The invention of metaphysical prisons in Piranesi and Foucault: The convergences between the Art of Etching and the Philosophy of Language

This article studies the emergence of the concept of metaphysical prisons, understood as psychic or mental confinements for the purpose of regulation, control and even punishment, which a person can impose on himself or on others. This research has two aims: the first, to formulate an interpretation of some of Piranesi's prison engravings, in the ligth of the definitions of enunciation and archive proposed by Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge. The second, I seek to show how Giovanni Battista Piranesi's engravings converge with Michel Foucault's philosophical work in his conception of the prison.