The DePaul Humanities Center is hosting Foucault and the Legacy of the Prisons Information Group, a symposium and film screening, in Room 115 of Richardson Library on Friday, May 8. 

According to the Humanities Center, “This workshop is designed to examine the unique nature and history of Le groupe d’information sur les prisons (The Prisons Information Group, known as the GIP) that Foucault created with his partner, the sociologist Daniel Defert, in December of 1970. The workshop will consider consider its legacy for current struggles around incarceration and all the carceral techniques of surveillance, control, and normalization that have historically been associated with this distinctive form of punishment.”

The symposium, featuring a panel of scholars and activists who will address the basic themes of the workshop, will take place from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. A film screening of the documentary Sur les toits (2014, French with English subtitles), which explores the French prison revolts of 1971–1972 and the role the Prisons Information Group played in supporting and facilitating these uprisings, will run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.