NCJ Number
107739
Date Published
1987
Length
195 pages
Annotation
This book chronicles the emergence of modern punishment policies in America, critiques the political theory and practice of liberal democratic government, and presents a genealogy of modern power.
Abstract
An introduction explains the concept of the 'genealogy of danger,' which pertains to perceptions of danger in society which are addressed through the application of power. Part I, is a study of the varying capacities of modern political theories to illuminate operations of power, critiques theorists within the liberal democratic tradition and situates them in the discursive fields they purportedly explain and justify. The author's use of the genealogical method demonstrates the limits of modern historical methods for understanding power. Part II considers the constitutive role that punishment played in the establishment of the American liberal-democratic political subject. Affinities are shown between John Locke's theory of toleration and the Quaker practice of punishment, and a common logic of radical republicanism is shown to inform Benjamin Rush's theories of government and criminal rehabilitation. The book views the birth of the liberal penitentiary as central to the establishment of political order and the subsequent politics of democratic despotism. Through a study of the work of Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville on the penitentiary system and Tocqueville's study of democracy in America, the book completes the analysis of the origins of disciplinary society. 160-item selected bibliography and subject index. (Publisher summary modified)