Re: Foucault and the American Civil War

     Take a look at:
      
     Thomas L. Dumm, _Democracy and Punishment: Disciplinary Origins of the 
     United States_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).
     
     Jeffrey Hearn
     University of Maryland, College Park


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Foucault and the American Civil War
Author:  Jeff Smithpeters <jeffsm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> at Internet
Date:    4/18/97 4:19 PM


I've noticed in my studies of the lit. of the American Civil War that in 
novels written predominantly by southerners the Northern troops in 
particular would employ panopticon terminology when dealing with the 
conquered populations.  They would often say, "Our eyes are everywhere!" or 
words to that effect.  
     
Yet hangings still took place.  The Union forces hung more people than 
anyone else.  So we see the mixture of the punishment modes of one episteme 
(hanging) with that of the later (direct observation).  
     
We have the same situation now.  Our prisons are ostensibly there to reform 
and to observe the convicted.  Yet we still have executions.  
     
Is there any book or article in which Foucault or someone sympathetic to 
his methods, tries to explain this apparent contradiction in the American 
penal system, which seems to date back to the Civil War and shows little 
sign of resolving?