In 1962, Michel Foucault, who had just defended his thesis, Folie et déraison: histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, published an introduction to Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, the last great autobiographical and paranoid text by the citizen of Geneva. The theme of confinement, already present in the thesis (from "grand renfermement" to "la grande peur"¹), is again central here, in the form of the suffocation, pressure and threat of silence with which Rousseau describes himself oppressed. But this theme is now completely internalized: it's no longer a question of describing the mechanisms by which a society administers its hauntings and practices its exclusions; it's a haunting of the haunting, or, in other words, a game entirely virtualized by writing, opposing a space of confinement (of persecution and vindictiveness against persecutors) to a space of strolling and reverie. On the one hand, prison, but an imaginary prison; on the other, retreat, whose pastoral fantasy is not yet political.

Between prison and retirement, Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques opens up a crossroads of possibilities for Michel Foucault: on the one hand, the theorization of surveillance devices, in Surveiller et punir, naissance de la prison (1975); on the other, the deconstruction of these devices, in Sécurité, territoire, population (1977-1978). There is no inconsistency in this balancing act: the biopolitical machine in the making, whose contours Foucault outlines, both inherits the Enlightenment prison and marks its radical overcoming as power over life. We'll show here how this founding contradiction was prepared from the ambivalence and historical reversibility of these two places, prison and retirement, whose Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques describes the conspiracy now at work.

Forced retirement: the contradiction of imprisonment

§XXIX of Cesare Beccaria's treatise Des délits et des peines is devoted to imprisonment. In it, Beccaria notes a contradiction:

Imprisonment is a punishment which, unlike any other, must necessarily precede proof of the offence, but this peculiarity does not remove the fundamental principle that the law alone determines the cases in which a man deserves to be punished².

Or the law determines these cases only at the end of a judicial investigation and trial, i.e. not before, but after "proof of the offence". Basically, prison is not a punishment but a security measure. Before trial, and for the purposes of investigation, the "magistrate executor of the laws³" orders the imprisonment of a presumed guilty person, in order to "subject him to interrogation⁴" and to investigate the case. Imprisonment therefore precedes the judicial decision, which in turn is governed by the law. Because it precedes proof of the offence, what we call preventive detention anticipates the law in a way, because it prejudges what has not yet been judged. And at the same time, there can be no judgment without investigation, which requires, or claims to require, imprisonment.

On the other hand, imprisonment can also be pronounced as a punishment, so that the same place, prison, the same measure, can mean two very different things: preventive detention does not in fact prejudge, or is not supposed to prejudge the judicial decision; it should therefore be neither afflictive nor infamous, unlike incarceration which follows a judicial conviction, and constitutes, or at any rate, can constitute, a punishment, a reparation, a penalty.

The law must therefore strictly regulate this prior imprisonment, which harms the prisoner in a way that no court decision has previously sanctioned. But this necessary regulatory framework, even if it can limit the arbitrariness of the investigation, will never reduce the fundamental contradiction that makes prison both a mark of infamy, the trace left by the sentence after res judicata, and an original point, the origin of the trial, the prerequisite for judgment. Whatever the nature of imprisonment, the judicial stage, with its bar, witnesses, pleadings, theatrical protocol and audience, is a long way off: prison is the other side of the judicial stage. Whether on their way to or from trial, or held indefinitely in the limbo of lawlessness, prisoners are suspended outside procedural time, outside the scenic visibility of the trial. Punishment consists in this suspension, but at the same time defines a regime of representation, which is the regime of the unassignable, i.e. not of "Surveillance and the Sign⁵", but precisely of the virtualization of surveillance (I can be watched anytime, by anyone, for anything) and the illegibility of signs (I don't know, don't want to, can't interpret why I'm here, for what reason, for what meaning, for how long).

