To free his father and himself from his mother's tyranny, Pierre Rivière decided to kill her. On June 3,1835, he went inside his small Normandy house with a pruning hook and cut to death his mother, his eighteen-year-old sister, and his seven-year-old brother. Then, in jail, he wrote a memoir to justify the whole gruesome tale. Michel Foucault, author of Madness and Civilization and Discipline and Punish, collected the relevant documents of the case, including medical and legal testimony, police records. and Rivière's memoir. The Rivière case, he points out, occurred at a time when many professions were contending for status and power. Medical authority was challenging law, branches of government were vying. Foucault's reconstruction of the case is a brilliant exploration of the roots of our contemporary views of madness, justice, and crime.

本書は単なる事件記録ではなく、一人の青年が綴った「手記」と、国家や医学が振るう「知の権力」が激突する、恐るべき文学的ドキュメントです。フーコーが提示するのは、狂気と理性が未分化だった時代の亀裂であり、自身の行為を神話的必然へと昇華させようとする告白は、読む者の倫理観を根底から揺さぶる凄絶な美学に満ちています。 法学や精神医学といった諸制度が、一個人の「声」をいかに解体し、管理可能な「症例」へと変容させていくのか。その知的闘争の果てに、現代社会が抱える司法と狂気の歪んだ関係性が鮮烈に浮かび上がります。冷徹な資料群から孤独な魂の叫びが立ち上がる瞬間、読者は言葉という刃が持つ真の恐ろしさを目撃することになるでしょう。