Watch Marx 2/13 with Judith Revel:
The philosopher Judith Revel reads and discusses with Bernard E. Harcourt
Marx’s Debates on the Law of Thefts of Wood, and Michel Foucault’s The Punitive Society, and Discipline & Punish
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Columbia Global Paris Center
Watch the full introduction to Marx 2/13 here:
Marx’s series of articles on the thefts of wood (1842) has been a touchstone to critical legal scholars, critical sociologists of crime, and radical lawyers since the early 1970s. The British social historians, E. P. Thompson, Peter Linebaugh, and the group that collectively assembled the classic work Albion’s Fatal Tree, wrote extensively about the articles. In France, the renowned critical jurist and penologist, Pierre Lascoumes, edited and presented the Marx texts in an important volume titled Marx: du “vol de bois” à la critique du droit (1984), and the critical legal scholar, Mikhaïl Xifaras, published a lengthy significant treatment of the articles. The Italian critical criminologist, Dario Melossi, marshalled Marx’s articles in his landmark work on penality and capitalism. In the legal academy in the United States, Marx’s articles on the theft of wood became a reference point within Critical Legal Studies in the 1970s.
Michel Foucault was steeped in these debates, especially of the historians, when he turned in 1973 to explore the construction of the “delinquent” and disciplinary power in his lectures at the Collège de France, The Punitive Society. The year before, in his lectures on Penal Theories and Institutions, Foucault had dedicated the first half of his yearly teaching to a detailed analysis of the Nu-pieds rebellion in Normandy in 1639 and to its repression by Richelieu and the Chancellor Séguier. Foucault had negotiated the querulous territory of historians—the vast literature on seventeenth-century popular uprisings, including the quarrels between a leading French historian of the ancien régime, Roland Mousnier, and the Soviet historian Boris Porchnev, a specialist of French popular uprisings during the period 1623-1648. Foucault read and admired the English historians around E.P. Thompson.
Immersed in this literature, Foucault threw himself into studying the birth of the penitentiary and what he would call “the punitive society.” In that enterprise, Marx’s articles on the thefts of wood would serve as a stepping stone for the development of his theories of “illégalismes,” of the subjectivation of the “criminal” subject, of the development of nineteenth century theories of the “criminal as social enemy.” Foucault refers explicitly to Marx’s articles in his lectures, The Punitive Society, on January 24, 1973, and draws on them in Discipline and Punish to formulate a theory of “illégalismes.” Foucault pushed Marx’s texts in a uniquely productive direction.
It is thus a privilege to have the philosopher Judith Revel join us at Marx 2/13 to discuss Foucault’s reading of Marx’s articles on the theft of wood. Judith Revel is one of the most subtle and insightful readers of Foucault. She has written groundbreaking works on Foucault and other contemporary philosophers, including Merleau-Ponty, in books such as Foucault: Experiences de la pensée (2005), Dictionnaire Foucault (2007), Foucault, une pensée du discontinu (2010), and Foucault avec Merleau-Ponty. Ontologie politique, présentisme et histoire (2015). She has directed the Italian edition of Foucault’s Dits et Écrits (Feltrinelli, 1996-1998).
Judith Revel will explore with us the unique way in which Foucault weaved together the analysis of penality (penal institutions, theories, and practices), on the one hand, and the study of political economy and the birth of capitalism, on the other. After her presentation, if there is time, I will explore the way in which Marx’s analysis in the articles on the thefts of wood and Foucault’s theories of penality form part of a historical current of thought that leads inexorably to abolition today.
Welcome to Marx 2/13!
[Read the full introduction to Marx 2/13 here].
