Foucault's Last Decade
Published on 17. May 2016
272 pages
978-0-7456-8395-9 (ISBN)
Description
On 26 August 1974, Michel Foucault completed work on Discipline and Punish, and on that very same day began writing the first volume of The History of Sexuality. A little under ten years later, on 25 June 1984, shortly after the second and third volumes were published, he was dead.
This decade is one of the most fascinating of his career. It begins with the initiation of the sexuality project, and ends with its enforced and premature closure. Yet in 1974 he had something very different in mind for The History of Sexuality than the way things were left in 1984. Foucault originally planned a thematically organised series of six volumes, but wrote little of what he promised and published none of them. Instead over the course of the next decade he took his work in very different directions, studying, lecturing and writing about historical periods stretching back to antiquity.
This book offers a detailed intellectual history of both the abandoned thematic project and the more properly historical version left incomplete at his death. It draws on all Foucault's writings in this period, his courses at the Collège de France and lectures elsewhere, as well as material archived in France and California to provide a comprehensive overview and synthetic account of Foucault's last decade.
This decade is one of the most fascinating of his career. It begins with the initiation of the sexuality project, and ends with its enforced and premature closure. Yet in 1974 he had something very different in mind for The History of Sexuality than the way things were left in 1984. Foucault originally planned a thematically organised series of six volumes, but wrote little of what he promised and published none of them. Instead over the course of the next decade he took his work in very different directions, studying, lecturing and writing about historical periods stretching back to antiquity.
This book offers a detailed intellectual history of both the abandoned thematic project and the more properly historical version left incomplete at his death. It draws on all Foucault's writings in this period, his courses at the Collège de France and lectures elsewhere, as well as material archived in France and California to provide a comprehensive overview and synthetic account of Foucault's last decade.
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Stuart Elden is Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick and Monash Warwick Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Monash University.
Content
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Pervert, Hysteric, Child
2. The War of Races and Population
3. The Will to Know and the Power of Confession
4. From Infrastructures to Governmentality
5. Return to Confession
6. The Pleasures of Antiquity
7. The Two Historical Plans of the History of Sexuality
8. Speaking Truth to Power
Notes
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Pervert, Hysteric, Child
2. The War of Races and Population
3. The Will to Know and the Power of Confession
4. From Infrastructures to Governmentality
5. Return to Confession
6. The Pleasures of Antiquity
7. The Two Historical Plans of the History of Sexuality
8. Speaking Truth to Power
Notes
Abbreviations
To ease reference, key texts are referred to by abbreviations. For texts where one book is translated in a single book, such as the lecture courses, the French page number is given first, followed by the English after a slash. So PP 105/103 would refer to the lecture course Le pouvoir psychiatrique, p. 105 in the French text, and p. 103 in the English translation Psychiatric Power. I have frequently modified existing translations.
In the text, English titles are used for books available in translation; French for untranslated works or unpublished manuscripts, though an English translation of the title is provided the first time they are used.
A Les Anormaux: Cours au Collège de France (1974-5), eds. Valerio Marchetti and Antonella Salomoni, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard, 1999; trans. Graham Burchell as Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974-5, London: Verso, 2003. ABHS 'About the Beginning of the Hermeneutic of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth', ed. Mark Blasius, Political Theory, 21 (2), 1993: 198-227. BB Naissance de la biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France (1978-9), ed. Michel Senellart, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard, 2004; trans. Graham Burchell as The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-9, London: Palgrave, 2008. C Daniel Defert, 'Chronologie', in Dits et écrits 1954-88, eds. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Paris: Gallimard, 4 vols., 1994, vol. I, pp. 13-64; trans. Timothy O'Leary in Christopher Falzon, Timothy O'Leary and Jana Sawicki (eds.) A Companion to Foucault, Oxford: Blackwell, 2013, pp. 11-83. CMPP 'Considérations sur le marxisme, la phénoménologie et le pouvoir: Entretien avec Colin Gordon et Paul Patton', Cités, 52, 2012: 101-26; trans. as Michel Foucault, Colin Gordon, and Paul Patton, 'Considerations on Marxism, Phenomenology and Power. Interview with Michel Foucault; Recorded on April 3rd, 1978', Foucault Studies, 14, September 2012: 98-114. CT Le courage de la vérité: Le gouvernement des soi et des autres II: Cours au Collège de France, ed. Frédéric Gros, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil; trans. Graham Burchell as The Courage of Truth (The Government of the Self and Others II): Lectures at the Collège de France 1983-4, London: Palgrave, 2011. DE Dits et écrits 1954-88, eds. