"What characterizes the act of justice is not the use of a court and judges; it is not the intervention of magistrates (even if they were to be mere mediators or arbitrators). What characterizes the legal act, process or procedure in the broadest sense is the regulated development of a dispute. And in this development, the intervention of judges, their opinion or their decision, is never more than an episode. It's the way we confront each other, the way we fight, that defines the legal order. The rule and the struggle, the rule in the struggle, that's what the juridical is all about." Michel Foucault
Théories et Institutions pénales is the title given by Michel Foucault to the lecture he gave at the Collège de France from November 1971 to March 1972.
In these lessons, Michel Foucault theorizes, for the first time, the question of power that was to occupy him until the writing of Surveiller et Punir (1975) and beyond, first through his meticulous account of Richelieu's suppression of the Nu-pieds revolt (1639-1640), then by showing how the power apparatus developed on this occasion by the monarchy broke with the economy of the legal and judicial institutions of the Middle Ages, and opened up a "state judicial apparatus", a "repressive system" whose function was to focus on the confinement of those who defied its order.
Michel Foucault systematizes the approach to a history of truth based on the study of "matrices juridico-politiques", a study he had begun in the previous year's lecture(Leçons sur la volonté de savoir), and which lies at the heart of the notion of "relation de savoir-pouvoir". This lecture develops his theory of justice and criminal law.
This summary is published with the kind permission of éditions du Seuil. It is taken from the back cover of Théories et institutions pénales. Cours au Collège de France (1971-1972) by Michel Foucault, published on May 15, 2015.
This lecture has not been enegistered.