'Michel Foucault' (
IPA pronunciation: ) (
October 15,
1926 –
June 25,
1984) was a
French philosopher and
historian. He held a chair at the
Collège de France, giving it the title "History of Systems of Thought," and taught at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Michel Foucault is best known for his critical studies of various
social institutions, most notably
psychiatry,
medicine, the human sciences, and the
prison system, as well as for his work on the
history of human sexuality. Foucault's work on
power, and the relationships among power,
knowledge, and
discourse, has been widely discussed and applied. Sometimes described as
postmodernist or
post-structuralist, in the 1960s he was more often associated with the
structuralist movement. Foucault later distanced himself from structuralism and always rejected the post-structuralist and postmodernist labels.
Biography
Early life
Foucault was born on
October 15,
1926 in
Poitiers as Paul-Michel Foucault to a notable
provincial family. His father, Paul Foucault, was an eminent
surgeon and hoped his son would join him in the profession. His early education was a mix of success and mediocrity until he attended the
Jesuit Collège Saint-Stanislas, where he excelled. During this period, Poitiers was part of
Vichy France and later came under German occupation. After
World War II, Foucault gained entry to the prestigious
École Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm), the traditional gateway to an
academic career in the
humanities in
France.
The École Normale Supérieure
Foucault's personal life during the École Normale was difficult—he suffered from
acute depression. He was taken to see a psychiatrist. Because of this, or perhaps in spite of it, Foucault became fascinated with
psychology. He earned a
licence (degree) in psychology, a very new qualification in France at the time, in addition to a degree in philosophy. He was involved in the clinical arm of psychology, which exposed him to thinkers such as
Ludwig Binswanger.
Like many '' '
normaliens' '', Foucault joined the
French Communist Party from 1950 to 1953. He was inducted into the party by his mentor
Louis Althusser. He left due to concerns about what was happening in the
Soviet Union under
Stalin. Various people, such as historian
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, have reported that Foucault never actively participated in his cell, unlike many of his fellow party members.
Early career
Foucault passed his ''
agrégation'' in 1950. After a brief period lecturing at the École Normale, he took up a position at the
University of Lille, where from 1953 to 1954 he taught psychology. In 1954 Foucault published his first book, ''Maladie mentale et personnalité,'' (translated to English as "Mental Illness and Personality") a work which he would later disavow. It soon became apparent that Foucault was not interested in a teaching career, and he undertook a lengthy exile from France. In 1954 Foucault served France as a cultural delegate to the
University of Uppsala in
Sweden (a position arranged for him by
Georges Dumézil, who was to become a friend and mentor). In 1958 Foucault left Uppsala for briefly held positions at
Warsaw University and at the
University of Hamburg.
Foucault returned to
France in 1960 to complete his doctorate and take up a post in
philosophy at the University of
Clermont-Ferrand. There he met
Daniel Defert, with whom he lived in a non-monogamous partnership for the rest of his life. In 1961 he earned his doctorate by submitting two theses (as is customary in France): a "major" thesis entitled ''Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique'' (Madness and Insanity: History of Madness in the Classical Age) and a 'secondary' thesis which involved a translation of, and commentary on
Kant's ''Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View''. ''Folie et déraison'' (''Madness and Insanity'' — ironically published in an abridged edition in English as ''
Madness and Civilization'' and finally published unabridged as "History of Maddness" by Routledge in 2006) was extremely well-received. Foucault continued a vigorous publishing schedule. In 1963 he published ''Naissance de la Clinique'' (''
Birth of the Clinic''), ''
Raymond Roussel'', and a reissue of his 1954 volume (now entitled ''Maladie mentale et psychologie'' or, in English, "Mental Illness and Psychology") which he would again disavow.
After Defert was posted to
Tunisia for his
military service, Foucault moved to a position at the
University of Tunis in 1965. In 1966 he published ''Les Mots et les choses'' (''
The Order of Things''), which was enormously popular despite its length and difficulty. This was during the height of interest in
structuralism and Foucault was quickly grouped with scholars such as
Jacques Lacan,
Claude Lévi-Strauss, and
Roland Barthes as the newest, latest wave of thinkers set to topple the
existentialism popularized by
Jean-Paul Sartre. Foucault made a number of skeptical comments about Marxism, which outraged a number of Left wing critics, but he quickly tired of being labelled a 'structuralist'. He was still in
Tunis during the
May 1968 student rebellions, where he was profoundly affected by a local student revolt earlier in the same year. In the fall of 1968 he returned to France, where he published ''L'archéologie du savoir'' (''
The Archaeology of Knowledge'') — a methodological response to his critics — in 1969.
