#quote20

How much blood and horror is at the bottom of all 'good things'!

companies that one would assume are far removed from the work of state punishment have developed major stakes in the perpetuation of a prison system whose historical obsolescence is therefore that much more difficult to recognize. It was during the decade of the 1980s that corporate ties to the punishment system became more extensive and entrenched than ever before. But throughout the history of the U.S. prison system, prisoners have always constituted a potential source of profit. For example, they have served as valuable subjects in medical research, thus positioning the prison as a major link between universities and corporations.

our entire science is still subject to the seduction of language

One should recall that the movement for reforming the prisons, for controlling their functioning is not a recent phenomenon. It does not even seem to have originated in a recognition of failure. Prison 'reform' is virtually con­temporary with the prison itself: it constitutes, as it were, its programme.

We remain unknown to ourselves...

Making love is not just about becoming as one, or even two, but becoming as a hundred thousand.

the entire history of a 'thing', and organ, a custom may take the form an extended chain of signs, of ever-new interpretations and manipulations, whose causes do not themselves necessarily stand in relation to one another, but merely follow and replace on another arbitrarily.

'I too am a slave' - these are the new words spoken by the master.