This article analyses Foucault’s 1972–3 lecture course,La société punitive. While the course can certainly be seen as an initial draft of themes for the 1975 bookSurveiller et punir, there are some important differences. The reading here focuses on different modes of punishment; the civil war and the social enemy; the comparison of England and France; and political economy. It closes with some analysis of the emerging clarity in Foucault’s work around power and genealogy. This is a course where Foucault makes (...) use of Marxist language and categories, engages with historical materialism, and offers a complementary and at times corrective focus. (shrink)

In manuscripts and unpublished articles written in the 1950s, Foucault developed a notion of myth that was intimately linked to what he called “imaginary forces,” a notion that he framed as a new critical approach. Its most important functions lie in exposing how mythological narratives naturalize social processes, and in developing a skeptical stance towards the allegedly liberating function of truth. This notion of myth is central in History of Madness, but it features most prominently in a passage that was (...) omitted from the first English translation. Here, Foucault criticizes the narrative that Enlightenment psychiatry told about its own origins, which naturalized social processes. The young Foucault’s notion of myth is strikingly similar to the Marxist notion of second nature. (shrink)