MICHEL FOUCAULT POWERI his fs nota book of history. The selection found here was slded by nothing more substantial than my taste, my pleasure, an motion, laughter, surprise, a certain dread, or some other feeling Ivhose intensity I might have trouble jslifying, now thatthe Hist ‘moment of discovery has passed "san anthology of existences, Lives of few lines or a fow pages, namelest misfortunes and adventures gathered into a handful of words, Brief lives, encountered by chance in books and documents, Bzempla, but unlike those collected by the sages in) the course of thet readin, they are examples that convey not so ‘much lessons to ponder as brief effects whose force fades almost ft once, The term “news” would fit them rather well, 1 think, be- ‘ause of the double reference it suggests: tothe rapid pace of the harrative and tothe reality of the events that are related, For the ‘hing said in these texts ares compressed that one isn't sure shetber the intensiy that sparks through them is due more to the vividness ofthe words oF to the fosling violence of the facts they tell, Singular lives, transformed into strange poems through ‘who knows what tists of fale—that Is what T decided to gather into a kind of herbarium, ‘As Lecall, the idea came to me one day when I was reading, at the Bibllotheque Nationale, a record of internment written at the ‘ery beginning of the eighteenth century. If Ym not mistaken, it ‘cured to mie a I read these two notices:158 Power ‘Mathura Mla, placed in he hospital of Charenton, gu Aug 707 ie madness a always to de from is aml to ea an obscure hte the county, to have actions a aw, to lend seriously and tithut security, to lets feeble mind down unknown paths and To believe himself capable ofthe areatest employments.” {Jean Amun Touran, pled nthe caste of Bite, a Api 701 ‘Seaitious apostate ra, capable ofthe greatest crnes,sodamite, visi that were possible this indvidua sa verable monster of ‘horintion horn i ould be beter to tie than to leave st arg In would be hard to say exaelly what I felt when Tread these frag- ments and many others that were similar. No doubt, one of these that are called “physic” asifthere could beans other ‘Kind. Taxmit that these “short stories," suddenly emerging from wo fand a half centuries of silence, stirred more fibers within me than ‘wha is ordinarily called literature,” without my being able to sty ‘even now if was more moved by the Beauty of that Clssial ste, frayed in a few sentences around characters that were plainly ‘wretched, or by the excesses, the blend of ark stubbornness and Tascality, ofthese lives whose disarray and relentless energy one ‘senses beneath the stsne-smooth words. i tong tine ato T made use of docaments lke these fora book. IFT did'so back then, it was doubtless because of the resonance T sil experience tay when {happen to encounter these lowly lives ele to ashes in the fev sentenoes that struck them down. The ‘dream would have been to restore their intensity in an analysis. inching the necessary talent, I broaded over the analysis alone. 1 considered the tests in their dryness, trying to determine their rea Son for belng, what institutions or what potitcal practice they re ferred to, seeking to understand why it had suddenly been so | important in a soctety ike ours to ste (as one stiles a cry, ‘smothers a fie, oF strangles an animal) «scandalous monk o & peculiar and inconsequential usurer. [looked forthe reason why people were so zealous to prevent the feebleminded from walking flown unknown paths. But the firs intensities that had motivated. ime remsined excluded, And since there was 2 good chance that they wouldn't enter into the order of reasons at all seeing that my ives of Infamous Men 139) Aiscourse was Incapable of conveying them in the necessary Way, ‘wouldnt i be beter to leave them in the very form tht had caused ‘ne to fst Feel them? ‘Whence the kes of this collection, done more or less asthe o¢- casion arose, A collection compiled without haste and without a ‘lear purpose. For along time I thought of presenting it ina sy tematic onde, witha few rudiments of explanation, and in sue a way that I would exhibit 9 minimum of historical significance. 1 Aecided agaist this, for reasons that I will come back to ler. 1 resolved simply to msembie a certain number of texts, forthe in- tensity they seem to me to have, Ihave appended afew preliminary reamarks fo ther, an Ihave distributed them soas wo preserve, as best F could, the effect of each, ‘So this book will not answer the purpose of historians, even less tan it wil others. A mood-based and purely subjective book? 1 ‘would say rather but it may come to the same thing tat i's a rule- and game-based book, the book faite obsession that found {ts system, think that the poem ofthe oddball usureror tha of the somite monk served as a model throughout. It as in order to recapture something ike thosé flash’pxistences, those poemnlves, that Ini down a certain numberof simple rues for myself + ‘The persons Included must have actually existed. + These existences must have been both obscure and ill-fated, + They must have been recounted in a few pages or, better, afew sentences, as brie as possible, + These