Structure

Foucault’s Discipline and Punish is a nonfiction study of the historical processes that contributed to the development of the prison in the West. It is divided into four parts, each corresponding to a set period in the history of punishment. Each part is further divided into two or three subsections, based on a theme that typifies that particular part.

What defines the structure of Discipline and Punish is its classification as a genealogy. Unlike a typical historical book, which might try to trace a specific domain of history in its entirety, a genealogical study is an investigative method that tries to unearth the origins of the circumstances that makeup the present. As a result of this interpretative process, the structure of Foucault’s study is not strictly chronological. Instead, we see that Foucault often begins each subsection with a dominant image that dictates a sense of...