Didier Fassin, Punir. Une Passion Contemporaine
| Published date | 01 July 2019 |
| Date | 01 July 2019 |
| Author | Nicolás Díaz Letelier |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474518758388 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews
2019, Vol. 21(3) 364–389
! The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1462474518758388
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
Didier Fassin, Punir. Une Passion Contemporaine, Seuil: Paris, 2017; 208 pp. ISBN
9782021327083, $30 (pbk)
“Punishment, in so far as it is a social institution, is indeed a remarkable analyzer of
societies, of the affects that pass through them, and of the values which they bear”
(Fassin, 2017b: 37 reviewer’s translation).
Adopting a philosophical and anthropological perspective on affects, values, and
the
politics
that
mediated
between
them,
Didier
Fassin
proposes
a
multidisciplinary assessment of the idea of punishment, its foundations, and
the peculiar forms of its circulation. Bursting into a long-standing debate
largely animated by philosophers and jurists, Fassin develops his book starting
from three classical questions that are still profoundly actual: What is punish-
ment? Why is punishment inflicted? Who is being punished? Combining a
genealogical approach as his analytical base and an ethnographic gaze as his
critical lens, Fassin weaves a journey through the discussions and reflections
around these three questions, revealing the many tensions underlying certain
assumptions, propositions, and fundamental opacities of the western punitive
canon.
In the first chapter, Fassin delineates a path into certain criteria and connota-
tions through which the act of punishing has been imagined and defined. The
highest point of this path is marked by the semantic equivalence that seems to
exist between punishment and suffering, where the association of both terms has
been translated—both in moral philosophy and in criminal law—into the task of
establishing a precise correspondence between the severity of a transgression and
the suffering imposed to sanction it. In this regard, Fassin develops a genealogical
layout in order to elucidate the transition from a logic of repair, as outlined by
Friedrich...
To continue reading
Request your trial