Post-1968: Foucault the activist
In the aftermath of 1968, the French government created a new experimental university at
Vincennes. Foucault became the first head of its philosophy department in December of that year and appointed mostly young leftist academics (such as
Judith Miller) whose radicalism provoked the Ministry of Education to withdraw the department's accreditation. Foucault notoriously also joined students in occupying administration buildings and fighting with police.
Foucault's tenure at Vincennes was short-lived, as in 1970 he was elected to France's most prestigious academic body, the
Collège de France as Professor of the History of Systems of Thought. His political involvement now increased, Defert having joined the ultra-
Maoist Gauche Proletarienne (GP). Foucault helped found the
Prison Information Group (in French: Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons or GIP) to provide a way for
prisoners to voice their concerns. This fed into a marked politicization of Foucault's work, with a book, ''Surveiller et Punir'' (''
Discipline and Punish''), which "narrates" the micro-power structures that developed in Western societies since the
eighteenth century, with a special focus on
prisons and
schools.
The late Foucault
In the late 1970s, political activism in France tailed off with the disillusionment of many left wing militants. A number of young Maoists abandoned their beliefs to become the so-called
New Philosophers, often citing Foucault as their major influence, a status about which Foucault had mixed feelings. Foucault in this period embarked on a 6 volume project ''
The History of Sexuality'', which he was never to complete. Its first volume, ''The Will to Knowledge'', was published in 1976. The second and third volumes did not appear for another eight years, and they surprised readers by their subject matter, (classical Greek and Latin texts) approach and style, particularly Foucault's focus on the subject, a concept he had previously neglected.
Foucault began to spend more time in the
United States, at the
University of Buffalo (where he had lectured on his first ever visit to the
United States in 1970) and especially at
UC Berkeley. In
1975 he took
LSD at
Zabriskie Point in
Death Valley National Park, later calling it the best experience of his life. In
1979 Foucault made two tours of
Iran, undertaking extensive interviews with political protagonists in support of the new
interim government established soon after the
Iranian Revolution. His many essays on
Iran, published in the Italian newspaper ''Corriere della Sera'', only appeared in French in 1994 and then in English in 2005. These essays caused some controversy, with some commentators arguing that Foucault was insufficiently critical of the new regime.
In
San Francisco of the 1970s and early 1980s, Foucault participated in the subcultures of
anonymous gay sex and
sadomasochism — it is suspected that it was there that he contracted
HIV, in the days before the
disease was described as such.
Foucault died of an
AIDS-related illness in
Paris June 25th,
1984. He was the first high profile French personality who was reported to have had AIDS. Very little was known about the disease
at the time and the event was mired in
controversy. Prior to his death, Foucault had destroyed most of his manuscripts and prohibited the publication of what he might have overlooked in his will.
[1]
Works
''Madness and Civilization (1961)''
Main articles: Madness and Civilization
The English edition of ''Madness and Civilization'' is an abridged version of ''Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique'', originally published in 1961. (A full translation titled ''The History of Madness'' has been published by
Routledge : ISBN 0-415-27701-9) This was Foucault's first major book, written while he was the Director of the Maison de France in Sweden. It examines ideas, practices, institutions, art and literature relating to
madness in Western history.
Foucault begins his history in the
Middle Ages, noting the social and physical exclusion of
lepers. He argues that with the gradual disappearance of leprosy, madness came to occupy this excluded position. The
ship of fools in the 15th century is a literary version of one such exclusionary practice, namely that of sending mad people away in ships. In 17th-century Europe, in a movement which Foucault famously describes as the Great Confinement, "unreasonable" members of the population were locked away and institutionalised. In the eighteenth century, madness came to be seen as the reverse of Reason, and, finally, in the nineteenth century as
mental illness.
Foucault also argues that madness was silenced by Reason, losing its power to signify the limits of social order and to point to the truth. He examines the rise of scientific and "humanitarian" treatments of the insane, notably at the hands of
Philippe Pinel and
Samuel Tuke. He claims that these new treatments were in fact no less controlling than previous methods. Tuke's country retreat for the mad consisted of punishing the madmen until they learned to act "reasonably". Similarly, Pinel's treatment of the mad amounted to an extended
aversion therapy, including such treatments as freezing showers and use of a straitjacket. In Foucault's view, this treatment amounted to repeated brutality until the pattern of judgment and punishment was
internalized by the patient.
''The Birth of the Clinic''
Foucault's second major book, ''The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception'' (''Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical'' in French) was published in 1963 in France, and translated to English in 1973. Picking up from ''Madness and Civilization'', ''The Birth of the Clinic'' traces the development of the medical profession, and specifically the institution of the ''clinique'' (translated as "clinic", but here largely referring to teaching hospitals). Its motif is the concept of the medical ''regard'' (a concept which has garnered a lot of attention from English-language readers, due to Alan Sheridan's unusual translation, "
medical gaze").
