* who exactly is the subject of terror, the person executed or the crowd? At the start of his book Foucault seems to claim that the subject is the person being executed. But then he shifts to talking about the attitude of the crowd.
* we are probably meant to view them as equivalents because of class consciousness and the Marxist digressions about man having no "soul" except for his position in power networks. But... but... surely it was quite common that the crowd and the person executed had quite different attitudes towards the event.
* also, if capital punishment was really ineffective at inducing terror (in whom?), why were 19th century French penal reformers the first ones to notice? isn't it weird that this enlightenment corresponded with a public debate over morality if the two events are unrelated?
* more substantively, if Foucault is right and French penal reformers were the first ones to notice for whatever reason, doesn't his pointing this out imply the existence of an objective standard of knowledge that undermines Foucault his claims elsewhere about power being wisdom and truth being subjective?
Uggg... I could go on for a while. Enough Foucault.
* we are probably meant to view them as equivalents because of class consciousness and the Marxist digressions about man having no "soul" except for his position in power networks. But... but... surely it was quite common that the crowd and the person executed had quite different attitudes towards the event.
* also, if capital punishment was really ineffective at inducing terror (in whom?), why were 19th century French penal reformers the first ones to notice? isn't it weird that this enlightenment corresponded with a public debate over morality if the two events are unrelated?
* more substantively, if Foucault is right and French penal reformers were the first ones to notice for whatever reason, doesn't his pointing this out imply the existence of an objective standard of knowledge that undermines Foucault his claims elsewhere about power being wisdom and truth being subjective?
Uggg... I could go on for a while. Enough Foucault.