For example, Foucault notes in Discipline and Punish that in many executions, people would start sympathizing with the condemned. This shift away from the public is done for quite a few reasons. Modern day executions, on the contrary, are hidden away and conducted privately in isolated jails, far from the eyes of the public. The first thing we’ll notice is that it was held in public, and a lot of people gathered to see it. By the end of the eighteenth century, the art of public execution and torture as a spectacle was dying out. In short, the spectacle of punishment has diminished not because it came into conflict with humanistic concepts but because it wasn’t efficient anymore. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault has drawn up a different thesis, one which doesn’t see the shift as a cause of increased rationality or enlightenment but as a sophistication of power. The shift from the barbaric and impulsive execution to the calculated, cold and rational punishments we have today is often praised as human progress by many. Indeed, there have been major changes in the ways punishment is delivered to those found guilty. In our modern times, this execution would strike us as incredibly barbaric.

The Shift in Execution The state penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Lithograph by Samuel Cowperthwaite., 1855, via the Library of Congress. Spectators watched this botched execution in shock and Damiens’ last agonizing screams left a mark in everyone who was present. “Though a strong, sturdy fellow, this executioner found it so difficult to tear away the pieces of flesh that he set about the same spot two or three times, twisting the pincers as he did so, and what he took away formed at each part a wound about the size of a six-pound crown piece.”įinally, the limbs gave in and Damiens was dismembered.

The executioners then started to cut off Damiens’ tendons.

Four horses were used at the beginning, but that didn’t work, so they added two more. After getting burned with wax and Sulphur, horses were harnessed to his arms and legs, and they were made to run in different directions so that Damiens would be dismembered. The details of the execution and the torture it included will make your stomach turn. The Beginning of Discipline and Punish: The Execution of Damiens Damiens before his judges, Unknown artist, 18th century, via Bibliothèque nationale de France.ĭiscipline and Punish opens up with a horrific description, the execution of Robert-François Damiens, which took place on the second of march, 1757.

Discipline and punish foucault