> Skip to content
  • Published: 16 June 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241386019
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.99

Discipline and Punish

The Birth of the Prison





Foucault's seminal work on torture, punishment, discipline and the prison system, now reissued in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time

In the Middle Ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. In this provocative work, Michel Foucault argues that the development of the Western system of prisons, police and legal hierarchies have merely shifted the focus of social control from our bodies to our souls.

  • Published: 16 June 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241386019
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.99

About the author

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers in the contemporary world. Social scientist and historian of ideas, Foucault was Profesor of History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. He wrote frequently for French newspapers and reviews, and edited Critique. Among his many publications are Madness and Civilisation (1961); The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972); The Birth of the Clinic (1973); Discipline and Punish (1975); and three volumes of The History of Sexuality: Volume One, The Will To Knowledge (1976); Volume Two: The Use of Pleasure (1984); and Volume Three: The Care of the Self (1984). Many of his books are published by Penguin. Ethics and Aesthetics, the first and second parts of a three volume Essential Works of Michael Foucault, were recently published by Penguin. Power, part three, was recently published by Allen Lane. Professor Foucault died in 1994.

Also by Michel Foucault

See all

Praise for Discipline and Punish

Discipline and Punish is clearly a tour de force ... that rare kind of book whose methods and conclusions must be reckoned with by humanists, social scientists and political activists

The New York Times Book Review

Foucault's genius is called forth into eloquent clarity of his passions ... his best book

Washington Post

'The main line of the thesis is enormously appealing and the range of historical sources and, even more, the analytical skill with which they are made to yield up their secrets, is quite dazzling'

Harvie Ferguson, International Journal of Criminology and Penology
penguin pop image
penguin pop image