Foucault discusses the notion of power operating under certain rules involving the types of knowledge-claims it makes. "The verification of the crime must obey the general criteria for all truth. In the arguments it employs, in the proofs it provides, legal judgment must be homogeneous with power in general." (p.97) What sorts of mechanisms does this "rule of common truth" take on in order to both reveal and obscure knowledge about the crime, the criminal, and the punishing power? How did the rise of Enlightenment thinking affect the establishment of this sort of notion of legislative truth? How are knowledge-claims about law and punishment (both transparent and concealed) justified in the modern legal and political world? Are they transparent? Do they in fact follow the same rules of evidence and proof available to common reason?
Monday, May 12, 2008
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