Michel Foucault

The final major work by one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth centuryIn the fourth and final volume of his far-reaching and influential study of human sexuality, Foucault turns his attention to early Christianity, exploring how ancient ideas of pleasure were modified into the notion of the 'flesh'. Ranging over marriage, procreation and the concept of virginity as a divine state, Foucault brilliantly shows how a fledgling religion altered and defined the Western history of desire. Confessions of the Flesh brings to a conclusion one of the twentieth century's seminal works.'A thinker of immense power ... posing questions that still perplex us' The Times Literary Supplement'Required reading ... The appearance of the fourth volume is the most significant event in the world of Foucault scholarship in 20 years ... Essential' Los Angeles Review of Books

Now in paperback, this collection of Foucault’s lectures traces the historical formation and contemporary significance of the hermeneutics of the self. Just before the summer of 1982, French philosopher Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures at Victoria University in Toronto. In these lectures, which were part of his project of writing a genealogy of the modern subject, he is concerned with the care and cultivation of the self, a theme that becomes central to the second, third, and fourth volumes of his History of Sexuality. Foucault had always been interested in the question of how constellations of knowledge and power produce and shape subjects, and in the last phase of his life, he became especially interested not only in how subjects are formed by these forces but in how they ethically constitute themselves. In this lecture series and accompanying seminar, Foucault focuses on antiquity, starting with classical Greece, the early Roman empire, and concluding with Christian monasticism in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Foucault traces the development of a new kind of verbal practice—“speaking the truth about oneself”—in which the subject increasingly comes to be defined by its inner thoughts and desires. He deemed this new form of “hermeneutical” subjectivity important not just for historical reasons, but also due to its enduring significance in modern society.

Newly published lectures by Foucault on madness, literature, and structuralism. Perceiving an enigmatic relationship between madness, language, and literature, French philosopher Michel Foucault developed ideas during the 1960s that are less explicit in his later, more well-known writings. Collected here, these previously unpublished texts reveal a Foucault who undertakes an analysis of language and experience detached from their historical constraints. Three issues predominate: the experience of madness across societies; madness and language in Artaud, Roussel, and Baroque theater; and structuralist literary criticism. Not only do these texts pursue concepts unique to this period such as the “extra-linguistic,” but they also reveal a far more complex relationship between structuralism and Foucault than has typically been acknowledged.

Sanat ja asiat oli Michel Foucault'n läpimurto ranskalaiseen filosofiaan. Hän tutkii teoksessaan ihmistieteiden arkeologiaa. Millaisista ajattelutavoista modernin ajan ihmistieteet ovat syntyneet, ja mistä niiden käsitteet ja kysymyksenasettelut ovat peräisin? Foucault'n mukaan kullakin ajalla on sille ominainen tiedon syvärakenne: renessanssin aikana tieto jäsentyy erilaisten samankaltaisuuksien mukaan, klassisella ajalla järjestyksen periaatteena ovat representaation erilaiset muodot ja modernin ajan kynnyksellä järjestyksen periaatteeksi tulee asioiden historiallisuus. Foucault esittää, että modernit ihmistieteet perustuvat käsitykselle, jonka mukaan ihminen on kaiken tiedon perusta ja samalla sekä tietonsa objekti että sen subjekti. Foucault on olennaisesti muuttanut käsityksiämme ajattelusta ja sen tutkimisesta. Sanat ja asiat on teos, johon kannattaa perehtyä, jos haluaa ymmärtää nykyistä filosofista keskustelua. Michel Foucault (1926-1984) tunnetaan ennen kaikkea tiedon ja vallan filosofina. Hänen ajattelunsa on vaikuttanut paljon myös yhteiskuntatieteisiin, historiantutkimukseen ja tieteenhistoriaan. Kysymykseen mitä uutta filosofiassa tapahtuu? Foucault'n kirjat tarjoavat syvällisimmän, elävimmän ja myös vakuuttavimman vastauksen. - Gilles Deleuze Foucault'n johdonmukaisuus, ainutlaatuisuus ja innoitus ovat sellaisia, että hänen viimeisimmän kirjansa lukemisesta syntyy väistämättä radikaalisti uusi näkemys länsimaisen kulttuurin menneisyydestä ja entistä kirkkaampi näkemys sen nykyisestä sekaannuksesta. - François Châtelet Foucault'n teos on yksi tämän ajan tärkeimmistä. - Jean Lacroix, Le Monde Muistuttavuus järjesti symbolien käyttöä, teki näkyvien ja näkymättömien asioiden tuntemisen mahdolliseksi ja ohjasi niiden esittämisen taidetta. Maailma oli kääriytynyt itseensä: maa heijasti taivasta, kasvot peilasivat itseään tähdissä ja kasvit piilottelivat varsissaan salaisuuksia, joita ihmiset käyttivät hyödykseen. ... kun joillekin afaatikoille näytetään monenkirjavia villavyyhtejä pöydän päällä, nämä eivät onnistu luokittelemaan niitä johdonmukaisesti... He sijoittavat kirkkaimman väriset vyyhdit yhteen nurkkaan, punaiset toiseen, kuteeltaan pehmeimmät vyyhdit muualle, kuten myös pisimmät, violettiin vivahtavat tai palloksi kerityt. Mutta kaikki ryhmittelyt on hädin tuskin hahmoteltu, kun ne jo hajotetaan, sillä oli niitä koossapitävän identiteetin kenttä miten kapea tahansa, se on vieläkin liian laaja ollakseen vakaa. Suomentanut Mika Määttänen

