Disorderly families : infamous letters from the Bastille Archives / [compiled by] Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault ; edited by Nancy Luxon ; translated by Thomas Scott-Railton ; afterword to the English edition by Arlette Farge.
Translated from the French. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Machine generated contents note: Contents -- Translator's Preface -- Editor's Introduction -- Presentation -- The King's Orders -- At the Family's Request -- 1728-1758: A Survey -- 1. Marital Discord -- Putting and End to One's Misery -- The Pact Broken -- Debauch: Masculine Spaces, Feminine Spaces -- The Gaze of Others -- The Imprisonment Obtained or the Beginning of a Story -- Obscure "Police Clarifications" -- The Singular Status of Repentance -- Documents 1. Marital Discord -- Households in Ruin -- The Imprisonment of Wives -- The Debauch of Husbands -- The Tale of a Request -- 2. Parents and Children -- Conflicts of Interest -- Disturbance -- "Conflicts at the Threshold" -- Departure for the Islands -- The Honor of Families -- Parental Ethics -- Documents 2. Parents and Children -- The Disruption of Affairs -- Shameful Concubinage -- The Dishonor of Waywardness -- Domestic Violence -- Bad Apprentices -- Exiles -- Family Honor -- The Parental Ethos of 1728: The Importance of Sentiment -- The Parental Ethos of 1758: The Duty to Educate -- 3. When Addressing the King -- From Use to Abuse -- Representation and Secrecy -- The End of Lettres de Cachet -- Afterword -- Arlette Farge -- Notes -- Index to Names -- Index to Places.
Summary:
"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 Regime 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 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 light on Foucault's conception of political agency and his commitment to theorizing how ordinary lives come to be touched by 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"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.