DISCIPLINE, SECURITY AND BEYOND

Bernard E. Harcourt 

DISCIPLINE, SECURITY AND BEYOND 

The Carceral Notebooks 

Volume 4, 2008 

Mass incarceration, order maintenance, preventative detention, actu- 

arial prediction instruments, felon disenfranchisement, sex offender reg- 

istries, habitual offender enhancements-these punitive practices characterize 

the contemporary landscape of our penal state. Michel Foucault’s seminal 

work, Discipline and Punish (1975), fundamentally transformed critical 

thought on punishment practices and institutions in the mid-1970s. The 

concept of discipline and the larger critique of power/knowledge were 

deployed by many critical theorists to reexamine the rehabilitative project 

and the penal practices that pervaded the carceral sphere. In the years imme- 

diately following publication of Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault 

delivered lectures at the Collège de France—some of which were published 

and some translated—that gave rise to other currents of critique in the 

penal field. These critiques, which became known as “governmentality stud- 

ies” and centered on the notions of biopower, sécurité, neo-liberal political 

economy and governance, blossomed in the early 1990s but simultaneously 

created significant tension with the disciplinary paradigm. 

With the release in 2004 of the complete lectures of Michel Foucault— 

Sécurité, Territoire, Population (1978) and Naissance de la Biopolitique 

(1979) —the internal tensions between these different ways of conceptual- 

izing the penal field increased. Today, with a few years distance from the pub- 

lication of the 1978 and 1979 Cours and at the thirtieth anniversary of their 

delivery, it may be possible to rethink the lectures and their influence on the 

way we discuss punishment, penality, and the carceral sphere. The purpose of 

this volume is to explore new readings of the Cours and of Discipline and 

Punishwith an eye toward developing better understandings and more pow- 

erful critiques of our current punishment practices, as well as social and polit- 

ical institutions implicated in the carceral form. I have learned a lot from 

reading these chapters. I hope you will enjoy them too.