Spectatorship of punishment was already class-divided before the prison era
Evidence
Order and wealth came to watch from a distance the passing of the great nomadic tribe that had been put in chains, that other species, ‘the race apart that has the privilege of populating the convict-ships and prisons’. The spectators of the lower classes, as at the time of the public executions, kept up their ambiguous exchanges with the convicts, alternating insults, threats, words of encouragement, blows, signs of hate or complicity. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 394
Categorization
- XREF: The bifurcation of spectator response — affluent distance versus proletarian complicity — prefigures how a surveilled subject’s own class position shapes their relation to power; relevant to the reader’s interest in internalization. — connects to: Pre-prison punishment aimed at spectators as public spectacle, not at reforming the punished. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 102; Public punishment was abolished because it inflamed crowds rather than teaching them. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 397; Lower classes rejected penal justice and intervened physically at its public sites — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 117
Related
- Lower classes rejected penal justice and intervened physically at its public sites (similarity 0.82)
- Pre-prison punishment aimed at spectators as public spectacle, not at reforming the punished. (similarity 0.80)
- Public punishment was abolished because it inflamed crowds rather than teaching them. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Pre-prison punishment aimed at spectators as public spectacle, not at reforming the punished.
#expands(0.75) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 102