tales must not just constitute strange or pathetic ance- bout, in one way or another (because they were com s, denunciations, oFders, oF reports), they must have truly formed pat of the minuscule history of these existences, of ei misfortune, their wildness, or thelr dubious madness. + And for us sil the shock of these words must give rise to a certain effet of beauty mixed with dread. should saya litle more about these rules that may appear160 Power 1 wanted it always to be a matter of real existences that one might bbe able to give them & place and a date; dua behind these names that no longer say anything, Dehind these quick words which may ‘well have been false, mendacious, unjust exaggerated, there were men who lived and died, with suferings, meannesses, jealousies, ‘osiferations. So T excluded everything in the way of Imagination ‘or hteratare: none ofthe dark heroes thatthe latter have invented fppeared as intense to me as these cobblers, these army deserters, these garment sellers, these seriveners, these vagabond monks, all, fof them rabid, scandalous, or pital. And this was owing, no doubt, to the mere fact that they are kuown to have lived. likewise ruled ‘out all the texts that might be memoirs, recollections, tebleaus, all those recounting a slice of reality but Keeping the distance of ob servation, of memory, of curiosity, or of amusement. I was deter- mined that these texts always be in a relation or, rather, in the {greatest possible numberof relations with reality not only that they Fefer tof, but they be operative within is that they form par ofthe ) ramatury othe eal; ht they consti the sastrunent of are tion, the weapon of «hatred, an episode in a bate, the geste lation ofa despair ora jealousy, an entreaty or an order. 1 adn" ley to bring together texts tha would be more atl to realty than. ‘others, that would merit inelusion for their representative valve, ‘ut, rather, ext that played pain the realy they speak of—and thay in return, whatever their inaccuracy their exaggeration, oF thei hypocrisy, are traversed by it: fragments of discourse traling the tragments ofa reality they are part of One won't see aeallecion 3f verbal portraits her, but traps, weapons, exis, gestures, alt= tudes, ruses, inrigues for which words were the instruments. Real lives were “enacted [Youées" in these few sentences: by this don". ‘mean that they were represented but thatthe Liberty, thelt misfor- tune, often their death, In any case thei fat, were actually decided ‘herein, at least in part. These discourses rally crossed lives; exis- tenes were actually risked and lost in these words. “Another requirement of mine was that these personages them selves be obscure; that nothing would have prepared them for any notoriety; that they would not have been endowed with any of the testable snd recognized nobilies—those of bir, fortune, saint Tiness, heroism, or genius; that they would have belonged to those Lives of Infamous Men 16 billions of existences destined wo pass away without a trace; that in their misfortunes, thele passions, in those loves and hatreds there would be something gray and ordinary i comparison with what Is Usually deemed worthy of being recounted hal, nevertheless, they be propelled by a violence, an eneray, an excess expressed in the malice, vileness, baseness, obstinacy, or il-fortune thls gave them inthe eyes of thet fellows and in proportion to is very medioc rity, a soft of appalling or pli grandeue I had gone in seare of ese sorts of particles endowed with an energy all the greater for a eam of ight ‘had to illuminate ther, for @nioment at east. A Wel eoming from clsemere. What snatched them from the darkness in which they ‘could, pertaps should, have remained was the encounter with: Bower; without that collision, is very wnlkely that any word would De there to recall their fleeting trajectory. The poster that watched these lives, that pursued ther, that lent is attention if only for moment, to their complaints and Wher ite sacket, and marked them with is clave was what gave rise othe few words about them ‘that remain for us—elther because someone decided to appeal to iv in order to denounce, complain, slit, entreat, oF because he those to intervene and ina few words oj and decide. All those) lives destined Wo pass beneath any discourse and disappear without fever having been told were able to leave traces—tvet, incisive, | ( foflen enigmatio—only atthe point of thei instantaneous contact | ‘ill poner. So that iL is doubles impossible Io ever grasp them? gain in themselves, as they might have been “in afree sale"; they ‘an no longer be separated out from the declamations, the tactical biases, the obligatory les that power games and power relation presuppose. Til be told: “Thats so like you, always with the same inability to cross the Tne, to pass tothe other side, to listen and convey the language that comes from elsewhere or from below; always the stmne choice, onthe side of power, of what it says or causes to be Sai Why not go listen to these lives were they speak in ther own, ‘oles? But, fst ofall, would anything at all remain of what they were In thei violence or in their singular misfortune had they nol, {ta given