''The Order of Things''
Main articles: The Order of Things
Foucault's ''Les Mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines'' was published in 1966. It was translated into English and published by
Pantheon Books in 1970 under the title ''The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences'' (Foucault had preferred ''L'Ordre des Choses'' for the original French title, but changed the title as there was already another book of this title).
The book opens with an extended discussion of
Diego Velázquez's painting ''
Las Meninas'' and its complex arrangement of sight-lines, hiddenness and appearance. Then it develops its central claim: that all periods of history have possessed certain underlying conditions of truth that constituted what was acceptable as, for example,
scientific discourse. Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, in major and relatively sudden shifts, from one period's
episteme to another.
Foucault's critique of Renaissance values in L''es mots et les choses'' has been very influential to cultural history. The various consciousness shifts that he points out in the first chapters of the book have led several scholars to scrutinize the bases for knowledge in our present day as well as critiquing the projection of modern categories of knowledge onto subjects that remain intrinsically unintelligible, in spite of historical knowledge.
''The Order of Things'' brought Foucault to prominence as an intellectual figure in France. A review by
Jean-Paul Sartre attacked Foucault as 'the last rampart of the
bourgeoisie'.
''The Archaeology of Knowledge''
Main articles: The Archaeology of Knowledge
Published in 1969, this volume was Foucault's main excursion into methodology. He wrote it in order to deal with the reception of ''Les Mots et les choses''. It makes references to Anglo-American
analytical philosophy, particularly
speech act theory.
Foucault directs his analysis toward the "statement", the basic unit of
discourse that he believes has been ignored up to this point. "Statement" is the English translation from French ''énoncé'' (that which is enunciated or expressed), which has a peculiar meaning for Foucault. "Énoncé" for Foucault means that which makes
propositions,
utterances, or
speech acts meaningful. In this understanding, statements themselves are not
propositions,
utterances, or
speech acts. Rather, statements create a network of rules establishing what is meaningful, and it is these rules that are the preconditions for
propositions,
utterances, or
speech acts to have meaning. Statements are also 'events'. Depending on whether or not they comply with the rules of meaning, a grammatically correct sentence may still lack meaning and inversely, an incorrect sentence may still be meaningful. Statements depend on the conditions in which they emerge and exist within a field of discourse. It is huge collections of statements, called discursive formations, toward which Foucault aims his analysis. It is important to note that Foucault reiterates that the analysis he is outlining is only one possible tactic, and that he is not seeking to displace other ways of analysing discourse or render them as invalid.
According to Dreyfus & Rabinow , Foucault not only brackets out issues of
truth (cf.
Husserl) he also brackets out issues of
meaning. Rather than looking for a deeper meaning underneath discourse or looking for the source of meaning in some transcendental subject, Foucault analyzes the discursive and practical conditions of the existence for truth and meaning. In order to show the principles of meaning and truth production in various discursive formations he details how truth claims emerge during various epochs on the basis of what was actually said and written during these periods of time. He particularly describes the
Renaissance, the
Age of Enlightenment, and the 20th Century. He strives to avoid all interpretation and to depart from the goals of
hermeneutics. This does not mean that Foucault denounces truth and meaning, but just that
truth and
meaning depend on the historical discursive and practical means of truth and meaning production. For instance, although they were radically different during Enlightenment as opposed to Modernity, there were indeed meaning, truth and correct treatment of madness during both epochs (
Madness and Civilization). This posture allows Foucault to move away from an
anthropological standpoint, denouncing ''a priori'' concepts of the nature of the human subject, and focus on the role of discursive practices in constituting subjectivity.
Dispensing with finding a deeper meaning behind discourse would appear to lead Foucault toward
structuralism. However, whereas structuralists search for homogeneity in a discursive entity, Foucault focuses on differences. Instead of asking what constitutes the specificity of European thought he asks what differences develop within it over time. Therefore, he refuses to examine statements outside of their role in the discursive formation, and he never examines ''possible'' statements that could have emerged from such a formation. His identity as a historian emerges here, as he is only interested in analysing statements in their historical context. The whole of the system and its discursive rules determine the identity of the statement. But, a discursive formation continually generates new statements, and some of these usher in changes in the discursive formation that may or may not be realized. Therefore, to describe a discursive formation, Foucault also focuses on expelled and forgotten discourses that never happen to change the discursive formation. Their difference to the dominant discourse also describe it. In this way one can describe specific systems that determine which types of statements emerge.
''Discipline and Punish''
Main articles: Discipline and Punish
''Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison'' was translated to English in 1977, from the French ''Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison'', published in 1975.
