What is it about?
The origins of the guillotine are not what we imagine. Instead of being invented out of Enlightenment impulses to avoid the pain and suffering of the condemned, it was mainly designed to prevent shock and horror in a sentimental public. To do this, its inventors believed it had to be an unfailing machine.
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Why is it important?
I show how the guillotine belongs to a history of sentiment and emotions. The paper brings together the history of technology and the history of psychology to show the surprising influences and motivations behind the brutal efficacy of the French Revolution's most iconic public machine.
Perspectives
This article is part of a longer book-length project that explores how people from the late-18th to the mid-20th centuries understood technological failures as a problem of the self — a problem of the kinds of people failing machines created, or threatened, or presupposed.
Edward Jones-Imhotep
York University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The unfailing machine, History of the Human Sciences, September 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0952695117722716.
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