momient, met up wih power and provoked its Forces? Is Ie not one ofthe fundamental tails of our society after al, tat162 Power destiny takes the form of a relation with power, of a strugale with ‘or agains it? Indeed, the most intense point of «lif, the point where ts eneray Is concentrated, ia where i comes up agains power, struggles witht aempts to use its forces and io evade its spa The bret and strident words that went back and forth be en power and the nos nessa existences doubiess cons tute, for he later, the only monument they have ever been grate it lo what gives them, forthe passage trough te, the bit of brilliance, the Brie ash tat earies them tus Tn short, {wanted to assemble a few rudiments for legend of eure men, out of the discourses that in sorrow or in rag, they fexenanged with power. 4b 4 Segend? because, atin all egends there Is certain ami uily between the feional andthe rel-but it occurs for opposite feasons. Whatever its kernel of really, the legendary is noting ‘else, inally, but the sum of what is sid about i i indifferent to the existence or noneistence ofthe persons whose glory it trans init It they existed, the legend covers them with so many won ders, embelishing them with so many fmpossibitis, that i's llmost a if they had never lived. And if they are purely imaginary, the legend reports so many insistent tales about them that they take on the historical thickness of someone who existed. in the texts that fllom, the existence of these men and women comes down to exacly what srs said about them: nothing subsists of foal they were or what they did, other than whats found in a few Sentences Here itis rority and not proxy tat makes realty equivalent to fiction, Having Been nothing in history, having played no appreciable role in events or mong important people, Thing etn ientilabe trace around them, they ont have and over will have any existence outside the precarious domicile of “Yinese words. And through those texts which tell about tem, they come down to ws bearing no more ofthe markings of reality than it they had eome from La Légende dorde or fom an adventure rove This purely verbal existence, which makes these forion ot Milainousindividvls toto quastfedonal beings, is du to thir teary complete disappearence, and to that Tuck oF mischance tric resulted in he survival, through the peradventure of reds Covered documents, ofa scarce few words hat spesk of them or that are pronounced by them. A dark but, above alla dry legend, ives of Igamous Men 165, reduce to what was sald one day and preserved down a our day by improbable encounters, ‘That is another tat of this dark legend. I hes not been trans rmited like one that was gilded by some deep necessity, following continuous paths. By nature, iis bereft of any traditions dseont Iuities, effacement, oblivion, convergences, appearances this ot {he only way itean reach us. Chance eatres it fom the beni Ufrst required a eombination of circumstances that, conirary tall ‘expectations, focused the attention of power and the outburst of ts anger on the most obscure individual, om his mediore ie, om his (afer al ather ordinary) faults: a stroke of misfortune that caused the vigilance of oficils or ofinstttions aimed no doubt at sup pressing all disorder, to pick om this person rather than that, this Scandalous monk, this beaten woman, this inveterate and furious drunkard, this quarrelsome merchant, and not so many others Who were making just as much ofa ruckus, And then it had toe just this document, among so many others scattered and lst, which ‘eame down tous and be rediscovered and read, So that between these people of no importance and us who have no more impor. tance than they, there s no necessary connection. Nothing made it Likely for them to emerge from the shadows, they instead of others, ‘wih their lives and their sorrows, We may amuse ouraeives, i we Wish, by seeing a revenge in ths: the chance that enabled these absolutely undistinguished people to emerge fom their place amid the dead multitudes, to gesticulate again, 10 manifest their rage, ‘her allction, or thelr invinible determination to err—perhaps it ‘makes up fr the bad luck that brought pomer's lighting bolt down ‘upon ther, in spite oftheir modesty and anonymity. Tives that areas though they hada been, that survive only rom the clash with a power that wished only to annihilate them oF at leas to obliterate them, ives that come back tows only through the fffect of multiple accidents~these are the infamies that I wanted to assemble here inthe form of few remains. There exists false infamy, the kind with which those men of terror or Seanda, Giles de Rais, Guillory or Cartouche, Sade and Lacenaire are blessed Apparently infamous, because of the abominable memores they have lef, the misdeeds attributed to them, the respectal horror they have inspired, they are actually men of glorious legend, even. It the reasons for thal renown are the opposite of those that con-164 Power stitute or ought to constitute the greatness of men. Their infamy I ‘nly @ modality of the universal fama But the apostate friar, the feetle minds lost on unknown paths, Hose are infamous 38 the strict sense: they no longer exist except