The book opens with a graphic description of the brutal public execution in 1757 of
Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to kill
Louis XV. Against this it juxtaposes a colourless prison timetable from just over 80 years later. Foucault then inquires how such a change in French society's punishment of convicts could have developed in such a short time. These are snapshots of two contrasting types of Foucault's "Technologies of Punishment". The first type, "Monarchical Punishment", involves the repression of the populace through brutal public displays of
executions and
torture. The second, "Disciplinary Punishment," is what Foucault says is practiced in the modern era. Disciplinary punishment gives "professionals" (psychologists, programme facilitators, parole officers, etc.) power over the prisoner, most notably in that the prisoner's length of stay depends on the professionals' judgment.
Foucault also compares modern society with
Jeremy Bentham's "
Panopticon" design for prisons (which was unrealized in its original form, but nonetheless influential): in the Panopticon, a single guard can watch over many prisoners while the guard remains unseen. The dark dungeon of pre-modernity has been replaced with the bright modern prison, but Foucault cautions that "visibility is a trap". It is through this visibility, Foucault writes, that modern society exercises its controlling systems of power and knowledge (terms which Foucault believed to be so fundamentally connected that he often combined them in a single hyphenated concept, "power-knowledge"). Increasing visibility leads to power located on an increasingly individualized level, shown by the possibility for institutions to track individuals throughout their lives. Foucault suggests that a "carceral continuum" runs through modern society, from the maximum security prison, through secure accommodation, probation, social workers, police, and teachers, to our everyday working and domestic lives. All are connected by the (witting or unwitting) supervision (surveillance, application of norms of acceptable behaviour) of some humans by others.
''The History of Sexuality''
Main articles: The History of Sexuality
Three volumes of ''
The History of Sexuality'' were published before Foucault's death in 1984. The first and most referenced volume, ''
The Will to Knowledge'' (previously known as ''An Introduction'' in English — ''Histoire de la sexualité, 1: la volonté de savoir'' in French) was published in France in 1976, and translated in 1977, focusing primarily on the last two centuries, and the functioning of sexuality as an analytics of power related to the emergence of a science of sexuality (''scientia sexualis'') and the emergence of
biopower in the West. In this volume he attacks the "repressive hypothesis," the widespread belief that we have, particularly since the nineteenth century, "repressed" our natural sexual drives. He shows that what we think of as "repression" of sexuality actually constituted sexuality as a core feature of our identities, and produced a proliferation of discourse on the subject.
The second two volumes, ''
The Use of Pleasure'' (''Histoire de la sexualite, II: l'usage des plaisirs'') and ''
The Care of the Self'' (''Histoire de la sexualité, III: le souci de soi'') dealt with the role of sex in
Greek and
Roman antiquity. Both were published in 1984, the year of Foucault's death, with the second volume being translated in 1985, and the third in 1986. In his lecture series from 1979 to 1980 Foucault extended his analysis of government to its 'wider sense of techniques and procedures designed to direct the behaviour of men', which involved a new consideration of the 'examination of conscience' and confession in early Christian literature. These themes of early Christian literature seemed to dominate Foucault's work, alongside his study of Greek and Roman literature, until the end of his life. However, Foucault's death from AIDS-related causes left the work incomplete, and the planned fourth volume of his ''History of Sexuality'' on Christianity was never published. The fourth volume was to be entitled ''
Confessions of the Flesh'' (''Les aveux de la chair''). The volume was almost complete before Foucault's death and a copy of it is privately held in the Foucault archive. It cannot be published under the restrictions of Foucault's estate.
[2]
Power/Knowledge
Power/Knowledge is a work by Foucault that explains his theory of how power is created and transferred throughout an "economy" of
discourse (or conversation). It shows how power is transferred along conduits of dialogue according to the knowledge one has. Barry Allen says that it is only to have a statement pass among others as "known or true". Therefore, knowledge does not necessarily have to be true, but it only needs to be passed on as true for the statement to have an effect on the speakers in the discourse.
[1]
Lectures
From 1970 until his death in 1984, from January to March of each year except 1977, Foucault gave a course of public lectures and seminars weekly at the
Collège de France as the condition of his tenure as professor there. All these lectures were tape-recorded, and Foucault's transcripts also survive. In 1997 these lectures began to be published in French with six volumes having appeared so far. So far, five sets of lectures have appeared in English: ''Psychiatric Power 1973–1974'', ''Abnormal 1974–1975'', ''Society Must Be Defended 1975–1976'', ''Security, Territory, Population 1977–1978'' and ''The Hermeneutics of the Subject 1981–1982''. Notes of Foucault's lectures from UC Berkeley has also appeared as ''Fearless Speech''.
