Drunken and debauched husbands; libertine wives; vagabonding children. These and many more are the subjects of requests for confinement written to the king of France in the eighteenth century. These letters of arrest (lettres de cachet) from France’s Ancien Régime were often associated with excessive royal power and seen as a way for the king to imprison political opponents. In...
Drunken and debauched husbands; libertine wives; vagabonding children. These and many more are the subjects of requests for confinement written to the king of France in the eighteenth century. These letters of arrest (lettres de cachet) from France’s Ancien Régime were often associated with excessive royal power and seen as a way for the king to imprison political opponents. In Disorderly Families, first published in French in 1982, Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault collect ninety-four letters from ordinary families who, with the help of hired scribes, submitted complaints to the king to intervene and resolve their family disputes.
Gathered together, these letters show something other than the exercise of arbitrary royal power, and offer unusual insight into the infamies of daily life. From these letters come stories of divorce and marital conflict, sexual waywardness, reckless extravagance, and abandonment. The letters evoke a fluid social space in which life in the home and on the street was regulated by the rhythms of relations between husbands and wives, or parents and children. Most impressively, these letters outline how ordinary people seized the mechanisms of power to address the king and make demands in the name of an emerging civil order.
Arlette Farge is Director of Research in Modern History at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris and the author of more than a dozen books, including Fragile Lives and The Allure of the Archives.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher and held the Chair in the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. He is often considered the most...
Arlette Farge is Director of Research in Modern History at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris and the author of more than a dozen books, including Fragile Lives and The Allure of the Archives.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher and held the Chair in the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. He is often considered the most influential political theorist of the second half of the twentieth century. His most notable works include History of Madness, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality, among others.
Nancy Luxon is associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Crisis of Authority: Politics, Trust, and Truth-Telling in Freud and Foucault.
Thomas Scott-Railton is a freelance French–English translator living in Brooklyn, New York, and previously translated Arlette Farge’s The Allure of the Archive.
一本私心很喜欢的书，lettre de cachet，告密之信，那些想将妻子丈夫父母儿女兄弟姐妹投进监狱的人，会花钱请识字的人写这样的信件，期望国王或谁看到这些信后能把自己的至亲永远关进监狱。不幸的人各有其悲惨境遇，每一封信都装着一个酗酒、赌博、家暴、挥霍、出轨甚至沾染巫术的控诉，无论是措辞还是信件内容，窥视它们就仿佛在还原着那些声名狼藉者的人生
from 《Foucault against Himself》 the interview with Arelete Farge 自译，轻拍 《封印之书》（A lettre de cachet）是国王将某人投入监狱时下的旨令。一般国王用它们来废除那些他想除掉的位高权重之人，比如不服从他的贵族。不过从1720年到1750年左右这段非常短的时期间，...
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米歇尔·福柯 作者
重金属海王星
上海人民出版社2023版
Celeste
1 有用 Celeste 2018-01-06 17:31:53
一本私心很喜欢的书，lettre de cachet，告密之信，那些想将妻子丈夫父母儿女兄弟姐妹投进监狱的人，会花钱请识字的人写这样的信件，期望国王或谁看到这些信后能把自己的至亲永远关进监狱。不幸的人各有其悲惨境遇，每一封信都装着一个酗酒、赌博、家暴、挥霍、出轨甚至沾染巫术的控诉，无论是措辞还是信件内容，窥视它们就仿佛在还原着那些声名狼藉者的人生