through the terible words gta were dedined trend dem fore unworthy ofthe memory fof met. And chance determined that ese words, these words one, would subsist. The retwen ofthese lives to really occurs in the very form in which they Were driven out ofthe work. Useless to look for another face for them oo suspect a different greatness fn thems they are no longer anything but that which was meant 10 ) crush them—neither more nor less. Such is infamy in the strict ‘Sense, the infamy tha, being wnmixed with ambiguous scandal or “unspoken admiration, fas nothing to do with any sort of glory. In comparison with inary’ great collection, which would gather its aces from everywhere and ll ies, Fm well aware that the setection here is palry, narra bit monotonous. teamprises doo “ions a ll date approximately trom the same hundred years 1601700, and cone from the same source: archives of confine tment ofthe ple, of petitions tothe Ring nd of res de cache. Tet us suppose tht this may be a frst volume and that Lives af Injamous hen wll be extended to oer times and other paces. 1 chose this period and tis type af texts Because of an old fe salary. ut ifthe taste ve had for them for years has not din- ined and ft come back to them nowy its beau Tsuspect they tunifest a begining, ovat any rate a mportant event, n which Giga mechanisms an discursive efets intersected "These texts from the seventeath ad elghteemh centunes (ex pedially when compared withthe Natnes of Tater administrative \fnd police documents) daplay s briiaee, reveal splendor of ‘rating, a vebemence thal belies, in our judgment atleast the Peitness of the afar or the rather shameful meanness of ite 5. | The most ptf ives are deserted with ie imprecations orem ‘has that ould seem to sult thomost rage A comical effect, no " Goubt there is something adirous in summoning llthe power of ‘words and though then the supreme power of heaven end earth, Xround insiguitcant disorders or such ordinary woes. “Unable to bear the weight ofthe most excesive sorrow, he clerk Duschene Yentures, with humble and respetal confidence, to throw him- Lives of Infamous Men 165, self at the feet of Your Majesty to implore his justice against the crueles of all women, ... What hope must not rise inthe breast af this unfortunate one who, reduced to the last extremly, today ap- peals to Your Majesty ater having exhausted all the ways of gen Heness, remonstrance, ad consideration to bring back to her dy ‘fe who lacks all sentiment of religion, honor, probity, and even Fhumanity? Such is, Sire, the slate of this poor wretch who dares to ‘voles is plaintive appeal tothe ears of Your Majesty.” Or that aban- daned wetaurse who asks forthe arrest of her husband on bekalt ot her four children “who may have nothing to expeet fom their father butatereible example ofthe effect of disorder. Your justice, sy Lond, wil surely spare them such a degrading lesson, wil pre= ‘ent opprobium and infamy for me and my family, by rendering Incapable of doing any injury to society a bad etizen who will not fail to bring it harm." We may laugh at this, but it should be kept {in mind that to this itorie, grandiloquent anly because of the smallness of the things to which itis applied, power responds in terms that appear no less excessive—with the diference tht its ‘words convey the Falgnration ofits decistons—and their solemnity ‘may be warranted if not by the importance of what they punish, then by the harshness ofthe penalty they impose I'some caster of horoscopes is locked up, tis Is because “there ae few eres she ‘has not commited, and none of which she is nol capable. So there 1 as much charity as justice in immediately ridding the public of so dangerous & woman, who has robbed it, duped it, and scandal- ied it with impunity for so many years” And about a young adle- brain, aba! son and a ne'erdo-well: “Te isa monster ofibertinage And impiety... Practices all the vices: Knavish, disobedient, km- pptuous, violent, capable of deliberate attacks on the lie of his ow father... always in the company of the worst prostitutes, Nothing {hat is said about his knaveries and profigacies makes any im pression on his hear; he responds only witha scoundre’s smile {that communicates his eallousness and gives no reason to think he fs anything short of incurable-” With the least peceadilo, one is always in the abominable, or atleast in the discourse of invective and execration, These loose women and these-unraly children do not pale next to Nero or Rodogune. The discourse of power in the Fassical age, like the discourses addressed to it, produces sters, Why this emphatic theater ofthe quotidian?166 Power | Ghristianty nad in large part organized powers holon the oF- ' inary preaceapatins of life: an obligation to run the minuscule everyday world regulary through the mil of language, revealing the common faults, the imperceptible failings even, and down 0 ‘he murky interplay of thoughts, ntetions and desires; a ritual of confession in whic te one speaking is atte same te one spoken bout an effacement of the thing saa by its very uterance, but also with an augmentation ofthe confession ite, which mst remain Secret and not leave anyother trace behind it but