ABSTRACT
“Read Catherine Fisher's Incarceron , Become Instant Expert on Foucauldian Philosophy,” promises the headline of a book review on https://Examiner.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Examiner.com . 1 Welsh author Catherine Fisher's young adult dystopian fantasy Incarceron (published in 2007 in the UK, 2010 in the U.S.) and its sequel Sapphique (published in 2008 in the UK, 2010 in the U.S.) have gained popularity not only with teen readers but also with adults eager to draw connections with poststructuralist theory. Kate Quealy-Gainer's review in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (2010) hails Incarceron as “Foucault meets science fiction,” 2 while even blog reviews include commentary like, “Imagine Foucault wrote a speculative sci-fi fantasy novel. For kids.” 3 As these examples suggest, the comparison to Foucault's history of the prison in Discipline and Punish (1975) is appealing, even for readers who are not professional academics. Incarceron is, after all, the name of an all-seeing prison, which almost begs the use of panopticism as a theoretical framework. In the novels, Incarceron was originally part of a utopian scheme to restore society after the Years of Rage, an apocalyptic struggle that destroyed the moon and its tides. In this postapocalyptic order, criminals and other undesirables are sent into Incarceron, a sentient prison in an undisclosed location, with no known entry or exit. The Prison itself sees to all its inmates’ needs. Meanwhile, the non-incarcerated population, living in the Realm, is kept in order by the restoration of an earlier Era (corresponding to the eighteenth century). Ruled by period “Protocol”—costumes, manners, technology, etc.—the residents of the Realm begin to discover that their situation is not all that different from that of Incarceron's inmates, thus 52illustrating Foucault's argument about the broader disciplining of society. As he asks, “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” 4