Denne bogs udgangspunkt er de Magritte-billeder, hvori tegningen af en pibe og sætningen ”Dette er ikke en pibe” indgår. Michel Foucault (1926-1984) gennemgår de forskellige tolkninger af det konceptuelle sammenstød mellem tegningen af piben og teksten for at påvise, at maleriets rolle med især Magritte, men også Klee og Kandinsky, har ændret sig. Magritte undgår det fundament af bekræftelse, som ligheden i det klassiske maleri hviler på, ved at sætte den tro kopi og de verbale tegn i spil – i et rum uden afgrænsninger. Tingene kan ikke ligne hinanden. Enten er de tro kopier eller også er de det ikke. For som Magritte formulerer det i sit brev til Foucault, er det kun tanken, der kan ligne, nemlig ved at blive det, den ser, hører eller kender. Dette er ikke en pibe udkom første gang på dansk i 1998 og genudgives nu i Hans Reitzels Forlags serie Klassikere.

Qu ve a un m dico, a mediados del siglo XVIII, cuando observaba la presencia de la enfermedad en el cuerpo del paciente? Sin duda, sus m todos y su discurso a n le deb an mucho al mito, a las creencias y a la imaginaci n. A fines de ese siglo, sin embargo, la medicina experiment un cambio radical: la fuente de la verdad m dica pasa a ser el ojo atento, la percepci n cuidadosa que registra manchas, irregularidades, durezas, color, adherencias. Esta vigilancia emp rica, que nace con la Ilustraci n, se convierte en el nuevo principio que rige la relaci n con el paciente y que se presenta como garant a de exhaustividad y precisi n. El nacimiento de la cl nica, publicada en Francia en 1963, es un ensayo revelador acerca de la observaci n m dica y sus m todos durante un breve pero fecundo per odo en el cual, en la pr ctica cl nica, la mirada se torn criterio de verdad y racionalidad. Hasta ese momento, el saber m dico hablaba un lenguaje sin apoyo perceptivo. " El nuevo esp ritu -explica Michel Foucault- no es otra cosa que una reorganizaci n sint ctica de la enfermedad, en la cual los l mites de lo visible y de lo invisible siguen un nuevo trazo." La enfermedad y aun la muerte, antes opacas, se ofrecen ahora a la claridad de la mirada. El libro aborda adem s dos temas centrales en la conformaci n de la cl nica como ciencia: la reorganizaci n del mbito hospitalario y la adquisici n, por parte del enfermo, de un estatuto propio en la sociedad. Constituye as un valioso esfuerzo por dilucidar no s lo el surgimiento de la medicina como ciencia, sino tambi n el de una nueva experiencia de la enfermedad.

Quiz s hoy provoquen verg enza nuestras prisiones. El siglo XIX se sent a orgulloso de las fortalezas que constru a en los l mites de las ciudades y, a veces, en el coraz n de stas. Se complac a en esa nueva benignidad que reemplazaba los pat bulos. Se maravillaba de no castigar ya los cuerpos y de saber corregir en adelante las almas. Aquellos muros, aquellos cerrojos, aquellas celdas figuraban una verdadera empresa de ortopedia social. Quienes robaban eran encarcelados, tambi n aquellos que violaban o mataban. De d nde proviene el curioso proyecto de encerrar para corregir, disciplinar, controlar, que traen consigo los c digos penales de la poca moderna? Es una herencia de las mazmorras medievales? M s bien, una tecnolog a novedosa: el desarrollo de un conjunto de procedimientos de coerci n colectiva para dividir en zonas, medir, encauzar a los individuos y hacerlos a la vez "d ciles y tiles". Vigilancia, ejercicios, maniobras, puntajes, rangos y lugares, clasificaciones, ex menes, registros: una manera de someter los cuerpos, de dominar las multiplicidades humanas y de manipular sus fuerzas, que fue despleg ndose en los hospitales, el ej rcito, las escuelas y los talleres: la disciplina. El Siglo XIX invent , sin duda, las libertades, pero les dio un subsuelo profundo y s lido: la sociedad disciplinaria, de la que a n dependemos.

