"The public execution, then, has a juridico-political function. It is a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted. It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at its most spectacular. The public execution, however hasty and everyday, belongs to a whole series of great rituals in which power is eclipsed and restored (coronation, entry of the king into a conquered city, the submission of rebellious subjects); over and above the crime that has placed the sovereign in contempt, it deploys before all eyes an invincible force. Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength."
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Atheists from FranceAcademics from FrancePhilosophers from FranceHistorians from FranceSociologists from France
Original Language: English
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Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
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Michel Foucault
1926 – 1984
französischer Philosoph
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