The Battle Roar of Silence: Foucault and the Carceral System

The Battle Roar of Silence: Foucault and the Carceral System by Meinrad Calleja explores the philosophical rationales sustaining morality, law, punishment and the carceral system as part of the discourse of globalisation. This text attempts to desacralize the foundations of this globalisation discourse by drawing upon Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ and ‘genealogical’ study of institutions, knowledge, discourse and power. This is an interdisciplinary study fusing aspects of sociology and psychoanalysis within a philosophical framework to tender a politically-charged critique of the contemporary modes of domination and power. Pseudo-scientific pathologies born from carceral discourses are disseminated and reproduced as an integral feature of the contemporary political culture and its dominant ideology. The proliferation of these pathologies often serves as a reference point against which various categories, identities and values are registered, classified and rendered plausible. In The Battle Roar of Silence: Foucault and the Carceral System, Calleja attempts to deconstruct the very plausibility structures that sustain these ideological constructs. The text correlates the carceral system discourse to political, social and economic antagonisms that have eroded human rights, democracy and freedom. Consumers of this discourse suffer the negative features of this despotic order in silence. Indeed, this text articulates the battle roar of silence.