In 1975 Foucault publishes Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison, tracing the passage from public torture to the timetable and the panopticon, and arguing that power produces the subjects it governs. The book becomes the most widely read of his works and the human sciences' standing challenge to their own institutions.
Tagged: Postmodernism
The Event
- Date
- 1975 (exact)
- Era
- The Structuralist Break; Standard periodization of postmodern history
- Location
- Paris; today Paris, France
- Traditions
- Postmodernism
- Streams
- Postmodernism
- Key figures
- Michel Foucault
- Key texts
- Discipline and Punish
Primary Sources
- Foucault, Michel. Surveiller et punir. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.
Secondary Sources
- Bertens, Hans. The Idea of the Postmodern: A History. London: Routledge, 1995.
- Hassan, Ihab. The Postmodern Turn. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987.
- Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 1988.
Provenance: HIST-1440; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
Related on This Site
History Event
Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus
1972
History Event
Derrida's Of Grammatology
1967
History Event
Derrida's Structure, Sign and Play lecture
1966
History Event
Foucault's The Order of Things
1966
History Event
Hassan's The Dismemberment of Orpheus
1971
History Event
Jencks's The Language of Post-Modern Architecture
1977
History Event
Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition
1979
World View
Postmodernism
Postmodernism doubts every grand story that claims to explain everything; it treats truth as shaped by language, culture, and power rather than simply discovered.