Farge and Foucault, Disorderly Families, II. Parents and Children

Overview of the letters in Section 2 (each of us volunteered to summarize one subsection):

Disruption of Affairs - questions of chronology arose in this section because some letters were not dated

Shameful Concubinage - focus on daughters in this section; interesting references to conception of children as significant; often those making the petition were fathers

Dishonor of Waywardness - tbd

Domestic Violence section - focused on theft; few cases of parents complaining against daughter (so case on p. 205 of suicidal daughter stands out)

Bad Apprentices - similar theme of sons being sent to apprenticeships and becoming drunks and libertines

Exiles - the punishment does not seem proportional to the behavior

Fam Honor - this section is mostly women; direct appeals to honor

Parental Ethos I - all arrestees in this section were male; the direction of the appeals is not always clear.

Parental Ethos II - tbd

Throughout sections, the theme presented in the section headings didn't seem to differentiate these letters from those in other sections. Also striking was the ages of the children (early to late 20s), which raises questions of dividing line between adulthood and childhood.


Discussion of Letters and Foucault's Introductory Texts:

Questions:

Why do they organize the archival material into subsections?

How does one tease out the prevalence of a certain style of justification in these letters, given that others exist?  Why do some of these become organizing principles for compiling and organizing the letters?

Discussion:

Foucault's discussion of the shift from 1728 to 1758 (135ff.) is interesting (from affection to education); very Foucauldian attention to shifts (did not appear in previous section).

The two introductions are clearly written by two different people.  Are the two introductions reflective of two different historiographical approaches?  "Tableaus of conjugal life" (29) v. "existence of a model, a framework" (135) in a process of "evolution".  Social groups v. historical differentiation (135).

What is at stake in organizing concepts like "threshold"?  How does one locate a distinction in an archive? Why not theorize those "thresholds" as proper places in their own right?

How is Fouc's introduction functioning?