Dangerousness and the dangerous individual in French historiography fifty years after Discipline and Punish

Abstract

The following article focuses on the notions of the dangerous individual and dangerousness, central to Michel Foucault’s thought. It deals with the way in which it has been taken up and appropriated by French historiography since 1975. It first demonstrates the importance of the projects initiated by Foucault’s work in French historical research. An initial historiographical phase can be identified in the 1990s and early 2000s. It was dominated by a deepening of Foucauldian questions on themes very similar to Discipline and Punish and, above all, to the article “L’évolution de la notion d’individu dangereux dans la psychiatrie légale” (1981): the history of homicidal monomania, the advent of subjective justice, the emergence of the notion of danger and hybrid categories around abnormals. This is followed by a second phase of emancipation of historical works, which nevertheless continue to dialogue with Discipline and Punish, fifty years after the book’s publication. Since the late 2000s, social and cultural historian researchers, attentive to approaches “from below”, to the patient’ point of view and to the history of conflicts and counter-discourses, have been bringing to light areas left in the shadows by Foucault.