Translator’s Note

Any closer translation of the French title of this book, Surveiller et punir, has proved unsatisfactory on various counts. To begin with, Foucault uses the infinitive, which, as here, may have the effect of an ‘impersonal imperative’. Such a nuance is denied us in English. More seriously the verb ‘surveiller’ has no adequate English equivalent. Our noun ‘surveillance’ has an altogether too restricted and technical use. Jeremy Bentham used the term ‘inspect’ – which Foucault translates as ‘surveiller’ – but the range of connotations does not correspond. ‘Supervise’ is perhaps closest of all, but again the word has different associations. ‘Observe’ is rather too neutral, though Foucault is aware of the aggression involved in any one-sided observation. In the end Foucault himself suggested Discipline and Punish, which relates closely to the book’s structure.

Another problem was posed by the French word ‘supplice’, which heads the first part of the book. For the sake of brevity I have entitled this first part ‘Torture’, but no single English word will cover the full range of the French. Here ‘supplice’ refers specifically to the public torture and execution of criminals that provided one of the most popular spectacles of eighteenth-century France. By extension the word can also refer to any prolonged torture, mental as well as physical. Depending on the context, I have translated the word by ‘torture’, ‘public execution’ or ‘scaffold’. The author also refers to another form of torture, ‘la question’, the extraction of confessions by interrogation and the systematic application of pain. Here I have followed the accepted translation, ‘judicial torture’.

References to other works are usually given not in footnotes but in an abbreviated form in the text itself. These references, in brackets, consist of the author’s name and a page number; dates of publication are used to distinguish more than one work by an author, and roman numerals refer to volume numbers. Full references are to be found in the Bibliography.