Languages of Punishment
Translating Foucault into English and German
Melissa Pawelski
Click cover to enlarge Booksellers & libraries: | Research Monographs in French Studies 71 Legenda
ISBN: 978-1-839542-26-8 (hardback) • RRP £95, $120, €120 ISBN: 978-1-839542-27-5 (paperback, forthcoming) ISBN: 978-1-839542-28-2 (JSTOR ebook) The works of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) form a multilingual network of ideas. It is for this reason that Foucault's ideas are difficult to translate. Yet in Anglophone debates, the task of translation has not been critically discussed. Focussing on the challenges of translating concepts of the human body (corps), power (pouvoir), violence, and surveillance in the French language, these key concepts have been informed by German-language philosophy which complicates translating them back into German and English. In this trilingual study of the English and German translations of one of Foucault's most famous works, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison (1975), Melissa Pawelski proposes for the first time a careful investigation into the difficulties of translating Foucauldian ideas, showing why and how the English and German translations differ from the original and from one another. Melissa Pawelski completed her PhD in French Studies at the University of Warwick. Bibliography entry: Pawelski, Melissa, Languages of Punishment: Translating Foucault into English and German, Research Monographs in French Studies, 71 (Legenda, 2025) First footnote reference: 35 Melissa Pawelski, Languages of Punishment: Translating Foucault into English and German, Research Monographs in French Studies, 71 (Legenda, 2025), p. 21. Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Pawelski, p. 47. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Bibliography entry: Pawelski, Melissa. 2025. Languages of Punishment: Translating Foucault into English and German, Research Monographs in French Studies, 71 (Legenda) Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Pawelski 2025: 21). Example footnote reference: 35 Pawelski 2025: 21. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) This title is distributed on behalf of MHRA by Ingram’s. Booksellers and libraries can order direct from Ingram by setting up an ipage Account: click here for more. Permanent link to this title: www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Languages-Punishment www.mhra.org.uk/publications/rmfs-71 |
26 November 2025 • 182pp