Marx 2/13 Seminar with Judith Revel on Marx's 1842 articles on Thefts of Wood and Michel Foucault

This is the Marx 2/13 seminar with philosopher Judith Revel and Bernard E. Harcourt on Marx’s 1842 articles on the Debates on the Law on the Thefts of Wood and Michel Foucault's 1973 lectures on The Punitive Society @CGCParis. Read more here: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/2-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 2/13 is here: the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024... The video recording of Marx 2/13 with Judith Revel can be watched here: https://youtu.be/pY_T7rdQYvc?si=bCMA4SvmeTwS2fb_ Information about Marx 13/13: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/ Information on the 13/13 series: cccct.law.columbia.edu/conten... Marx’s series of articles on the thefts of wood (1842) has been a touchstone to critical legal scholars, critical sociologists of crime, and radical lawyers since the early 1970s. The British social historians, E. P. Thompson, Peter Linebaugh, and the group that collectively assembled the classic work Albion’s Fatal Tree, wrote extensively about the articles. In France, the renowned critical jurist and penologist, Pierre Lascoumes, edited and presented the Marx texts in an important volume titled Marx: du “vol de bois” à la critique du droit (1984), and the critical legal scholar, Mikhaïl Xifaras, published a lengthy significant treatment of the articles. The Italian critical criminologist, Dario Melossi, marshalled Marx’s articles in his landmark work on penality and capitalism. In the legal academy in the United States, Marx’s articles on the theft of wood became a reference point within Critical Legal Studies in the 1970s. Michel Foucault was steeped in these debates, especially of the historians, when he turned in 1973 to explore the construction of the “delinquent” and disciplinary power in his lectures at the Collège de France, The Punitive Society. The year before, in his lectures on Penal Theories and Institutions, Foucault had dedicated the first half of his yearly teaching to a detailed analysis of the Nu-pieds rebellion in Normandy in 1639 and to its repression by Richelieu and the Chancellor Séguier. Foucault had negotiated the querulous territory of historians—the vast literature on seventeenth-century popular uprisings, including the quarrels between a leading French historian of the ancien régime, Roland Mousnier, and the Soviet historian Boris Porchnev, a specialist of French popular uprisings during the period 1623-1648. Foucault read and admired the English historians around E.P. Thompson. Immersed in this literature, Foucault threw himself into studying the birth of the penitentiary and what he would call “the punitive society.” In that enterprise, Marx’s articles on the thefts of wood would serve as a stepping stone for the development of his theories of “illégalismes,” of the subjectivation of the “criminal” subject, of the development of nineteenth century theories of the “criminal as social enemy.” Foucault refers explicitly to Marx’s articles in his lectures, The Punitive Society, on January 24, 1973, and draws on them in Discipline and Punish to formulate a theory of “illégalismes.” Foucault pushed Marx’s texts in a uniquely productive direction. In Marx 2/13, the philosopher Judith Revel will discuss these texts. This is the full seminar. Welcome to Marx 2/13!