repentance and ‘cts of contrton. The Christan West invented that astonishing Constraint, which imposed on everyone ttl everything inorder to effce everthing, to express even the most minor faults i an \ unbroken, relentless, exhustive murmur which nothing. must ade, ut which mast not outlive itself even for a moment For hundreds of millions of men and over a period of centuries, evil had to be confessed in the frat person, in an obligatory and ephem- cal whisper But, fom the end of the seventeenth century, this mechanisin was encirted and outreached by another one whose operation was ‘ery diferent. An administrative and no Tonger religious appa: sais a reeording mechanism instead of a pardoning mechanism. ‘The objective wa the same, however, at last in part to bring the © ‘quotian into discourse to survey te iy universe of regularities ‘and unimportant eisorers In this sysiem, thong, confession does ‘ot play the ennent role that Christanity had reserved fori For this sola mapping and control, long-standing procedures are used, but ones that had been localized up to then: the denunciation, the complaint, the Ingiry, the report, spying, the interrogation. And tverthing that is said inthis way Is noted down in writing, sac cumulated, is gathered into dossiers and archives. The single, in- Stantancous, and taceless voice of the penitential confession that etfced evi ast effaced itself would now be supplanted by multiple ‘voices, which were to be deposited in an enormous documentary ‘ass and thus constitute, through ime, sor of eonstantly growing recor of all the world's woes, The minuscule trouble of misery and ‘wansgression is no longer sent to heaven through the scarcely dite confidence ofthe confession: t accumulates on earth in the form of written aces. An entirely ferent type of relations se leblished between power, discourse, and the quotidian, an alto Lives oftnfamous Men 107 gether diferent way of governing th later and of formulating it For ordinary life, a new mise-en-scene is born. ‘We are familiar with its frst instruments, archaic but already ‘complex: they are the petitions, the eres de cache or king's orders, the various internments the police reports and decisions. I won't 0 back over these things, which are already well known; Cl just, Fecall certain aspects that may account for the strange intensity, 1nd fora kind of beauty that sometimes emanates from these hast ty drayn images in which unfortunate men assume, for us who perocive them from such a great distance, the guise of infamy. The Tear de eachet, internment, tne generalized presence ofthe police— llth usualy evokes only the despotism ofan absolute monarchy. But one cannot help but see tht this “arbitrariness” was a kind of public service, Except in the rarest of eases, the eking’s orders did ‘ot strike without warning, crashing down from above as signs of the monarch’s anger. More often than not, they were requested ‘against someone by bis entourage—his father and mother, one of his eelatives, his family, his sons oF daughters, his neighbors, the local preston occasion, or some notable. They were solicited for some obscure fay trouble, as ftinvolved a great rime menting the sovereign’s wrath rejected or abused spouses, « squandered fornine, conflicts of interes, disobedient young people, knavery or ‘arousing, and all the lite disorders of conduct. The ltre de eachar {hat was presented as the express and particular wil of the king to hhave one of his subjects confined, outside the channels of regular justice, was nothing more than the response to such petitions com- ing from below. But it was not freely granted to anyone requesting {t-an inguiry must precede it, for the purpose of substantiating the laims made in the petition. It needed to establish whether the de- Dbauchery or drunken spree, the violence or the libertinage, called {or an internment, and under what conditions and for how long — 1 job for the pole, who would collet statements by witnesses, Information from spies, ad all the hsze of doubsful rumor that forms around each individual, he system of les de cachet and internment was only a rather brief episode, lasting for litle more than a century and limited to France. But it Is nonetheless important in the history of power ‘mechanisms. I did not bring about the uninvited intrusion of royal, arbitrariness im the most everyday dimension of life. It ensured,108 Power rather, the distribution ofthat power through complex circuits and ' whole Interplay of petitions and responses, An absoatst abuse? Maybe so, yet notin the sense that the absolute monareh purely fand simply abused his own power, rather, in the sense that each individual cou aval himself, for his own ends and agains others, of absolute power in its enormity sort of placing ofthe mecha. isms of sovereignty at one's disposal, an opportunity to divert is effects to one's own benef, for anyone clever enough to capture them. A certain number of consequences followed from this: polit ical sovereigaly penetrated into the most elementary dimension of the social bods; the resources ofan absolutis politial power, be- yond the traditional weapons of authority and suralsion, could be brought into play between