Prison supplants justice while opening up the possibility of a lawless space. Boucher d'Argis, in the "Jurisprudence" entry of the Prison article in the Encyclopédie, lists the ancient customs of France that guarantee their citizens from prison⁶. Law asserts itself by excluding prison. Affirming the public power of the State implies reducing and confining prison. Thus, there can be no private prison. The Encyclopédie insists on this in the article Prison⁷, and returns to it in a specific article:

Private prison means a place other than the public prison, where someone is detained by force, & without it being by the authority of justice. It is forbidden to all persons, even officers of justice, to hold anyone in chartre privée. The ordinance of 1670, tit. ij. art. 10. forbids provosts of marshals to hold chartre privée in their houses, nor elsewhere, on pain of deprivation of their charges, & wants that at the instant of capture the accused be taken to the local prisons, if there are any, if not to the next ones, in twenty-four hours at the latest. (Enc., III, 222)

Chartre is an old word said to come from the Latin carcer. It's the medieval prison, against which the new state of law is built, governed in particular by charters, which are sometimes referred to, by corruption, as... charters⁸! The charter thus designates the law and the other side of the law. For it is undoubtedly private chartre, i.e. imprisonment outside the public space of the prison and its regulatory framework, that chapter XXIX "On Imprisonment" of Beccaria's treatise is primarily aimed at.

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The private charter constitutes the symptom of the structural contradiction of the prison: there is detention, but without the authority of justice; the officer of justice avails himself of his public office in a space that escapes public jurisdiction. If the injustice here is patent, it only accentuates the feature: fundamentally, even when placed under public administration, the prison constitutes an off-stage space, radically removed from the theatrical visibility of the trial.

The other retreat: collapse of the humanist model

In contrast to the scandal, or at least the secrecy of prison, is the prestige of retirement⁹. Yet retirement entails the same exclusion from social space, the same recession from the public arena, the same condemnation to silence, even enclosure and destitution. But this exclusion is now voluntary. Retreat can be part of a spiritual process, sanctioned by monastic vows¹⁰. But there is also a lay retreat, based on a strong ancient philosophical tradition: complementary to the heroic ordeal of prison¹¹, or preparing for it, Stoic and Epicurean ataraxia aims at the highly moral position of detachment from worldly passions and cupidities.

For the Stoic or Epicurean sage, then, there is no antinomy between prison and retirement: the exercise of one prepares for the trial of the other; both constitute and complete the ideal figure of autonomy. The infamy-stricken convict is not opposed to the sage haloed in glory: this ancient moral literature knows only martyrs who are philosophers, and the reversal of the prison suffered into a voluntary prison.

The revolt against prison as a philosophical affirmation of a freedom that would also be wisdom constitutes, with the Enlightenment, a complete reversal of the dual ancient and Christian heritage. We can observe this reversal at work in Rousseau's Dialogues, which are by no means anti-confessions¹², which in no way carry the discourse of a consciousness, however divided, but account for the new space assigned to consciousness and carry this appalled discovery of a place that is both completely intimate and outrageously exposed. It's not a question of what Rousseau has to say, not even what he could testify to. It's about that space he was the first to experience, the space of contemporary consciousness as a prison where the limit of the law is experienced, between foundation and punishment.

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The important thing is not whether or not Rousseau was actually persecuted by Diderot, Grimm, Mme d'Épinay, by that vague coalition he calls "ces Messieurs"¹³. As soon as we leave behind an autobiographical expectation that the Dialogues never claimed to satisfy, the question of Rousseau's paranoia falls¹⁴. The issue isn't whether what he says is true, sincere or exaggerated. At stake is the space in which the Dialogues describe and intsall this persecution: this space is - truly - the new space of the prison, confused with retirement, and telescoping the public and the intimate.

Let's recall the structure of the three dialogues that make up the text entitled Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques written between 1772 and 1776. The first pits Rousseau against the Frenchman. Rousseau refers to a reader of Rousseau, an admirer of his works, whose author he does not know personally. The Frenchman is a man of the world, well aware of the cabal against Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and utterly convinced of the character's villainy. The Frenchman has not read the works. They part, one promising to read, the other to meet the author personally. The second dialogue takes place after this interview: Rousseau (Rousseau's reader) has met Jean-Jacques (the author), referred to as J.-J. in the text. He declares himself conquered: J.-J. is indeed the man of his writings! Finally, the third dialogue comes after the Frenchman has spent a long time in the country, reading the works. In his opinion, it's hardly surprising that J.-J. was persecuted: his sincerity was aimed at too many people!

