Key Arguments

• Foucault notes that the ordinances formally inscribed a kind of "‘scaffold service’ that the people owed the king’s vengeance," such as the 1347 edict allowing mud and refuse to be thrown at blasphemers, but that in the classical period this participation "was no more than tolerated and attempts were made to limit it ... because of the barbarities that it gave rise to and the usurpation it involved of the power to punish," indicating an inherent tension.
• Despite attempts to limit it, popular participation "belonged too closely to the general economy of the public execution for it to be eliminated altogether," so it persists as both functional and dangerous.
• He recounts scenes where the crowd stages its own violence (e.g. fish‑wives parading and decapitating an effigy of Montigny) and where condemned men must be "‘protected’ from the crowd – both as an example and as a target, a possible threat and a ‘prey’, promised but also forbidden," revealing the double valence of the condemned as object of sovereign and popular action.
• Foucault emphasizes that "on this point that the people, drawn to the spectacle intended to terrorize it, could express its rejection of the punitive power and sometimes revolt," through preventing executions, snatching the condemned from the executioner, assaulting officials, and making an "uproar against the sentence."
• He notes "small, but innumerable ‘disturbances around the scaffold’" and describes elementary forms like "the shouts of encouragement, sometimes the cheering, that accompanied the condemned man to his execution," where the criminal is sustained by "the compassion of the meek and tenderhearted, and with the applause, admiration and envy of all the bold and hardened."
• The scaffold also allows the condemned to speak freely: "it was also to hear an individual who had nothing more to lose curse the judges, the laws, the government and religion," and Boucher d’Argis observes that the tortured commonly "accuse heaven ... reproach his judges ... curse the minister of the altars ... and blaspheme against the God whose organ he is," turning the execution into a platform of anti‑authority speech.
• Foucault concludes that "In these executions, which ought to show only the terrorizing power of the prince, there was a whole aspect of the carnival, in which rules were inverted, authority mocked and criminals transformed into heroes. The shame was turned round; the courage, like the tears and the cries of the condemned, caused offence only to the law," so the intended spectacle of sovereign power is destabilized by a counter‑spectacle of popular identification and inversion.

Source Quotes

It was rather like a ‘scaffold service’ that the people owed the king’s vengeance. This ‘service’ had been specified in the old ordinances; the edict of 1347 concerning blasphemers stipulated that they would be exhibited at the pillory ‘from the hour of prime, to that of their deaths. And mud and other refuse, though no stone or anything injurious, could be thrown at their faces … The second time, in case of relapse, it is our will that he be put in the pillory on a solemn market day, and that his upper lip be split so that the teeth appear.’

And mud and other refuse, though no stone or anything injurious, could be thrown at their faces … The second time, in case of relapse, it is our will that he be put in the pillory on a solemn market day, and that his upper lip be split so that the teeth appear.’ No doubt, at the classical period, this form of participation in the torture was no more than tolerated and attempts were made to limit it: because of the barbarities that it gave rise to and the usurpation it involved of the power to punish. But it belonged too closely to the general economy of the public execution for it to be eliminated altogether.

No doubt, at the classical period, this form of participation in the torture was no more than tolerated and attempts were made to limit it: because of the barbarities that it gave rise to and the usurpation it involved of the power to punish. But it belonged too closely to the general economy of the public execution for it to be eliminated altogether. Even in the eighteenth century, there were scenes like the one that accompanied the execution of Montigny in 1737; as the executioner was carrying out the execution, the local fish-wives walked in procession, holding aloft an effigy of the condemned man, and then cut off its head (Anchel, 63).

In calling on the crowd to manifest its power, the sovereign tolerated for a moment acts of violence, which he accepted as a sign of allegiance, but which were strictly limited by the sovereign’s own privileges. Now it was on this point that the people, drawn to the spectacle intended to terrorize it, could express its rejection of the punitive power and sometimes revolt. Preventing an execution that was regarded as unjust, snatching a condemned man from the hands of the executioner, obtaining his pardon by force, possibly pursuing and assaulting the executioners, in any case abusing the judges and causing an uproar against the sentence – all this formed part of the popular practices that invested, traversed and often overturned the ritual of the public execution.

It occurred again after the corn riots of 1775; and again in 1786, when the day-labourers marched on Versailles and set about freeing their arrested comrades. But apart from these cases, when the process of agitation had been triggered off previously and for reasons that did not concern some measure of penal justice, one finds many examples when the agitation was provoked directly by a verdict and an execution: small, but innumerable ‘disturbances around the scaffold’. In their most elementary forms, these disturbances began with the shouts of encouragement, sometimes the cheering, that accompanied the condemned man to his execution.

‘If there were annals in which the last words of the tortured and executed were scrupulously recorded, and if one had the courage to read through them, even if one did no more than question the vile populace that gathers around the scaffolds out of cruel curiosity, one would be told that no one who had died on the wheel did not accuse heaven for the misery that brought him to the crime, reproach his judges for their barbarity, curse the minister of the altars who accompanies them and blaspheme against the God whose organ he is’ (Boucher d’Argis, 128–9). In these executions, which ought to show only the terrorizing power of the prince, there was a whole aspect of the carnival, in which rules were inverted, authority mocked and criminals transformed into heroes. The shame was turned round; the courage, like the tears and the cries of the condemned, caused offence only to the law. Fielding notes with regret: ‘To unite the ideas of death and shame is not so easy as may be imagined … I will appeal to any man who hath seen an execution, or a procession to an execution; let him tell me.

Key Concepts

• this ‘service’ had been specified in the old ordinances
• because of the barbarities that it gave rise to and the usurpation it involved of the power to punish
• it belonged too closely to the general economy of the public execution for it to be eliminated altogether
• on this point that the people, drawn to the spectacle intended to terrorize it, could express its rejection of the punitive power and sometimes revolt
• small, but innumerable ‘disturbances around the scaffold’
• In these executions, which ought to show only the terrorizing power of the prince, there was a whole aspect of the carnival, in which rules were inverted, authority mocked and criminals transformed into heroes. The shame was turned round

Context

In the latter part of the passage, Foucault details how the people’s sanctioned participation in executions repeatedly spills over into disorder, resistance, and carnival‑like inversion, undermining the sovereign’s intended message of terror and control.