subject and subject, sometimes the most humble of them, between family members and between neighbors, nin relations of interest, of profession, of rivalry, of love and hte, Providing one knew how to pla the gamne, every individual ‘ould become forthe other «terrible and Inwless monarch: homo hhomini rex. 4 whole poitieal network became intermayen with the fabric of everyday life. But it was sll necessary, atleast for a mo- rien, to appropriate this power, channel it eaptute if, and bend it The diretion one wanted fone meant to take advantage of tit sas necessary to “seve” ib It became both an object of coveto hess and an object of seduction; it was desirable, then, precisely oar as It was dreadful. The intervention of a limitless political [power in every relations thus heeame not only acceptable and familar but deeply condoned—not without becoming, from that very fact, the theme of a generalized fear. We should not be sur- prised at this inclination which, ite by litle, opened up the rela- tons of appurtenanee or dependence that traditionally connect the family t9 administrative and politcal contos. Nor should we be surprised thatthe king's boundless power, thas operating in the Iidst of passions, rages, miseries, and mischiefs, was able to be~ ‘come despite oF perhaps even because ofits uiity—an object of ‘execration, Those who resorted tothe letires de cachet and the hing ‘who granted them were caught inthe trap oftheir complicit: the frst lost more and more oftheir traditional prerogatives to an ad ministrative authority. As for the king, he hecame detestable from haying meddled on a daily basis in so many hatreds and intrigues ‘As T recall, it was the Duke de Cha Lives of Iefamous Men 189 dle deur jeunes mariées, that by cutting off the King’s head, the French Revolution decapitated all family men.» or the momen, I would lke to single out one element fom al the foregoing: with this apparatus comprising petitions, letres de ‘achets, internment, and police, there would issue an endless nu ber of discourses that would pervade dally life and take charge of the minuseute is of insignificant lives, but in a completely diferent manner from the confession. Neighborhood disputes, the quarrels of parents and children, misunderstandings between couples, the excesses of wine and sex, public alercations nd many secret pas- ions would all be caught in the nets of power which stretched {hough rather complex circuits. There was a kindof immense and ‘omnipresent call forthe procesing of these disturbances and these petty sufferings into discourse. An unending hum began to be hear, the sound of the discourse that delivered individual vasa tons of bebvior, shames, and secrets into the grip of power, The ‘cominionplace ceased to belong wo silence, tothe passing rumer or the fleeting confession. All thse ingredients of the ordinary, the ‘unimportant detail, obscurity, unexceptional days, community ie, foul and must be fold—better sil, written down. They became {escribable and transerbable, precisely insofar as they were tr versed by the mechanisms of poltieal power. For a long tine, the actions of great men had merited being told without mock ‘ery only blood, birth, and exploit gave a right to history. And fit ‘sometimes happened that the lowllest men aeceded to a kind of ‘lory, this was by vstue of some extraordinary fact—the distinction ff stintiness oF the enormity of a crime. There was never a thought that there might be, ia the everyday run of things, some~ thing ikea secret tors, that the iessental might be, na certain ‘way, important, ual the blank gaze of power cameo Fest om these rinuscule commotion (a “The birt, consequent, of an immense possibilty for discourse A certain knowledge ofthe quotiian had a part at least ints origin, together with agri of intelligibility thatthe West undertook o ex tend over our ations, our ways of being and of behaving. But the birth in question depended also on the real and virtual omnipres fence ofthe monarchy one had to imagine him sufficiently near to ll hose miseries, ielently attentive tothe least of those disor- ‘ders, before ane could attempt to invoke him: he had to seem en170 Power owed witha kind of physical ubiquity himself ts firs form, this “iscourse concerning the quotidian was turned entirely toward the ng, twas addressed to lm; it had to slip ito the great ene Thonious rituals of power had to adopt their frm and take ot their sgus. The commonplace could be tld, described observed, Caterorized, and indexed only witin a power relation that ws frauntod by ihe figure of the king—by his real power or by the spec- ter of his might Hence the peculiar form of that discourse: re- (hired a decorative, mprecatory, or supplicating language. All those lite everyday squabbles had to be told with the emphasis of tare events worthy of royal atlentin; these inconsequential ffalrs had to be dressed up in grand rhetoric In subsequent periods, nel ther the dreary reports of police administration mor the ease tones of medicine or psyhiatry would ever recapture suck effects ft language. At times, # sumptuous verbal edifice for relating at Goscure piece of meanness of a minor Intrigue; at others, a few fret sentences