Over 250 years ago, on the Place de Grève in Paris, Robert-François Damiens was quartered for attempting to assassinate King Louis XV. The description of his horrific execution marks the beginning of "Discipline and Punish," one of the most revolutionary books on modern social theory.

The gruesome spectacle of the execution allows Foucault to demonstrate the differences between individual violence and state violence, and to show how, over time, the main focus of state control shifts from the body to the soul of the criminal. The evolution of methods of surveillance and punishment gradually transforms crude state violence into a complex mechanism of total biopower, enveloping modern individuals in their daily lives and shaping a society of total control.