ENGLISH

I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century

By Michel Foucault , Frank Jellinek

Book information

Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
Year
1982
ISBN
0803268572, 9780803268579
LCC
HV6248.R57 M6413 1982
Open Library ID
OL3488890M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
15 MB (15944301 bytes)
Pages
152\152
Orientation
no
Scanned
yes
Time added
2012-02-04 16:00:00

Description

To free his father and himself from his mother's tyranny, Pierre Rivi?re decided to kill her. On June 3,1835, he went inside his small Normandy house with a pruning hook and cut to death his mother, his eighteen-year-old sister, and his seven-year-old brother. Then, in jail, he wrote a memoir to justify the whole gruesome tale.Michel Foucault, author of Madness and Civilization and Discipline and Punish, collected the relevant documents of the case, including medical and legal testimony, police records. and Rivi?re's memoir. The Rivi?re case, he points out, occurred at a time when many professions were contending for status and power. Medical authority was challenging law, branches of government were vying. Foucault's reconstruction of the case is a brilliant exploration of the roots of our contemporary views of madness, justice, and crime.

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