Disorderly Families: Infamous Letters From the Bastille Archives

March 05, 2022 Post a Comment

Disorderly Families

Infamous Letters from the Bastille Archives

2021

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Authors:

Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault
Edited past Nancy Luxon
Translated by Thomas Scott-Railton

The commencement English language translation of letters of abort from eighteenth century France held in the archives of the Guardhouse

Starting time published in French in 1982, this first English translation of Disorderly Families contains ninety-four letters collected by Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault from ordinary families who submitted complaints to the king of France in the eighteenth century to intervene and resolve their family disputes. Together, these letters offering unusual insight into the infamies of daily life.

"Thirty-5 years on, the study of obscure private lives has become a valued characteristic of historical research and the source of new perspectives in the understanding of social and political contexts. [Just quite apart from this change in the attitude of historians], the letters themselves seem to have anile better than the intellectual disagreements and academic disputes that accompanied their original publication." —Times Literary Supplement

Drunken and debauched husbands; libertine wives; vagabonding children. These and many more are the subjects of requests for confinement written to the king of French republic in the eighteenth century. These messages of arrest (lettres de cachet) from France'southward Ancien Régime were often associated with excessive royal power and seen every bit a mode for the king to imprison political opponents. In Disorderly Families, first published in French in 1982, Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault collect ninety-four messages from ordinary families who, with the help of hired scribes, submitted complaints to the male monarch to intervene and resolve their family disputes.

Gathered together, these letters show something other than the do of arbitrary royal ability, 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 past the rhythms of relations betwixt husbands and wives, or parents and children. Almost impressively, these letters outline how ordinary people seized the mechanisms of ability to address the king and make demands in the name of an emerging civil club. Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault were fascinated by the letters' explosive qualities and by how they both illustrated and intervened in the workings of power and governmentality. Disorderly Families sheds lite on Foucault's conception of political bureau and his commitment to theorizing how ordinary lives come to be touched past power. This first English translation is complete with an introduction from the book's editor, Nancy Luxon, as well as notes that contextualize the original 1982 publication and eighteenth-century policing practices.

Arlette Farge is Director of Enquiry in Modern History at the Middle 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 ofttimes considered the most influential political theorist of the 2nd half of the twentieth century. His most notable works include History of Madness, Subject field and Punish, and The History of Sexuality, amongst others.

Nancy Luxon is associate professor of political scientific discipline at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Crisis of Potency: 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'southward The Allure of the Archive.

Expertly edited, this thoughtful translation of Disorderly Families adds a central pillar to the English archive of Michel Foucault'south work. A source of fascination for him since at least the 1950s, the Bastille lettres de cachets deeply influenced and shaped his analysis of power. As he discovered, these messages were what he and Arlette Farge would call a 'pop practice,' demanded from below, and not an arbitrary do of monarchical power—and they would become a key building cake for Foucault's theory of ability-knowledge. This exceptional English translation gives life to Foucault's—and Farge's—destructive desire to breathe life into these beautiful, infamous, and obscure lives.

—

Bernard Eastward. Harcourt, Columbia University*

An enlightening compilation that will exit historically inclined readers wanting to dig a petty farther into the archives.

30-five years on, the written report of obscure individual lives has become a valued characteristic of historical research and the source of new perspectives in the understanding of social and political contexts. [Simply quite apart from this alter in the attitude of historians], the letters themselves seem to have aged better than the intellectual disagreements and academic disputes that accompanied their original publication.

—

Times Literary Supplement