Tag: Michel Foucault

  • Foucault on School-Prison and Prison-School Pipelines

    Foucault on School-Prison and Prison-School Pipelines

    “So successful has the prison been that, after a century and a half of ‘failures’, the prison still exists, producing the same results, and there is the greatest reluctance to dispense with it.”  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 277 In my mini-review of Bryan Caplan’s polemic against education, I noted that he partly ignores Foucaultian arguments…

  • Reflections on my Crime and Punishment Seminar

    Reflections on my Crime and Punishment Seminar

      This semester I taught a course on crime and punishment, and in part out of competition with my colleague Seth Vannatta, I set out to give a final presentation on the dimensions of the course. This is the presentation I wrote. Introduction Our task was to explore the role of ethics in the law,…

  • Snark Polemics and Contrite Fallibilism

    Most people who know me in person would at least consider using the term “snarky” in their description of me, which is why John Barnes’ polemic against “snark” troubled me so:  It’s a currently fashionable powerful rhetorical weapon that allows the uninvolved and the never-to-be-involved to discredit people who do, or attempt – anything at…