The public execution is to be understood not only as a judicial, but also as a political ritual. It belongs… — Michel Foucault
The public execution is to be understood not only as a judicial, but also as a political ritual. It belongs, even in minor cases, to the ceremonies by which power is manifested.
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The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single haze to see everything constantly. A central point would be both the source of light illuminating everything, and a locus of convergence for everything that must be known: a perfect eye that nothing would escape and a centre towards which all gazes would be turned.
The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social worker-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements.
The disappearance of public executions marks therefore the decline of the spectacle; but it also marks a slackening of the hold on the body.