★ ''Society Must Be Defended'' (1975–1976)
In this course, Foucault analyzes the historical and political discourse of "race struggle".
★ ''Security, Territory, Population'' (1977-1978)
In this course, Foucault outlines his theory of governmentality, and demonstrates the distinction between sovereignty, discipline, and governmentality as distinct modalities of state power. He argues that governmental state power can be genealogically linked to the 17th century state philosophy of ''raison d'etat'' and, ultimately, to the medieval Christian 'pastoral' concept of power. His overriding goal in this lecture series is to argue that the state does not have as much salience as an analytical category as we all seem to think it does.
Terminology
Terms coined or largely redefined by Foucault, as translated into English:
★
biopower/
biopolitics
★
Disciplinary institutions
★
episteme (''épistémé'')
★
genealogy
★
governmentality
★
heterotopia
★
parrhesia
★
power
★
state racism
★
medical gaze
★
discourse
Foucault on age of consent
Main articles: Sexual Morality and the Law
Michel Foucault has also had some participation in political life.
In 1977, while a Commission of the French
Parliament discussed a change in the French
Penal Code, he signed a
petition, along with
Jacques Derrida and
Louis Althusser, among others, asking for the
abrogation of some articles of the law in order to
decriminalize all consensual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen (the
age of consent in France).
These ideas are expressed in his text ''
Sexual Morality and the Law'', chapter 16 of his book ''Politics, Philosophy, Culture – Interviews and other writings 1977–1984''.
He believed that the
penal system was replacing the
punishment of
criminal acts by the creation of the figure of an individual
dangerous to society (regardless of any actual crime), and predicted that a society of dangers would come, where sexuality would be a kind of roaming danger, a “phantomâ€. He stressed that this would be possible thanks to the establishment of a “new medical powerâ€, interested in profits coming from the treatment of this “dangerous individualâ€.
[3]
Criticisms of Foucault
Many thinkers have criticized Foucault, including
Charles Taylor,
Noam Chomsky,
Ivan Illich,
Camille Paglia,
Jürgen Habermas,
Jacques Derrida,
Jean Baudrillard,
Nancy Fraser,
Pierre Bourdieu,
Alasdair MacIntyre (1990),
Richard Rorty,
Slavoj Žižek and historian
Hayden White, among others. While each of these thinkers takes issue with different aspects of Foucault's work, most share the orientation that Foucault rejects the values and philosophy associated with the
Enlightenment while simultaneously secretly relying on them.
[4] This criticism is developed, for example, in
Derrida (1978). It is claimed that this failure either makes him dangerously
nihilistic, or that he cannot be taken seriously in his disavowal of normative values because in fact his work ultimately presupposes them.
Foucault has also been criticized for his careless use of historical information with claims that he frequently misrepresented things, got his facts wrong, extrapolated from insufficient data, or simply made them up entirely. For example, some historians argue that what Foucault called the "Great Confinement" in ''
Madness and Civilization'' did not in fact occur during the 17th century, but rather in the 19th century,
[5] which casts doubt on Foucault's association of the confinement of madmen with the Age of Enlightenment.
Sociologist Andrew Scull argued that thousands of previously untranslated footnotes in ''
Madness and Civilization'' reveal a very lax standard of scholarship in Foucault's work, "It is as though nearly a century of scholarly work had produced nothing of interest or value for Foucault’s project. What interested him, or shielded him, was selectively mined nineteenth-century sources of dubious provenance. Inevitably, this means that elaborate intellectual constructions are built on the shakiest of empirical foundations, and, not surprisingly, many turn out to be wrong."
[6]
''Madness and Civilization'' was also famously criticized by
Jacques Derrida who took issue with Foucault's reading of
René Descartes' ''
Meditations on First Philosophy''. Derrida's criticism led to a break in their friendship and marked the beginning of a fifteen-year–long feud between the two. (At one point, in a 1983 interview with
Paul Rabinow, Foucault seemed to criticize Derrida's reading of
Plato's ''
Phaedrus'' in ''Of Grammatology'', considering the writing/speech distinction unimportant.) They eventually reconciled in the early 1980s.
There are also notable exchanges with
Lawrence Stone and
George Steiner on the subject of Foucault's historical accuracy, as well as a discussion with historian
Jacques Leonard concerning ''Discipline and Punish''. Sociologist Richard Hamilton also argues against ''
Discipline and Punish'', suggesting that large portions of the book are incoherent or invalid. For example, Foucault places great emphasis on
Jeremy Bentham's
panopticon, suggesting it is a model for the modern prison, but Hamilton notes that the panopticon was never built and only one extant prison uses that model. In the book, however, Foucault did not suggest that the Bentham's panopticon had been constructed, and did not suggest that prisons ''explicitly'' modeled themselves after it.