It's immediately clear that there's no question here of pursuing, in any way whatsoever, confessions: the conscience, the intimacy in question, is that of J.-J., to whom the text never gives us direct access. What is at stake is the way in which this withdrawn, imprisoned consciousness constitutes a space that is both completely public (J.-J. occupies the media field, and is the only subject of conversation) and totally incommunicable. J.-J. could here be the form taken by the letter to signify the schize of the subject, the division of the I into the perpetrator of crimes and the author of writings, which is the initial division, the structure on which Rousseau (Rousseau's reader) relies in the 1^er dialogue¹⁵. And no doubt J.-J.'s form perfectly matches this liminal structure. But the invention of J.-J. as an absolutely entrenched figure drawing a space that is both public and incommunicable, both of judgment and beyond judgment, is already the invention of the matricule as a mark of any kind of singularity of the post-subject in the community to come¹⁶ : the stammering of an I, the withdrawal of speech into less than I, and at the same time the indistinct character of this I, indistinguishable by dint of singularity.

J.-J. lived withdrawn: "he loved retirement, not to live there alone, but to join the sweets of study to the charms of intimacy" (R. I, p. 75¹⁷). This is the otium honestum or studiosum of a Cicero and a Pliny¹⁸, which Renaissance humanism made the ideal horizon of the intellectual's life and the ethical foundation of his thinking. One of the first stages of persecution was to pervert this retreat:

Becoming the object of public horror, he thereby saw himself the one¹⁹ of everyone's attentions. It was up to whoever would celebrate him, whoever would have him for dinner, whoever would offer him retreats, whoever would bid eagerly for preference. (F. I, p. 114)

The Frenchman is alluding here in particular to the Hermitage that Mme d'Épinay offered Rousseau at the back of her Montmorency park: a perverted retreat, as it carried an implicit courtesan counterpart²⁰. Rousseau was retiring, but was to appear in the Montmorency circle; he was to advertise himself to the world as having retired; retirement was supposed to become a kind of trademark of the sect of philosophers, a worldly logo, in other words the very opposite of retirement. We can see here the contradiction of retirement with itself, a contradiction similar to that of prison, as a place where the law is set aside, where publicity and the incommunicable are implemented.

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The confusion of retreat and prison arises when the humanist heritage of intimate communication is replaced by the organization of the incommunicable:

Everyone around him has been advised to pay particular attention to what he can²¹ write. We even tried to deprive him of the means to do so, and in the retreat to which we had lured him in Dauphiné, we managed to keep all legible ink away from him, so that he could only find lightly tinted water under this name, which even in a short time would lose all its color. (F. I, p. 121)

J.-J. is prevented from writing, not by formally forbidding it, but by perverting the ways in which his writings are disseminated: not only is J.-J. watched, but the ink on his pages fades as they spread. The intimate space of the confessional discourse becomes a blank page. Speech is neutralized: this is not simply a great subversive writer who is prevented from speaking; this is not a political configuration - let's not forget that philosophers are the persecutors here. What is at stake here is a certain modernity of which they are the bearers, and of which J.-J. bears the brunt: it is the implementation of the new space of any kind of singularity, where all writings of difference²².

Alone, friendless, this white, contentless singularity is now exposed to public vindictiveness. Rousseau then points to the theorist of this new, unnameable media sociability:

I first saw this new doctrine in a speech published by the Philosopher Diderot precisely at the time when his friend J.-J. had retired into solitude. It is only the wicked, he said, that is alone²³. Until then, the love of retirement had been regarded as one of the least equivocal signs of a peaceful and healthy soul, free from ambition, envy and all the ardent passions of self-love, which are born and ferment in society. Instead, here, by an unexpected stroke of the pen, is this peaceful and gentle taste once so universally admired, suddenly transformed into an infernal rage; here are so many respected Sages and Descartes himself, changed in an instant into so many dreadful misanthropes and scoundrels. [...]

