Corporal punishment is often seen as a litmus test for a society's degree of civilization. Its licit use purports to separate modernity from premodernity, enlightened from barbaric cultures. As Geltner argues, however, neither did the infliction of bodily pain typify earlier societies nor did it vanish from penal theory, policy, or practice. Far from displaying a steady decline that accelerated with the Enlightenment, physical punishment was contested throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, its application expanding and contracting under diverse pressures. Moreover, despite the integration of penal incarceration into criminal justice systems since the nineteenth century, modern nation states and colonial regimes increased rather than limited the use of corporal punishment. Flogging Others thus challenges a common understanding of modernization and Western identity and underscores earlier civilizations' nuanced approaches to punishment, deviance, and the human body. Today as in the past, corporal punishment thrives due to its capacity to define otherness efficiently and unambiguously, either as a measure acting upon a deviant's body or as a practice that epitomizes - in the eyes of external observers - a culture's backwardness.

About the Author
G. Geltner is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam. His main focus is on Western Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Reviews
"A direct, scathing, and largely successful critique of what Geltner sees as the intellectually dishonest rhetoric about corporal punishment in modern Western identity narratives and policy arguments." - Warren C. Brown, Speculum Volume 94, Number 1 | January 2019. "Geltner's striking account...makes this volume necessary reading well beyond the history of criminology itself." - Ed Peters, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. "Brilliant! A short, sharp, and often shocking corrective to conventional penal history and western cultural categories. Geltner's little book mobilizes an abundance of comparative evidence to challenge our historical understanding of bodily punishment and to point up the invidious cultural uses of that history. An object lesson in scholarly provocation." - David Garland, New York University, author of Punishment and Modern Society. 'This provocative thesis about the continuation of corporal punishment will give rise to a great deal of debate.' - Pieter Spierenburg, Emeritus Professor at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam 'This is an important book for anyone interested in the history of violence or punishment, or interested in tracking historical change over the long term.' - Susan D. Amussen, The Medieval Review



Book Information
ISBN 9789089647863
Author G. Geltner
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Amsterdam University Press
Publisher Amsterdam University Press