Foucault's changing viewpoint
The study of Foucault's thought is complicated because his ideas developed and changed over time. Just how they changed and at what levels is a matter of some dispute amongst scholars of his work. Some scholars argue that underneath the changes of subject matter there are certain themes that run through all of his work. But as
David Gauntlett (2002) suggests:
In a similar vein, Foucault preferred not to claim that he was presenting a coherent and timeless block of knowledge; rather, as he says:
Intellectual contexts
Influences on Foucault's work
Thinkers whose work has apparently or admittedly had a strong impact on Foucault's thought include:
★
Louis Althusser — French structuralist Marxist philosopher and Foucault's sometime teacher and mentor.
★
Roland Barthes — French (post) structuralist literary critic who was at one time very close to Foucault.
★
Georges Bataille — French philosopher, novelist and critic whose views on transgression, communication, and sexuality were very influential in Foucault's work.
★
Maurice Blanchot — Literary critic and novelist whose views on non polemical critique had a strong impact on Foucault
★
Jorge Luis Borges — Argentine author of short stories frequently referred to in Foucault's Works
★
Georges Canguilhem — Author of ''The Normal and the Pathological'' and a major influence on Foucault's work on deviance and the medical sciences (cf.
The Birth of the Clinic)
★
Gilles Deleuze — French philosopher. A great friend and ally of Foucault's in the early 1970s.
★
Georges Dumézil — French structuralist mythologist, known for his reconstruction of
Indo-Aryan mythology.
★
Martin Heidegger — German philosopher whose influence was enormous in post-war France. Foucault rarely referred to him, but once stated 'For me Heidegger has always been the essential philosopher... My entire philosophical development was determined by my reading of Heidegger'.
★
Jean Hyppolite — French
Hegel scholar and Foucault's sometime
khâgne teacher.
★
Karl Marx — Marx's influence in French intellectual life was dominant from 1945 through to the late 1970s. Foucault often opposed aspects of Marxist ideology.
★
Maurice Merleau-Ponty — French philosopher and sometime teacher of Foucault.
Phenomenologist instrumental in popularising
Saussure's
structuralism for a philosophical audience.
★
Friedrich Nietzsche — German philosopher whose work greatly influenced Foucault's conception of society and power. Towards the end of his life, Foucault stated: "I am a Nietzschean".
Influence of Foucault's work
Foucault's work is frequently referred to in disciplines as diverse as
art,
philosophy,
history,
anthropology,
geography,
archaeology,
communication studies,
public relations,
rhetoric,
cultural studies,
linguistics,
sociology,
education,
psychology,
literary theory,
feminism,
queer theory,
management studies,
the philosophy of science,
political science urban design,
museum studies, and many others. Quantitative evidence of the impact of his work can be found in the sheer volume of citations in standard academic journal indexes such as the Social Sciences Citation Index
[2] (more than 9000 citations). A keyword search of the
Library of Congress catalogue
[3] reveals over 750 volumes in a variety of languages relating to his writings, and a search on
Google Scholar [4] reveals thousands of citations.
Bibliography
Monographs
| Year | Original French | English Translation |
|---|
| 1954 | ''Maladie mentale et personnalité'' (Paris: PUF, 1954) re-edited as ''Maladie mentale et psychologie'' (1995) | ''Mental Illness and Psychology'' trans. by A. M. Sheridan-Smith, (New York: Harper and Row, 1976) |
| 1961 | ''Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique - Folie et déraison'' (Paris: Plon, 1961) | ''Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason'' trans. by R. Howard, (London: Tavistock, 1965) - abridged; ''History of Madness'' ed. Jean Khalfa, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa, (London: Routledge, 2006) - unabridged |
| 1963 | ''Naissance de la clinique - une archéologie du regard médical'' (Paris: PUF, 1963) | ''The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception'' |
| 1963 | ''Raymond Roussel'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1963) | ''Death and the Labyrinth: the World of Raymond Roussel'' |
| 1966 | ''Les mots et les choses - une archéologie des sciences humaines'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1966) | ''The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences'' |
| 1969 | ''L'archéologie du savoir'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1969) | ''Archaeology of Knowledge'' (first three chapters available here) trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 2002) |
| 1971 | ''L'ordre du discours'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1971) | "The Discourse on Language" translation appears as an appendix to the ''Archaeology of Knowledge'' trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), pp. 215-37 |
