The ‘Enlightenment,’ which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.

That’s the most oft-quoted line from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, probably because it’s such an apt summation from an author who, let’s face it, preferred discursive barrel-rolls to punchy thesis statements. Liberty and discipline are the topics of Dan Bullock’s latest board game, a term I’m employing loosely but not unfavorably. The game in question is called Penitent, it’s about constructing and managing a prison in the early 19th century in the United States, and it’s either the second or fifth of Bullock’s provocations on the issue of justice, depending on how liberally we stretch the concept.

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