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Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault. Disorderly Families: Infamous Letters from the Bastille Archives. Ed. Nancy Luxon. Trans. Thomas Scott-Railton. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. 331 pp.
This book collects lettres de cachet (letters of arrest) from myriads of dysfunctional families, as we would call them now. So potent is their threat, however, the body politic itself appears to be suffering an apocalyptic death of a million cuts. In fact, they are specially formulaic petitions to the King and/or his local representatives, to intervene and order the arrest of debauched husbands or wives, wayward children, bad apprentices, violators of family honor, all disruptors of affairs, who have not been brought to justice via the normal system; or, if facing possible legal actions by the usual process, have evaded final judgment and are still free to wreak havoc with the lives of ordinary people. An entire rhetoric of how to address the king is on display in these letters, and the third section of the book lays it out. The other two sections of the book concern "Marital Discord" and "Parents and Children," the vast majority of the topoi of this genre. One cannot help envisioning a new Dickensian novel when reading these letters.
These materials arise...