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Paris: Gallimard, 4 vols., 1994 - with reference to volume number, and also includes text number for ease of reference to the two editions of this text and to bibliographies of English translations.1 Thus 'DE#81 II, 99-104' means text 81, in vol. II, pp. 99-104. DF Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault, Le désordre des familles: Lettres de cachet des Archives de la Bastille au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Julliard/Gallimard, 1982. DP Surveiller et punir - Naissance de la prison, Paris: Gallimard, 1975; trans. Alan Sheridan as Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin, 1976. E Roger-Pol Droit, Michel Foucault, Entretiens, Odile Jacob, Paris, 2004. EW Essential Works, eds. Paul Rabinow and James Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley and others, London: Allen Lane, 3 vols., 1997-2000. FL Foucault Live: Interviews 1961-84, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, New York: Semiotext[e], 1996. GSO Le gouvernement de soi et des autres: Cours au Collège de France 1982-3, ed. Frédéric Gros, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil; trans. Graham Burchell as The Government of the Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France 1982-3, London: Palgrave, 2010. GL Du gouvernement des vivants: Cours au Collège de France 1979-80, ed. Michel Senellart, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2012; trans. Graham Burchell as On the Government of the Living: Lectures at the Collège de France 1979-80, London: Palgrave, 2014. HB Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B, Paris: Gallimard, 1978; trans. Richard McDougall as Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century Hermaphrodite, New York: Pantheon, 1980. HS I Histoire de la sexualité I: La Volonté de savoir, Paris: Gallimard, 1976; trans. Robert Hurley as The History of Sexuality I: The Will to Knowledge, London: Penguin, 1978. HS II Histoire de la sexualité II: L'Usage des plaisirs, Paris: Gallimard, 1984; The History of Sexuality Volume II: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley, London: Penguin, 1985. HS III Histoire de la sexualité III: Le Souci de soi, Paris: Gallimard, 1984; The History of Sexuality Volume III: The Care of the Self, trans. Robert Hurley, London: Penguin, 1986. HSu L'Herméneutique du sujet: Cours au Collège de France (1981-2), ed. Frédéric Gros, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2001; trans. Graham Burchell as The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, London: Palgrave, 2005. MG Michel Foucault, Blandine Barret-Kriegel, Anne Thalamy, François Béguin and Bruno Fortier, Les machines à guérir (aux origines de l'hôpital moderne), Bruxelles: Pierre Mardaga, revised edn 1979 (original edn, Paris: Institut de l'environnement, 1976). OHS L'origine de l'herméneutique de soi: Conférences prononcées à Dartmouth College, 1980, eds. Henri-Paul Fruchaud and Daniele Lorenzini, Paris: Vrin, 2013. P/K Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-7, ed. Colin Gordon, Brighton: Harvester, 1980. PP Le pouvoir psychiatrique: Cours au Collège de France (1973-4), ed. Jacques Lagrange, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard, 2003; trans. Graham Burchell as Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France 1973-4, London: Palgrave, 2006. PPC Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-84, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, London: Routledge, 1990. QC Qu'est-ce que la critique? Suivi de la culture de soi, eds. Henri-Paul Fruchaud and Daniele Lorenzini, Paris: Vrin, 2015. RC Religion and Culture, ed. Jeremy R. Carrette, London: Routledge, 1999. SMBD «Il faut défendre la société»: Cours au Collège de France (1975-6), eds. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard, 1997; trans. David Macey as 'Society Must Be Defended', London: Allen Lane, 2003. SP La société punitive: Cours au Collège de France (1972-3), ed. Bernard E. Harcourt, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2013. SKP Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography, eds. Jeremy W. Crampton and Stuart Elden, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. STP Sécurité, Territoire, Population: Cours au Collège de France (1977-8), ed. Michel Senellart, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard, 2004; trans. Graham Burchell as Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-8, London: Palgrave, 2008. SV Subjectivité et vérité: Cours au Collège de France, 1980-1, ed. Frédéric Gros, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil. WDTT Mal faire, dire vrai: Le function de l'aveu en justice, eds. Fabienne Brion and Bernard E. Harcourt, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2012; trans. Stephen W. Sawyer as Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Archival material BANC Manuscripts and tapes, Bancroft library, University of California, Berkeley.2 BNF Archives et Manuscrits, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris IMEC Fonds Michel Foucault, l'Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine, l'abbaye d'Ardenne,...