| 1975 | ''Surveiller et punir'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1975) | ''Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison'' |
| 1976–84 | ''Histoire de la sexualité''
★ ''Vol I: La Volonté de savoir'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1976)
★ ''Vol II: L'Usage des plaisirs'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1984)
★ ''Vol III: Le Souci de soi'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1984) | ''The History of Sexuality''
★ ''Vol I: The Will to Knowledge''
★ ''Vol II: The Use of Pleasure''
★ ''Vol III: The Care of the Self'' |
The Collège Courses
| Year | Original French | English Translation |
|---|
| 1997 | 1976–1977 ''Il faut défendre la société'' | ''Society Must Be Defended'' |
| 1999 | 1974–1975 ''Les anormaux'' | ''The Abnormals'' |
| 2001 | 1981–1982 ''L'herméneutique du sujet'' | ''The Hermeneutics of the Subject'' |
| 2003 | 1973–1974 ''Le pouvoir psychiatrique'' | ''Psychiatric Power'' |
| 2004 | 1977–1978 ''Sécurité, territoire, population'' | ''Security, Territory, Population'' |
| 2004 | 1978–1979 ''Naissance de la biopolitique'' | ''The Birth of the Biopolitical'' |
| Forthcoming | 1970–1971 ''La Volonté de Savoir'' | ''The Will to Knowledge'' |
| Forthcoming | 1971–1972 ''Theories de Institutions Penales'' | ''Theories of Punishment'' |
| Forthcoming | 1972–1973 ''La Société Punitive'' | ''The Punitive Society'' |
| Forthcoming | 1979–1980 ''De Gouvernement des Vivants'' | ''The Government of Man'' |
| Forthcoming | 1980–1981 ''Subjectivite et Vérité'' | ''Subjectivity and Truth'' |
| Forthcoming | 1982–1983 ''Le Gouvernement de Soi et des Autres'' | ''The Government of Self and Others'' |
| Forthcoming | 1983–1984 ''Le Courage de la Vérité'' | ''The Courage of Truth'' |
Collaborative works
| Year | Original French | English Translation |
|---|
| 1973 | ''Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère'' (Gallimard) | ''I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered my Mother, my Sister and my Brother'' (Penguin, 1975) |
| 1978 | ''Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B.'' (Gallimard, 1978) | ''Herculine Barbin'' (New York: Pantheon, 1980).'' |
| 1982 | ''Le Désordre des familles. Lettres de cachet'' with Arlette Farge (Gallimard) | Not yet available in English |
Other books
| Year | Original French | English Translation |
|---|
| 1973 | "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" | ''This is not a pipe'' (1991) |
| 1980 | Interview with Michel Foucault originally published in Italian, then in French in 1994 | ''Remarks on Marx'' (1991) |
| 2001 | Berkeley lecture series, never published in French | ''Fearless Speech'' |
Anthologies
In French, almost all of Foucault's shorter writings, published interviews and miscellany have been published in a collection called ''Dits et écrits'', originally published in four volumes in 1994, latterly in only two volumes.
In English, there are a number of overlapping anthologies, which often use conflicting translations of the overlapping pieces, frequently with different titles. Richard Lynch's
bibliography of Foucault's shorter work is invaluable for keeping track of these multiple versions. The major collections in English are:
★ ''Language, counter-memory, practice'', ed. Donald F. Bouchard (1977)
★ ''Power/Knowledge'', ed. Colin Gordon (1980)
★ ''The Foucault Reader'', ed.
Paul Rabinow (1984)
★ ''Politics, Philosophy, Culture'', ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (1988)
★ ''Foucault Live'' (2nd Ed.), ed.
Sylvère Lotringer (1996)
★ ''The Politics of Truth'', ed. Sylvère Lotringer (1997)
★ ''Ethics : subjectivity and truth'' (Essential Works Vol. 1), ed.Paul Rabinow (1997)
★ ''Aesthetics, Method, Epistemology'' (Essential Works Vol.2), ed. James D. Faubion (1998)
★ ''Power'' (Essential Works Vol. 3), ed. James D. Faubion (2000)
★ ''The Essential Foucault'', eds. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (2003)
Lectures
In a 1967 lecture, called in English either "Different spaces" or ''Of Other Spaces'' (reprinted in the ''Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology'' collection), Michel Foucault coined a novel concept of the ''heterotopia''. See also
[5] Foucault's essay ''Of other spaces''.
Notes
1. The Passion of Michel Foucault, James Miller, , , HarperCollins, 1993, ISBN 0-00-255267-1
2. , Michel Foucault, edited by Jeremy R. Carrette, , , , 1999, ISBN 0-415-92362-X
3. Politics, Philosophy, Culture – Interviews and other writings 1977-1984, Michel Foucault, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, , , , 1988, ISBN 0-415-90082-4
4. Foucault: A Critical Reader, Edited by David Hoy, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986
5. Les Médecines de la Folie, Pierre Morel and Claude Quétel, , , , 1985, ISBN 2-01-011281-4
6. Andrew Scull, "The Fictions of Foucault", ''Times Literary Supplement'', March 21, 2007
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality By Graham Burchell et al
References
★ Carrette, Jeremy R (ed.). ''Religion and culture: Michel Foucault''. (Routledge, 1999).