The fourth and final volume in Michel Foucault's acclaimed History of Sexuality, completed just before his death in 1984 and finally available to the public One of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Michel Foucault made an indelible impact on Western thought. The first three volumes in his History of Sexuality--which trace cultural and intellectual notions of sexuality, arguing that it has been profoundly shaped by the power structures applied to it--constitute some of Foucault's most important work. This fourth volume posits that the origins of totalitarian self-surveillance began with the Christian practice of confession. The manuscript had long been secreted away, in accordance with Foucault's stated wish that there be no posthumous publication of his unpublished work. With the sale of the Foucault archives in 2013, Foucault's nephew felt that the time had come to publish this final volume in Foucault's seminal history. Philosophically, it is a chapter in his hermeneutics of the desiring subject. Historically, it focuses on the remodeling of subjectivity carried out by the early Christian Fathers, who set out to transform the classical Logos of truthful human discourse into a theologos--the divine Word of a pure sovereign. What did God will in the matter of righteous sexual practice? Foucault parses out the logic of the various responses proffered by theologians over the centuries, culminating with Saint Augustine's fascinating discussion of the libido. Sweeping and deeply personal, Confessions of the Flesh is a tour de force from a philosophical master

The first English translation of letters of arrest from eighteenth century France held in the archives of the Bastille Drunken and debauched husbands; libertine wives; vagabonding children. These and many more are the subjects of requests for confinement written to the king of France in the eighteenth century. These letters of arrest (lettres de cachet) from France’s Ancien Régime were often associated with excessive royal power and seen as a way for the king to imprison political opponents. In Disorderly Families, first published in French in 1982, Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault collect ninety-four letters from ordinary families who, with the help of hired scribes, submitted complaints to the king to intervene and resolve their family disputes. Gathered together, these letters show something other than the exercise of arbitrary royal power, and offer unusual insight into the infamies of daily life. From these letters come stories of divorce and marital conflict, sexual waywardness, reckless extravagance, and abandonment. The letters evoke a fluid social space in which life in the home and on the street was regulated by the rhythms of relations between husbands and wives, or parents and children. Most impressively, these letters outline how ordinary people seized the mechanisms of power to address the king and make demands in the name of an emerging civil order. Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault were fascinated by the letters’ explosive qualities and by how they both illustrated and intervened in the workings of power and governmentality. Disorderly Families sheds light on Foucault’s conception of political agency and his commitment to theorizing how ordinary lives come to be touched by power. This first English translation is complete with an introduction from the book’s editor, Nancy Luxon, as well as notes that contextualize the original 1982 publication and eighteenth-century policing practices.

As a transformative thinker of the twentieth century, whose work spanned all branches of the humanities, Michel Foucault had a complex and profound relationship with literature. And yet this critical aspect of his thought, because it was largely expressed in speeches and interviews, remains virtually unknown to even his most loyal readers. This book brings together previously unpublished transcripts of oral presentations in which Foucault speaks at length about literature and its links to some of his principal themes: madness, language and criticism, and truth and desire. The associations between madness and language-and madness and silence-preoccupy Foucault in two 1963 radio broadcasts, presented here, in which he ranges among literary examples from Cervantes and Shakespeare to Diderot, before taking up questions about Artaud’s literary correspondence, lettres de cachet, and the materiality of language. In his lectures on the relations among language, the literary work, and literature, he discusses Joyce, Proust, Chateaubriand, Racine, and Corneille, as well as the linguist Roman Jakobson. What we know as literature, Foucault contends, begins with the Marquis de Sade, to whose writing-particularly La Nouvelle Justine and Juliette-he devotes a full two-part lecture series focusing on notions of literary self-consciousness. Following his meditations on history in the recently published Speech Begins after Death, this current volume makes clear the importance of literature to Foucault’s thought and intellectual development.

