Towards a juridical archaeology of primitive accumulation: A reading of Foucault's Penal Theories and Institutions

The virtual dimensions of a project The implicit diptych formed by the two successive courses delivered by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France between 1971 and 1973 – Penal Theories and Institutions and The Punitive Society – has already been the object of substantial commentary. The principal gains arising from philological or speculative soundings […]
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Negri in prison

News Negri in prisonbest a farce. The various trials to which he has been subject have, to all intents and purposes, been showtrials, violating due process of law and the European Convention of Human Rights. His ʻcrimeʼ is that of political opposition. And Negri is far from alone on this score. The Italian state has […]

Bodies and power, revisited

Foucaultʼs early approach to the question of bodies and power is perhaps best known in his analysis of the body of the prisoner in Discipline and Punish. [1] Many of us have read and reread this analysis, and tried to understand how power acts upon a body, but also how power comes to craft and […]