Society transforms chosen crime into imposed, inherent vice

Evidence

Lacenaire is the typical ‘delinquent’. But he brought with him, at least potentially, a horizon of illegalities that had, until quite recently, represented a threat: this ruined petty bourgeois, of good education, would, a generation earlier, have been a revolutionary, a Jacobin, a regicide; had he been a contemporary of Robespierre, his rejection of the law would have taken a directly political form. Born in 1800, at more or less the same time as Stendhal’s Julien Sorel, his character bears the trace of these possibilities; but they took the form of theft, murder and denunciation. All these potentialities became a delinquency of no great moment: in this sense, Lacenaire is a reassuring character. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 435 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Elite circles reframe as fashionable vice what the masses punish as crime.; Political revolt could be rerouted into mere crime by the penal apparatus — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 435

Related

• Political revolt could be rerouted into mere crime by the penal apparatus (similarity 0.90)
• Elite circles reframe as fashionable vice what the masses punish as crime. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Political revolt could be rerouted into mere crime by the penal apparatus #corroborates (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 435