Report Blog Entry
Welcome to my first book blog! This is something I’ve wanted to start on here for a while. This is a little read-along blog series, where I post my thoughts on a book I’m reading as I’m reading it, updating as I go along. Hopefully it’s enjoyable!
21/04/2025
I have just started reading Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish which, yikes, probably pretty heavy as a start to my blog series but nevertheless I prevail! Discipline and Punish is a philosophy novel about the evolution of prisons and criminal punishment, analysing institutional control and power in prison systems. Fascinating! My initial thoughts (at the roughly 20 page mark) have so far been that Foucault writes in a surprisingly easy to comprehend way. My previous attempts at reading philosophical works (AKA Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble) have been incredibly difficult, which I chalked up to my own inability to understand what was being said, but it seems that may not be the case. Foucault’s outlines of the history of torture and execution are fascinating, and the idea of punishment shifting from punishment to the body to punishment to the soul is incredibly interesting and something I’d not considered before. Very enjoyable so far, with a lot of interesting ideas, and I will update as I keep reading.
07/05/2025
I have finished now the first part of Discipline and Punish, entitled ‘Torture’. Foucault outlines the history of torture and the role it’s played in discipline systems, primarily in France and touching a little bit on a few other countries as well. I thought what was especially fascinating was how Foucault expressed the way torture acted to reinforce the power of the sovereign. To quote directly - “The justice of the king was shown to be an armed justice. The sword that punished the guilty was also the sword that destroyed enemies.”
The expression of crime as an affront to the powers that be, which Foucault presents as a war between the criminal and the sovereign was so interesting to consider, especially when applied to the modern world that we live in. Acts deemed criminal, often with no real moral backing, are deemed criminal because they are seen as an affront to ‘ordered’ society - capitalist, individualist society. I think this links pretty heavily to the ways that the theories of things like ‘anarchist calisthenics’ and other concepts work, that in order to resist constructs of power one must resist in small ways.
I’m not sure if I have much else intelligent to say about this part of the book beyond a lot of ‘this was interesting’, and ‘I liked this’, and etcetera etcetera. But regardless, as I said, truly fascinating! You’re likely to hear a lot of that in this book journal. Sorry!
Comments
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megabug.web
so interesting to hear ur thoughts on this!! I have to read Panopticism from Discipline and Punishment soon for a class and im a bit nervous to get into it but also veryyy excited hehe:)) definitely looking forward to further reviews of yours on this book :D
panopticism is a chapter i’m really looking forward to reading!! some of the concepts from it are really just so interesting and so widely applicable and i’ve heard them summarised from different sources but never read Foucault’s own outlines of it. i hope you can enjoy it as well :)
by Ronan ☥; ; Report
kadavera (under construction)
ooh this is a great idea! maybe you could also include some kind of rating/score for the book based on how much you'd recommend it? I really appreciate your insight as someone who wants to get more into reading but doesn't quite know where to start, aside from the usual obvious picks of classic literature
oh for sure! kind of in closing to wrap up my final thoughts. a great idea :)
i can for sure relate to the thought of not knowing where to start with reading - there’s so much stuff and so much of it is hit or miss. i really hope these blogs might be helpful as they go on
by Ronan ☥; ; Report
bernardo
cool af how youre reading foucault, i tried to read one of his books last year because a teacher had recommended it to me but i could never finish it. the one you are reading sounds very interesting, i dont know a lot about his philosophy but it seems pretty good
very relatable honestly, philosophy can be tough to get through (don’t even get me started on trying to read authors like judith butler…fascinating ideas but truly a slog to try and read). this one is actually surprisingly easy to parse compared to what i was expecting based on my experience with other philosophers and my understanding of Foucault’s work! if you’re interested i’d for sure recommend giving it a try because it’s super interesting
by Ronan ☥; ; Report
Accurator
Foucault grew up during the height of industrial warfare, when material and ideological conflict intersected almost in perfect congruence. I think that's an important circumstance to consider when reviewing his works. Much of what he says no longer applies under the current paradigm of info-political struggle, other things are more relevant now than he himself could have ever predicted. Especially in the realm of spiritual torture he has long since been eclipsed by the operators of postmodern governments and infocorps, who manage to place people under substantial psychological duress from the supposed comfort of their own home using weaponised memetics and targeted misintel; in short: psyops.
i’m still pretty early on into the book, but i’m definitely going to keep that in mind. i think context is a major influencing factor especially when it comes to social philosophy like this, and with the way capitalism has developed since it was published is hugely significant
by Ronan ☥; ; Report