This article is devoted to reconstructing the concept of popular illegalisms (illégalisme populaire) in the thought of Michel Foucault. Although this concept is central to the entire argumentative architecture of Discipline and Punish, its significance has been overshadowed in the existing literature by the much better‐known notion of disciplinary power. The publication of Théories et institutions pénales (1971–1972) and La Société Punitive (1972–1973) prompted a whole series of reinterpretations of Foucault’s work from the perspective of illegalism. In Théories et institutions pénales, focusing on the example of the Nu-pieds uprising (1639–1640) in Normandy, Foucault argues that from the second half of the seventeenth century the modern system of repression emerged in response to intensifying popular revolts. In La Société Punitive, Foucault complicates this argument by introducing the notion of popular illegalisms and contending that well into the eighteenth century a certain form of popular illegalism was compatible with the development of the capitalist economy, but by the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had become antagonistic to it.
The aim of this article is to reconstruct the evolution of that argument. The central thesis I defend is that Foucault employs the concept of illegalisms to describe the class conflicts arising around the historical emergence of the prison as one of the key strategies for the commodification of labor, that is, proletarianization.
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.