I do believe that loners who are so by force, may, gnawed with spite and regret in the retreat where they are detained, become inhuman, ferocious, and take in hatred with their chain everything that is not burdened with it as they are. But solitary people, by taste and choice, are naturally human, hospitable and caressing. (R., II p. 200)

Diderot's doctrine is that of Dumarsais in the Philosopher article of the Encyclopédie: the humanist retreat is over, the time has come to engage in the affairs of the city²⁴. On the contrary, Rousseau insists on the peaceful character of the former retreat: "one of the least equivocal signs of a paisible soul", "this paisible and gentle taste". The term characterized J.-J. from the very first pages: "a paisible and gentle man" (Dialogues, op. cit., p. 75), "it was natural that, beaten, tired of so many storms, he should desire to end his unhappy days in a paisible captivity" (p. 162), "his loving and peaceful nature" (p. 279).

This peace in truth is not so much that of books as of nature. The model that emerges is that of the pastoral: the peaceful shepherd on a walk is contrasted with the "infernal rage" of the "inhuman, ferocious" solitary ²⁵. In fact, Rousseau isn't talking about opposition, but transformation: the loner is animalized, becoming the ferocious dog of the shepherd, who turns against him. The representation of retirement is thus insidiously contaminated: from the bookshop to the sheepfold, from the shepherd to the ferocious animal, from the desired retirement to the chains of forced imprisonment, we lose, in the flow of images, the logical articulation of the opposition, a priori clear and irreconcilable, between good and bad retirement, between that which Rousseau calls for and that which Diderot reprobates. In fact, Diderot's disapproval forever perverts the old retirement, which becomes the new prison. In the contemporary world to come, there will be no more possible retreat: it is of this diabolical news that Diderot has made himself the coryphaeus.

The inner prison

By a relentless process of the new sociability inaugurated by the Enlightenment, the old retreat advocated by J.-J. led him to the new prison:

I saw him, squeezed into their lakes²⁶, struggling very little to get out, surrounded by lies and darkness waiting without a murmur for light and truth, locked alive in a coffin standing still enough there without even invoking death. I've seen poor pass for rich, old pass for young, gentle pass for fierce, complacent and weak pass for inflexible and hard, cheerful pass for gloomy, simple at last to the point of stupidity, pass for cunning to the point of darkness. I have seen him delivered up by your gentlemen to public derision, flogged, mocked by honest people, used as a toy by scoundrels, to feel them groan, deplore human misery and patiently endure his condition. (II, p. 243)

Pay close attention to the punctuation and highly idiosyncratic syntax of this text, which extents the breath of the sentence in anguished parataxis, where commas jump: "flagorné persiflé moqué", "le voir le sentir en gémir". The picture of confinement, of gradual asphyxiation, is reversed into public exposure, manifesting the paradox of a space that is both that of removal from the public to serve his sentence and that of exhibition to the public to investigate his trial. Tight and delivered²⁷: the contradiction of the public and the intimate, of prison and private charter, is at the same time the contradiction of the relationship to the law.

Prison isn't just public. It is the public. It manifests itself in the place par excellence where the new public space is constituted, in the theater:

"See him entering the show surrounded in the moment by a narrow enclosure of outstretched arms and canes in which you can think how comfortable he is! What's the point of this barrier? If he tries to force it, will it resist? Probably not. So what's the point? Only to amuse him by keeping him locked up in this cage, and to make him feel that all those around him take pleasure in being as many argousins and archers as possible. Is it also out of kindness that we don't fail to spit on him, whenever he comes within range, and that we can do so without being seen by him?" (II, p. 305)

The enclosure of the prison is the outstretched arms of the crowd in the parterre surrounding Jean-Jacques, some pointing their fists at him, others threatening him with their canes. This enclosure is not absolute; he could cross it. But flexible, ceaselessly reformed, it indicates to him the continued hostility of the public, it constantly weighs down the verdict of his condemnation²⁸.

