Update September 2025: the Berfrois site is now closed and the archive has been removed. My piece can now be found here.
My review of Foucault’s La société punitive has now been published at Berfrois.
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Hi Stuart thanks for posting and writing this. Any tips on where I could follow up the idea of the ‘examen/épreuve’ in Focault’s work?
Hi Stuart,
Thanks for posting and writing this. Any tips on where I could follow up the idea of the ‘examen/épreuve’ in Foucault’s work?
Well, the examination is a major theme of Discipline and Punish, but to see it in the fullest context, I’d suggest looking at the course summaries of the first three years at the College de France, and the Truth and Juridical Forms lectures from Rio in 1973. Foucault used material from those first three courses in the lectures. It’s the three way development of measure, inquiry, examination that I think is crucial. The course I reviewed here is the third of the courses, and has the most explicitly on examination. Lectures on the Will to Know is now in English – that was the first. The second is not yet published in any language. Hope that helps.