-line sketch of the reality without loss of utility... except that people would then read the rest of the book in a less aroused state of mind, and would be more calmly critical of his unsupported and frequently implausible claims.
- benbreen 12y ago
  It seems to me that you're conflating too different manifestations of fear - the fear of the crowd that watched executions and a larger societal fear of governmental or judicial violence. No one who has read primary sources from the period we're talking about would argue that the latter didn't exist; as for the former, like Muir points out, it could manifest many different ways, from howls of fear to laughter and jokes. In the end we can never say definitively what was running through the heads of everyone in a crowd 400 years ago, but it's not just Foucault making stuff up or trying to trick his audience when he writes about attitudes toward early modern executions. It really is there in the original sources. Here's just one case in point, from the dairy of Samuel Pepys: Saturday 13 October 1660 To my Lord’s in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/10/13/ http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/10/13/
trevelyan 12y ago
* who exactly is the subject of terror, the person executed or the crowd? At the start of his book Foucault seems to claim that the subject is the person being executed. But then he shifts to talking about the attitude of the crowd. * we are probably meant to view them as equivalents because of class consciousness and the Marxist digressions about man having no "soul" except for his position in power networks. But... but... surely it was quite common that the crowd and the person executed had quite different attitudes towards the event. * also, if capital punishment was really ineffective at inducing terror (in whom?), why were 19th century French penal reformers the first ones to notice? isn't it weird that this enlightenment corresponded with a public debate over morality if the two events are unrelated? * more substantively, if Foucault is right and French penal reformers were the first ones to notice for whatever reason, doesn't his pointing this out imply the existence of an objective standard of knowledge that undermines Foucault his claims elsewhere about power being wisdom and truth being subjective? Uggg... I could go on for a while. Enough Foucault.

tjradcliffe 12y ago

And just because people took their kids doesn't mean they didn't find it frightening. The two claims have literally nothing to do with each other. It's like saying people pay good money to see horror movies so they aren't scared of being hacked to bits by psychopaths. Native peoples in the Great Lakes region mostly enjoyed torturing prisoners of war to death in variously fairly horrible ways, often over days. The whole tribe participated and it had something of the carnivalesque atmosphere the link you provide mentions. Yet there is also evidence that fear of capture loomed very large in the minds of warriors because of the fate that awaited them. One of the things the post-structuralists (especially Derida, who is really nothing but a troll) are good at is distraction and indirection. Foucault's bloodthirsty descriptions of torture in D&P have no scholarly value and could easily be replaced by a one-or-two-line sketch of the reality without loss of utility... except that people would then read the rest of the book in a less aroused state of mind, and would be more calmly critical of his unsupported and frequently implausible claims.

benbreen 12y ago
It seems to me that you're conflating too different manifestations of fear - the fear of the crowd that watched executions and a larger societal fear of governmental or judicial violence. No one who has read primary sources from the period we're talking about would argue that the latter didn't exist; as for the former, like Muir points out, it could manifest many different ways, from howls of fear to laughter and jokes. In the end we can never say definitively what was running through the heads of everyone in a crowd 400 years ago, but it's not just Foucault making stuff up or trying to trick his audience when he writes about attitudes toward early modern executions. It really is there in the original sources. Here's just one case in point, from the dairy of Samuel Pepys: Saturday 13 October 1660 To my Lord’s in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/10/13/ http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1660/10/13/

trevelyan 12y ago

* who exactly is the subject of terror, the person executed or the crowd? At the start of his book Foucault seems to claim that the subject is the person being executed. But then he shifts to talking about the attitude of the crowd. * we are probably meant to view them as equivalents because of class consciousness and the Marxist digressions about man having no "soul" except for his position in power networks. But... but... surely it was quite common that the crowd and the person executed had quite different attitudes towards the event. * also, if capital punishment was really ineffective at inducing terror (in whom?), why were 19th century French penal reformers the first ones to notice? isn't it weird that this enlightenment corresponded with a public debate over morality if the two events are unrelated? * more substantively, if Foucault is right and French penal reformers were the first ones to notice for whatever reason, doesn't his pointing this out imply the existence of an objective standard of knowledge that undermines Foucault his claims elsewhere about power being wisdom and truth being subjective? Uggg... I could go on for a while. Enough Foucault.