The thirteenth and final English volume of Michel Foucault's Lectures at the Coll ge de France "What characterizes the act of justice is not resort to a court and to judges; it is not the intervention of magistrates (even if they had to be simple mediators or arbitrators). What characterizes the juridical act, the process or the procedure in the broad sense, is the regulated development of a dispute. And the intervention of judges, their opinion or decision, is only an episode in this development. What defines the juridical order is the way in which one confronts one another, the way in which one struggles. The rule and the struggle, the rule in the struggle, this is the juridical." --Michel FoucaultThe great French philosopher Michel Foucault delivered a series of lectures at the Coll ge de France from November 1971 to March 1972, entitled Penal Theories and Institutions. Within them, he presented for the first time his approach to the question of power, one that would become the focus of his research up to the writing of Discipline and Punish and beyond. His analysis begins with a detailed account of Richelieu's repression of the Nu-pieds Revolt (1639-1640) and moves on to show how the apparatus of power developed by the monarchy on this occasion broke with the system of juridical and judicial institutions of the Middle Ages, widening into a "judicial State apparatus"--a "repressive system," whose function was focused on the confinement of those who challenged its order. Here, Foucault systematizes his approach to a history of truth which is at the heart of his notion of "knowledge-power," based on the study of "juridico-political matrices" that he had begun in the previous year's Lectures on the Will to Know. Available for the first time in English, these lectures are an essential milestone in the development of Foucault's influential theory of justice and penal law.

Just before the summer of 1982, French philosopher Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures at Victoria University in Toronto. In these lectures, which were part of his project of writing a genealogy of the modern subject, he is concerned with the care and cultivation of the self, a theme that becomes central to the second, third, and fourth volumes of his History of Sexuality. Throughout his career, Foucault had always been interested in the question of how constellations of knowledge and power produce and shape subjects, and in the last phase of his life, he became especially interested not only in how subjects are formed by these forces, but in how they ethically constitute themselves. In this lecture series and accompanying seminar, Foucault focuses on antiquity, starting with classical Greece, the early Roman Empire, and concluding with Christian monasticism in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Foucault traces the development of a new kind of verbal practice-"speaking the truth about oneself"-in which the subject increasingly comes to be defined by its inner thoughts and desires. He deemed this new form of "hermeneutical" subjectivity important not just for historical reasons but also due to its enduring significance in modern society. Is another form of the self possible today?

A groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France’s inhumane treatment of prisoners Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970–71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member HÉlÈne Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. These archival documents-public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions-trace the GIP’s establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault’s concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish. Presenting the account of France’s most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today.

A groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France’s inhumane treatment of prisoners Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970–71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member HÉlÈne Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. These archival documents-public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions-trace the GIP’s establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault’s concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish. Presenting the account of France’s most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today.

Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality—the first volume of which was published in 1976—exerts a vast influence across the humanities and social sciences. However, Foucault’s interest in the history of sexuality began as early as the 1960s, when he taught two courses on the subject. These lectures offer crucial insight into the development of Foucault’s thought yet have remained unpublished until recently. This book presents Foucault’s lectures on sexuality for the first time in English. In the first series, held at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1964, Foucault asks how sexuality comes to be constituted as a scientific body of knowledge within Western culture and why it derived from the analysis of “perversions”—morbidity, homosexuality, fetishism. The subsequent course, held at the experimental university at Vincennes in 1969, shows how Foucault’s theories were reoriented by the events of May 1968; he refocuses on the regulatory nature of the discourse of sexuality and how it serves economic, social, and political ends. Examining creators of political and literary utopias in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Sade to Fourier to Marcuse, who attempted to integrate “natural” sexualities, including transgressive forms, into social and economic life, Foucault elaborates a double critique of the naturalization and the liberation of sexuality. Together, the lectures span a range of interests, from abnormality to heterotopias to ideology, and they offer an unprecedented glimpse into the evolution of Foucault’s transformative thinking on sexuality.

Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality—the first volume of which was published in 1976—exerts a vast influence across the humanities and social sciences. However, Foucault’s interest in the history of sexuality began as early as the 1960s, when he taught two courses on the subject. These lectures offer crucial insight into the development of Foucault’s thought yet have remained unpublished until recently. This book presents Foucault’s lectures on sexuality for the first time in English. In the first series, held at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1964, Foucault asks how sexuality comes to be constituted as a scientific body of knowledge within Western culture and why it derived from the analysis of “perversions”—morbidity, homosexuality, fetishism. The subsequent course, held at the experimental university at Vincennes in 1969, shows how Foucault’s theories were reoriented by the events of May 1968; he refocuses on the regulatory nature of the discourse of sexuality and how it serves economic, social, and political ends. Examining creators of political and literary utopias in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Sade to Fourier to Marcuse, who attempted to integrate “natural” sexualities, including transgressive forms, into social and economic life, Foucault elaborates a double critique of the naturalization and the liberation of sexuality. Together, the lectures span a range of interests, from abnormality to heterotopias to ideology, and they offer an unprecedented glimpse into the evolution of Foucault’s transformative thinking on sexuality.

