Didier Fassin (Author) - The Will to Punish

The Berkeley Tanner Lectures

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values were established by the American scholar, industrialist, and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner; they are presented annually at nine universities in the United States and England. The University of California, Berkeley became a permanent host of annual Tanner Lectures in the academic year 20002001. This work is the eleventh in a series of books based on the Berkeley Tanner Lectures. The volume includes a revised version of the lectures that Didier Fassin presented at Berkeley in April 2016, together with the responses of the three invited commentators on that occasionBruce Western, Rebecca M. McLennan, David W. Garlandand a final rejoinder by Professor Fassin. The volume is edited by Christopher Kutz, who also contributes an introduction. The Berkeley Tanner Lecture Series was established in the belief that these distinguished lectures, together with the lively debates stimulated by their presentation in Berkeley, deserve to be made available to a wider audience. Additional volumes are in preparation.

Martin Jay

R. Jay Wallace

Series Editors

Volumes Published in the Series

Joseph Raz , The Practice of Value

Edited by R. Jay Wallace

With Christine M. Korsgaard, Robert Pippin, and Bernard Williams

Frank Kermode , Pleasure and Change: The Aesthetics of Canon

Edited by Robert Alter

With Geoffrey Hartman, John Guillory, and Carey Perloff

Seyla Benhabib , Another Cosmopolitanism

Edited by Robert Post

With Jeremy Waldron, Bonnie Honig, and Will Kymlicka

Axel Honneth , Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea

Edited by Martin Jay

With Judith Butler, Raymond Guess, and Jonathan Lear

Allan Gibbard , Reconciling Our Aims: In Search of Bases for Ethics

Edited by Barry Stroud

With Michael Bratman, John Broome, and F. M. Kamm

Derek Parfit , On What Matters: Volumes 1 and 2

Edited by Samuel Scheffler

With Susan Wolf, Allen Wood, Barbara Herman, and T. M. Scanlon,

Jeremy Waldron , Dignity, Rank, and Rights

Edited by Meir Dan -Cohen

With Wai Chee Dimock, Don Herzog, and Michael Rosen

Samuel Scheffler , Death and the Afterlife

Edited by Niko Kolodny

With Susan Wolf, Harry G. Frankfurt, and Seana Valentine Shiffrin

Eric L. Santner , The Weight Of All Flesh: On the Subject-Matter of Political Economy

Edited by Kevis Goodman

With Bonnie Honig, Peter E. Gordon, and Hent De Vries

F. M. Kamm , The Trolley Problem Mysteries

Edited by Eric Rakowski

With Judith Jarvis Thomson, Thomas Hurka, and Shelly Kagan

Didier Fassin

With Commentaries by

Bruce Western

Rebecca M. Mc Lennan

David W. Garland

Edited and Introduced by

Christopher Kutz

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ISBN 9780190888589

eISBN 9780190888602

A French version of Didier Fassins text has been published under the title Punir: Une passion contemporaine (Le Seuil, 2017).

Christopher Kutz

Didier Fassin

Bruce Western

Rebecca M. Mc Lennan

David W. Garland

Didier Fassin

Delivering the Tanner Lectures on Human Values is an immense honor, and succeeding the distinguished scholars and intellectuals who have previously given them is a great privilege. Anthropologists and sociologists are certainly not the most numerous in this prestigious list, and as it is the first time that someone from these disciplines has this honor at the University of California, Berkeley, the challenge is even greater.

I am therefore especially grateful to Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and Professor Martin Jay as well as the chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Tanner Committee for their invitation to develop these untimely meditations on punishment, if I may dare such reference to the author who has accompanied my reflection as I was preparing them. I also want to express my gratitude to Professors David Garland, Rebecca McLennan, and Bruce Western for having agreed to provide comments on my lectures; I could not have imagined a better set of discussants. Several colleagues and friends have made various contributions at different stages of the elaboration of this book, in particular Linda Bosniak, Jos Brunner, Bernard Harcourt, Axel Honneth, Jaeeun Kim, Christopher Kutz, Thomas Lemke, Allegra McLeod, Aye Parla, Yves Sintomer, Felix Trautmann, Peter Wagner, and Linda Zerilli, for which I am appreciative. In the preparation of the manuscript, I have also benefited from Laura McCunes copyediting and Anne-Claire Defossezs remarks.

But since this theoretical reflection is based on ten years of empirical research on police, justice, and prisons in France, as part of an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, I must finally acknowledge my debt toward all those who have rendered my work possible and have nourished it with their knowledge and experience: officers, commissioners, judges, lawyers, guards, wardens, parole counselors, social workers, health professionals, public officials, politicians, activists, prisoners, citizens.

I dedicate this essay to my father who passed away as I was preparing my lectures and whose inspiration is probably more profound than I even realize.

Didier Fassin

January 2017

Didier Fassin is the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a director of studies at the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Anthropologist, sociologist, and physician, he has worked in Senegal, South Africa, Ecuador, and France in the domain of political and moral anthropology. His recent work includes an ethnography of the French state based on fieldwork with the police, justice, and prison systems, which he conducted as part of his Advanced Grant of the European Research Council, and a theoretical reflection on the public presence of the social science, which he presented in his recipient lecture for the Gold Medal in Anthropology at the Swedish Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. He recently authored Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (2011), Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing (2013), Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition