'Imaginative illuminating and innovative' The New York Times Book Review The grisly spectacle
of public executions and torture of centuries ago has been replaced by the penal system in
western society - but has anything really changed? In his revolutionary work on control and
power relations in our public institutions Michel Foucault argues that the development of
prisons police organizations and legal hierarchies has merely changed the focus of domination
from our bodies to our souls. Even schools factories barracks and hospitals in which an
individual's time is controlled hour by hour are part of a disciplinary society. 'Foucault's
genius is called forth into the eloquent clarity of his passions ... his best book' Washington
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