The final major work by one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth centuryFoucault's History of Sexuality changed the way we think about power, selfhood and sexuality forever. Arguing that sexuality is profoundly shaped by the power structures applied to it, the series is one of his most important and far-reaching works. In this fourth and final volume, Foucault turns his attention to early Christianity, exploring how ancient ideas of pleasure were modified into the Christian notion of the 'flesh' - a transformation that would define the Western experience of sexuality and subjectivity. Completed at Foucault's death, the manuscript of this volume was locked away in a bank vault for three decades. Now for the first time, the work is available to English-language readers as the author originally conceived it.

”Talens forfatning” er den tiltrædelsesforelæsning, som Michel Foucault holdt på Collège de France den 2. december 1970. Forelæsningen i trykt form blev første gang udgivet på dansk i 1980. I forbindelse med denne udgivelse, der blev til i 2001 i samarbejde med oversætteren Søren Gosvig Olesen, blev den tidligere oversættelse og noteapparatet gennemgået kritisk og revideret på en række punkter. Hovedteksten blev suppleret med to mindre tekster. Det drejer sig for det første om Foucaults forelæsningsrapport ”Résumé des cours” fra Collège de France (1971), hvor han kort redegør for, hvordan det program, han præsenterer i sin tiltrædelsesforelæsning, vil blive videreført i de følgende forelæsninger. Desuden drejer det sig om hans lille, men meget læste artikel ”Nietzsche, genealogien, historien”, som uddyber de ting, Foucault i sin forelæsning siger om genealogien som den nye forskningsstrategi. Endelig afrundes udgivelsen med en samtale, hvor oversætteren taler med Foucault om hans baggrund og forhold til samtiden. Denne udgave udkom første gang i 2001 og genudgives nu i Hans Reitzels Forlags serie Klassikere.

”Ingen postum publicering”. Så står det i den franske filosofen Michel Foucaults trettiosex år gamla testamente. Härom året kom detta till trots det fjärde bandet av "Sexualitetens historia", Foucaults uppmärksammade verk om den västerländska diskursen om sexualiteten och försöken att disciplinera och omgestalta vårt driftsliv, ut i Frankrike – och nu föreligger band fyra också på svenska: Köttets bekännelser. Verkets första band, som har undertiteln "Viljan att veta" kom ut 1976 och band två ("Njutningarnas bruk") och tre ("Omsorgen om sig själv") åtta år senare, inte långt före Foucaults död. Medan Foucault i "Viljan att veta", med en polemisk udd mot den freudianska idén om den undertryckta sexualitateten, studerar diskurser om könslivet från 1600- till 1800-tal, vänder han sig i de följande båda banden till den grekisk-romerska antikens filosofer, läkare och oratorer och deras utläggningar om den sexuella njutningen och levnadskonstens regler. I dessa band handlar det inte minst om uppslagsrika närläsningar av olika passager i filosofiska verk och inträngande resonemang om den innebörd filosoferna ifråga har lagt i en i sammanhanget central institution som äktenskapet eller i ett begrepp som ”afrodisia”, ”njutning i kärlek”. I "Köttets bekännelser", i praktiken fullbordad på författarens dödsbädd, fortsätter Foucault med samma slags subtila närläsningspraktik. Men här är det istället de stora kyrkofäderna från de första århundradena av vår tideräkning som han intresserar sig för – såsom Klemens av Alexandria, Gregorius av Nyssa, Johannes Chrystostomos och, naturligtvis, den mest inflytelserike av dem alla, Augustinus. Foucault läser deras texter om frälsning, synd och botgörelse, om jungfruskap och äktenskap som dokument över framväxten av en ”begärsekonomi” som, menar han, har präglat den västerländska civilisationen fram till våra dagar. Michel Foucault (1926–1984) blev först känd genom sin studie "Vansinnets historia" (1961). Han var professor i tankesystemens historia vid Collège de France. Daidalos har tidigare givit ut band ett till tre av "Sexualitetens historia".