★ Derrida, Jacques. Cogito and the History of Madness. In Alan Bass (tr.), ''Writing and Difference'', pp. 31–63. (Chicago University Press, 1978)
★ Dillon, ''Foucault on Politics, Security and War'', (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
★ Dreyfus, Herbert L. and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd edition. (University of Chicago Press, 1983)
★ Eribon, Didier. ''Michel Foucault'' (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).Considered in France, according to Le Monde, as the best biography of Foucault.
★ Eribon Didier. ''Insult and the Making of the Gay Self'' (Duke University Press, 2004). The third part - about 150 pages of this book - is devoted to Foucault and a reinterpretation of his life and work.
★ Foucault, Michel.
Sexual Morality and the Law (originally published as ''La loi de la pudeur''), is the Chapter 16 of Politics, Philosophy, Culture (see “Notesâ€), pp. 271–285.
★ Hoy, D. (Ed.). ''Foucault''. (Oxford, Blackwell, 1986)
★ Hicks, Stephen R. C. ''Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault'' (Scholargy Publishing, 2004)
★ Macey, David. ''The Lives of Michel Foucault'' (London: Hutchison, 1993) - This is the most detailed biography of Foucault.
★ MacIntyre, Alasdair (1990). ''Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition.'' Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
★ Miller, James. ''The Passion of Michel Foucault'' (London: HarperCollins, 1993) - A number of scholars have expressed reservations in relation to some of the sensational claims made in this biography.
★ Smart, B. ''Foucault''. (Chichester, Ellis Horwood, 1985)
See also
★
Foucault-Habermas debate
Works available online
★
Michel Foucault's Introduction to Kant's Anthropology original version translated by Arianna Bove, 2002
★
Repository of texts from Foucault.info (excerpts from Discipline & punish, Archeology of knowledge, Heterotopia, Manet, Pierre Rivière, Enlightenment, Author Function, etc.)
★
List of texts from DMOZ
★
Thefoucauldian.co.uk 18 online texts on Pierre Rivière, technologies of the self, archeology of knowledge, Nietzsche & genealogy, etc.
★
Online audiorecording of Foucault at UC Berkeley, April 1983: "The Culture of the Self"
★
Sexual Morality and the Law, April 1978 - Transcript of a Radio
France Culture conversation between Foucault, Jean Danet, and Guy Hocquenghem about age of consent. See also:
"Romance is Dead" Daniel Z. Epstein, 2007.
★
Michel Foucault, Buffalo 1971 & Paris 1975. Ten photographs of Foucault (including one with Raymond Federman and two with Olga Bernal) by Bruce Jackson
External links
General sites (updated regularly):
★
Foucault.info
★
Michel Foucault Archives by IMEC
★
Michel Foucault: Resources
★
Foucault at theory.org.uk
Other Foucault entries:
★
The Fictions of Foucault's scholarship: Recent (controversial) critique by a journeyman historian.
TLS.
★
Response to Scull by Colin Gordon
★
Michel Foucault entry at the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
★
Michel Foucault entry at the ''International Dictionary of Intellectual Historians''
★
Foucault article by Mark Poster from the ''Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism''
★
Retrospective article written by Michel Foucault
★
Good place to start - Review of a Foucault biography, written by noted scholar and Foucauldian David Halperin
★
University of Minnesota – Dept. of Communications Studies – Detailed summary of the book ''“Politics, Philosophy, Culture - Interviews and other writings 1977–1984â€'', chapter by chapter.
Bibliographies:
★
Lynch's bibliography
★
French and English bibliographies
Pages of related links:
★
Links from Foucault Resources
★
Journals and weblogs:
★
Foucault Studies - an electronic, refereed, international journal
★
The Journal of French Philosophy - the online home of the Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française
★
A special issue of the journal ''Labyrinthe'', 2005 (in French): "La biopolitique (d')après Michel Foucault"
★
Foucault Blog
Mail lists:
★
Foucault-L - unmoderated, opt-in discussion list
Miscellaneous:
★
Foucault's Paris - Walking tour of Paris
★
Dossiers - Thematic micro-sites
★
"What are the Iranians Dreaming About?" - an excerpt from ''Foucault and the Iranian Revolution''
العربية
ä¸å›½
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिनà¥à¤¦à¥€
Italiano
日本語
Português
РуÑÑкий
Español