From this universal condemnation comes an enjoyment: a perverse community is formed, which feeds on surveillance and condemnation, which enjoys the cage shown and subtracted, the monster and its neutralization. The prison wall is at once the bond of community and the deceptive word that seals imprisonment:

They may enclose the truth in triple walls of lies and impostures that they continually reinforce, but they always tremble that it might escape through some crack. The immense edifice of darkness they have built around it is not enough to reassure them (R. III, p. 380²⁹)

The image of the light of truth piercing through the wall of lies is superimposed on that of J.-J. imprisoned in the living enclosure set up by these gentlemen's conspiracy, so that J.-J. becomes the glorious body of truth. The fear of these gentlemen prejudges no reversal, no hope of a return: it constitutes the spring and thrill of enjoyment, and sustains its complicit community. As for the enclosed truth, its radiance, even supposing that it diffuses through a fault, is no longer the development of a word. Truth gives itself simply as an enclosed presence that is not, and should not be, given to be seen, and that we enjoy seeing in spite of everything. Thus are ordered what Michel Foucault designates as "the means of good training":

The exercise of discipline presupposes a device that constrains through the play of the gaze; an apparatus in which the techniques that enable us to see induce effects of power, and in which, in return, the means of coercion make clearly visible those on whom they are applied. [...] an obscure art of the light and the visible has prepared in mute a new knowledge about man, through techniques to subjugate him and procedures to use him³⁰.

This discipline becomes what the philosopher is summoned to denounce and fight. It cannot be identified with the discipline of asceticism and self-denial that propels the sage, the mystic, the simple walker of the classical age towards the autonomy of a paradoxical liberation. Added to this symbolic reversal is the fact that the new discipline is also an architecture, embodied in the architecture of the new prisons built by the modern state. An interior architecture, a virtual wall, preceded these visible constructions. Yet there's no mistaking it: if the modern prison seems panoptic³¹, if it seems to organize an absolute transparency of the visible singularities enclosed within, this transparency rests on a fundamental basis of invisibility. Against the classical stage of political discourse, against its judicial rhetoric, it defines the new space where the articulation of the intimate and the political is played out as the space of the chamber withdrawn from all gaze, similar to the magician Atlant's castle-mirror in Roland furieux:

A rock stands in its center, its top.
Of a beautiful wall of steel is all barded;
And against the sky it is so sublime
That all around, it leaves below.
Who does not fly does not even imagine going there;
For his efforts would be pure loss
Brunel says: here's where the prisoners are,
where the magician holds ladies and knights³².

The Italian poet's brilliant phantasmagoria prefigures the contemporary biopolitical prison whose advent Rousseau experienced and described, in horror and dread: a prison where it would no longer be necessary to lock people up, because everyone would be forced to do so of their own accord, caught up in the reels and mirages of their own desires, which the social machine would have forged for them; a prison whose outer enclosure would be a gigantic steel mirror, reflecting and distorting to nausea one's own self-image, the J.J. to rush to and vomit in, to desire and despair in. Faced with this globalized prison, never has Rousseau's call to "join the charms of study to the charms of intimacy" (p. 75) been so urgent; never has it been so political.

Notes

Moreover, one could not put in prison an inhabitant of the town of Saint-Géniez, in Languedoc, for light offenses, if he gave surety to pay what he would be condemned to.

Similarly in Villefranche in Périgord, an inhabitant could not be arrested, nor his property seized, if he gave surety to appear in court, unless he had committed murder or a mortal wound, or committed other crimes, entailing confiscation of body & property.

Les habitans de Boiscommun & ceux de Chagny, jouissoient du même privilege." (Encyclopédie, XIII, 386b)