The Institution of Prison in the society of Tetuan through Nineteenth Century: Between Theorizing and Historical Reality

Abstract

Historically, the research on the issue of prison and prisoners is a research about the history of marginalization and the marginalized. The prisoner, in the perspective of the jailer and society, is outside the customary controls. In this context, one of the most famous philosophers of the West during the twentieth century, who gave space to marginal issues in his writings, and prison was one of them. He is Michel Foucault, who tried to read the concept of imprisonment within a different methodological horizon, as it is related to formulating a new problem within the axis of power, truth and self. So how did he define through his philosophical reference prison as an institution that aims at adapting, taming and domesticating the human body? On the other hand, historicizing imprisonment remains one of the silent issues in contemporary Moroccan sources in general and in the history of its cities in particular. Therefore, digging into it may require arming with source and documentary material and an analytical approach that enables the building of a historical and objective picture that allows achieving an accumulation that aims at highlighting the role of prison as an institution in the political and social development of Morocco and Allowing the discussion of the problematic issue of Makhzen power from different angles, as it raises ambiguity between it and similar concepts such as authoritarianism, power, influence, social control, domination, sovereignty, repression, and others.