that strike down a poor wretch and plunge im back Into his darkness; or the Long tale of sorowts recounted in the form 4 suleaton and hy. The pes! dour of anny ‘ould not be anything but sole Hut these texts also manifested another effet of incongruity. Ie ‘often happened thatthe pettons for internment were lodged by {literate or semiliterate persons of humble circumstance; they themselves, with thelr meager skill, or an undergualfied sexe in ther place, would compose as best they could the formulas or turns ‘tphrase they believed to Be requleed when one addressed the king rikigh officials, and they would stir in words that were awkward tnd viotent, loutish expressions by which they hoped no doubt to five their petitions more fore and truthfulness. In this way, crude, Tlumsy, and jaring expressions would suddenly appear in the fnidst of solemn and disjointed sentences, alongside nonsensical ‘Words; the obligatory and ritualistic language would be inter~ persed with outburst of impatience, auger, rage, passin, rancor, ire rebellion, The rules ofthis tilled discourse were thus upset BY {Tibration, by wild intensities muscling in with their own ways of vig things, ‘This is how the wife of Nicolas Bienfat speaks: she “ates the liberty of representing very humbly to your Lordship that said Notas Bienait, coach, i a highly debauched man who is tiling her with bom and who is selling everything having already Lives of Ifans Men im caused te dents ois two wives Afi of whom he led her Ch the byt Sect hon ater having ol an eaten ‘at we erty htt tresonent ease hrf de om ar {nent ren tying sre heron the ev ther dent, fe tare wishes ea her heat ote pinto mein Inyo murdered My Lov, iow myself he fot Tour het obesech Tour Mer pe tha on your gn eas you wl ener ie ue, Bechiey Me Dlg ne rer nomen Tahal nt cease ying to Go forthe rset youre” Te ors that ve brought gether here re homogeneous, and they may nell oper monotonous et ey hen nie len Order Ari beween he ngs ected an ema pert tng tee «depart between hse wo complains thse hove every pomer ver tens izariybetmen he Inimce oer fhe pre ad sd te etry of he poner rug ino pay dry betwen he engage ofc roxy an eran a geo plese Tee et thro ne drctin f acne Rout, or Cron, bt thy eamey whe sch of poplar tence, of ier and who ee wt ere a Pevod ond hve aceamnedated They roe amy por riches, or simply mediocre indviuel one a s¥Dg¢ sage ‘here te site pose perch and ddan, wre they rape Tims the ite fh they nee th wish rate ton nthe eae f power Ane hey Tend ove «por troupe o agi an nso deh tems ou i ae Sha erage of a ery ploy tea aes of raat Sto witmne fn ofthe Except th hes are aking th he Met peromae thc re ying re poet men wo fan tele erate Characters oof ne ying to make her teres Herd at Yrs ‘ne dyral is ncngrty Would be ep away Powe exe ced lhc eel ofevenny fe wold no longerbe at ese] tna ata enmgecnt and copes mone he ure a Jue and an objec fever sor of erent, bo «pa Princ an mage! stat wu be mate pa ie ‘Genet cows never, wich te vss ia tow ofthe aye pole dine td pct wold& ie Power operate band in hand, And the discourse that would then take form | would no longer have that old artificial and clumsy theatricality: It ould develop ina language that would claim to be tha of obser- Viton and. neutrality, ‘The commonplace would be analyzed rough the efficient but colorless categories of administration, journalism, and sclence—unloss one goes a lite further to seek ‘ute splendors in the domain of literature In the seventeenth and Cighteonth centuries, we are sil in the rough and barbarous age ‘nti al these mediations don't exist: the body ofthe misérables is Trough into almost direct contact with that of the King, their ah tuuion with his ceremonies, There Hot even a shared language But rather» clash between the cries and the rituals, between the dis- ‘orders to be told andthe rigor ofthe forms that must be followed. ‘Whence, for us who lok from afar at tat frst upsurge ofthe every- {ay into the eo ofthe poltical, the strange fulgurtions that a pear, something gaudy and intense tat will later be lost, when {hese tings and these men sil be made into “matters,” into inc dents or eases An important moment, this one, when a society lent words, tras Of phrase, and sentences, language rituals tothe anonymous mass [Gr people 20 that they might speak of themselves—speak publicly fad othe tiple condition thet their discourse be uttered and put {n circulation within a well-defined apparatus of powers that i re ‘eal the hitherto barely perceptible lower depths of social exis- ence, and through the asoes provided by that diminutive war of passions and interests offer poser the possibility ofa sovereign Intervention. Dionysius’ ear was & small, rudimentary machine by | comparison, How light power would be, and easy to dismantle no ‘Soubl if all lid was to observe, spy, detect, prohibit, and punish [Toa tnctes, provokes, prodnces. Its not spl exe and ear i ‘makes people act and speak. "This machinery was doubtless important for the constitution of ‘new knowledges {savoir}. Itwas not unconnected, moreover, with whole new regime of iterature. I don’t mean to say that the ftir (a cachet was atthe point of origin of new Ierary