Psychiatric power: Lectures at the college de france, 1973--1974

by Foucault, Michel (2008)

Key Passage

At the time when, in the nineteenth century, the European proletariat was being formed, conditions of work and housing, movements of the labor force, and the use of child labor, all made family relationships increasingly fragile and disabled the family structure. In lact, at the beginning ol the nineteenth century, entire bands of children, young people, and transhumant workers were living in dormitories and forming communities, which then immediately disintegrated. There was an increasing number of natural children, foundlings, and infanticides, etcetera. Faced with this immediate consequence of the constitution of the proletariat, very early on, around 1820-1825, there was a major effort to reconstitute the family; employers, philanthropists, and public authorities used every possible means to reconstitute the family, to force workers to live in couples, to marry, have children and to recognize their children. The employers even made financial sacrifices in order to achieve this refamilialization of working class life. Around 1830-1835, the first workers' cities were constructed at Mulhouse.52 People were given houses in which to reconstitute a family, and crusades were organized against those who lived as man and wife without really being married. In short, there were a series of arrangements that were disciplinary. (p.83)

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