Public punishment served to reconstitute the sovereign’s injured authority

Evidence

The Pasha is saying that he takes these offenses very seriously because he considers them an attack on his sovereign person. It is his “momentarily injured sovereignty” that had to be avenged and the public punishment was seen as a way of reconstituting this sovereignty. It does so “by manifesting [that sovereignty] at its most spectacular … [O]ver and above the crime that has placed the sovereign in contempt [public punishment] deploys before all eyes an invincible force. Its aim is not to re-establish a balance [as much] as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength.” — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 675

Categorization

• XREF: Foucault’s account of public punishment; connects to the reader’s sacrifice article on ritual violence as political stabilizer. — connects to: Revenge requires crime and punishment be separated in time — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 900; The Egyptian army replaced spectacular punishment with rehabilitative discipline; Subtler punishment masked sovereign power rather than making it more humane (+12 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 675

Broader Connections

• Punishment’s meaning is fashioned through institutional symbiotic relationships #expands (0.60) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 283