forms; rather, that atthe turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rela~ tions of discourse, power, everyday life, and truth were knoted to tether in a new wa, one in which literature was also entangled. Lives of Igamous Men uns "The fable, in the proper sense ofthe word is that which deserves to be told. For along tine in Western soclety, everyday life could necede to discourse only iit was traversed anid transhigured bythe Tegendary, i had to be drawn out of Ise by heroism, the expat, adventures, Providence and grace, or occasionally the heinous terme, ltneeded to be marked with a toueh of impossibilty—only then did it become expressible, What made it inaccessible enabled it to function as lesson and example. The more extraordinary the tale, the more capable twas of eastng a spel or of persuading. In this game ofthe “exemplary fabulous,” indifference to truth and lunruth was therefore findamental. If someone happened to de~ feribe the shabby side of reality, thls was mainly to produce a com- ical effect: the mere fact of taking about it made people laugh. ‘Starting in the seventeenth century, the West saw the emergence of a whole “able” of obscure life, from which the fabulous was banished. The impossible oF the ridiculous ceased to be the con dion under which the ordinary could be recounted. An art of ln~ fuage was born mhose tak was no longer to tcl of the improbable bt to bring into view that which doesn’, which can't and mustn't, appear 1 tell the last and miost tenuous degrees of the rel. Just ts an apparatus was belng Installed for foreing people to tell the insignificant” [‘Fingime’]-—that which Isn't tok, which does merit any glory, therefore, the “infamous’—a new Imperative was forming that would constitute what could be called the “immanent ‘lhc of Wester teary discourse. ls ceremonial funetions would fradually fade it would no longer have the task of manifesting in {tangible way the allt visible radiance of force, grace, heroism, fand might but, rather, of searching forthe dings hardest to per= {eive-the most biden, hardest o tell and to show, and lastly most forbidden and scandalous. 4 kind of injunction to ferret out the ‘most nocturnal and most quotidian elements of existence (even if {his sometimes meant discovering the solemn Figures of fate) would mark out the courve tat erature would follow from the seven- teenth century onward, trom the lime it began to be iterate to the modern sense of the word, More than a specific form, more than an estential connection with form, it was ths eonstralnt—I twas about to say “principle” that characterized iterate and car. ‘ed its immense movement all the way to us an obligation to ell the most common of secret, Literature does not epitomize this114 real policy, this great dscursive ethic by ise; and, certainly, there fs more to tterature than that but that is where it has is Jocus and its conditions of existence. ‘Whence is dual relation to ruth and to power. Whereas the fab- ‘lous eould function only in a suspension between true and als, Iiverature based itself, rather, on a decison of nontrath: explicitly presented itself as aniice while promising to produce effects of ‘auth that were reengnizable as such. The importance that was iven, in the Classical period, © naturalness and imitation was ‘oubiless one ofthe fist ways of formolating this functioning of Iterature “in truth” Fition thus replace fable, the novel broke Tree of the fantastical and was able to develop only by freeing itself from t ever more completly Hence, Iterature belongs tothe great system of constraint by which the West obliged the quotidian to fter Into discourse. But iterature occupies a special place within ‘determined to seek out the quotidian beneath the quo to cross boundaries, to ruthlessly or insidious bring fur secrets out inthe open, to displace niles and codes, to compel the unmentionable tobe told, wil thus tent place tel outside the law, oat least o take on the burden of scandal, transgression, for revolt. More than any other form of language, it remains the tiscourse of “infamy” thas the duty of saying what is mos resis tantto being stid—the worst the most secret, the most insufferable, the shameless. The fascination that psychoanalysis and Ierature hhave exerted on each other for years is significant in this connec: Lon. But it should not be forgoten that this singular postion of IMterature is only the effect ofa certain sytem [disposi of power that traverses the economy of discourses and strategies of ruth in the West, began by saying that these texts might be read a8 so many “shor stories” That was saying too much, no doubt; none of them vill ever measure up tothe lest tale by Chekhov, Maupassant, or James. Neither "quasl-” nor subliterature,” they are noteyen the Firat sketch of a genre; they are the action, in disorder, noise, and pain, of power on lives, and the discourse that comes of Manon Lescaut tells one ofthe stories that are presented here sine rn ai ef ig ga Power Lives of Infamous Men 15 {i ened Le ltarar de fri (Pe Dre of Pai,» wae open nlc ic eng hts te es oe) Tesseract ft cmp bins Fhancvnm pes tas an arr ne mmr ot pos Tee usp di : [Lt ret es fo heer ie le Maan et ten 3)