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Intent upon letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the How to Read series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon.
Michel Foucault was a philosopher of extraordinary talent, political activist, social theorist, cultural critic, and creative historian. He irreversibly shaped the way we think today about such controversial issues as power, sexuality, madness, and criminality.

Johanna Oksala explores the conceptual tools that Foucault gave us for constructing new forms of thinking as well as for smashing old certainties. She offers a lucid account of him as a thinker whose persistent aim was to challenge the self-evidence and necessity of our current experiences, practices, and institutions by showing their historical development and, therefore, contingency.

Extracts are taken from the whole range of Foucault’s writings—his books, essays, lectures, and interviews—including the major works History of Madness, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality.
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A brilliant introduction to Foucault's work
First, I must say that I am quite pleased with all of the "How To Read" series installments I have picked up thus far.They are all exceptionally well organized and presented introductions to the writer in question, and the format is brilliant.This little book on Foucault by Johanna Oksala is a perfect example.By having a reputable expert on the subject in question, in this case Oksala on Foucault, the series texts are organized around 10-12 excerpts selected from the subject's work (Foucault, here) from books or essays (canonical and obscure), as the author unpacks and situates each of them to give a much more full and complex picture than most introductory texts are going to give you.
This complexity does not mean that this is too advanced for an introduction, far from it. In fact, I think the way Oksala puts Foucault's methods and concepts on display is very accessible and useful.

This book, like others in the series, is an excellent tool for newcomers and for more seasoned scholars as well, which is a rare feat and a very valuable service.This one is almost like having an introductory course on Foucault in a book, and for quite a bargain price, which makes it well worth a look. ... Read more

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This collection of articles on Michel Foucault confirms his position as one of the most influential thinkers in this last quarter of the century, and simultaneously demonstrates the current ambivalence among philosophers and social scientists about the actual grounds for such an assessment. ... Read more

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A Tremendous Collection of Essays from Many Perspectives
This collection of essays about Foucault's thought assumes at least some familiarity with his work and is valuable even for the most weathered of Foucault students. It contains essays by such big names in philosophy as Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Richard Rorty, Ian Hacking, Edward Said, and Hubert Dreyfus, as well as by such big names in Foucauldian scholarship as Arnold Davidson and Paul Rabinow (along with Dreyfus).These essays are all generally respectful in tone, but some are of a highly critical nature (those of Charles Taylor and Habermas, especially) while others are of an interpretive nature (those of Arnold Davidson, Richard Rorty, Dreyfus/Rabinow, Ian Hacking).Most of these essays are of very fine quality, and even ones with which I do not agree (like that of Charles Taylor) are still extremely interesting and valuable, perhaps for that very reason.

I've read a great deal of Foucault as well as secondary literature about him, and I would go so far as to say that this is the best critical volume available, if you are looking for a nice array (from positive to negative) of philosophically important perspectives.The CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO FOUCAULT is valuable as a collection of scholarly essays concerning Foucault, but this FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER provides a completely different realm of discussion by incorporating a sense of active philosophical dialogue where Foucault is not necessarily the central participant.That is not to say that Foucault is not the subject of these essays, as they run the gamut from analysis of his early work on madness, to his middle quasi-structuralist work, to his later work on ethics. But, the thought contained in these essays are not always confined within the realm of thought Foucault opened up and actively confront pragmatic and philosophical problems with his work

The essay by Dreyfus and Rabinow is particularly fine as an interpretation of Foucault's oeuvre.Their book, MICHEL FOUCAULT: BEYOND STRUCTURALISM AND HERMENEUTICS, is still the standard text for a philosophically rigorous interpretation of Foucault.This essay seems to update the reading they provided in that text and is very engaging.

Another great feature of this collection is that many of the essays cite the others or at least the authors of the others, so one gets the sense of a superb discussion.The essays by Arnold Davidson and Richard Rorty have conflicting interpretations about the coherency of Foucault's oeuvre, the former viewing archaeology and genealogy as companion methods (as Foucault did...most of the time...) and the latter viewing archaeology as a failed project then replaced by a more philosophically coherent project of genealogy.More directly, Rorty's essay is a response to a lecture given by Ian Hacking, a lecture which is one of the two items by Hacking published in this collection.Almost every author (to my recollection) cites Dreyfus and Rabinow, and some speak about the Habermas/Foucault debate-that-never-was, while Habermas himself includes a short article partially (but only partially) summarizing his criticisms of Foucault in his very engaging THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE OF MODERNITY.

For anyone interested in Foucault in any significant way or for those interested in the takes of any of these thinkers on Foucault, this volume is a must. ... Read more

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Michel Foucault was one of the twentieth century's most influential and provocative thinkers. His work on freedom, subjectivity, and power is now central to thinking across an extraordinarily wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, history, education, psychology, politics, anthropology, sociology, and criminology. "Michel Foucault: Key Concepts" explores Foucault's central ideas, such as disciplinary power, biopower, bodies, spirituality, and practices of the self. Each essay focuses on a specific concept, analyzing its meaning and uses across Foucault's work, highlighting its connection to other concepts, and emphasizing its potential applications. Together, the chapters provide the main co-ordinates to map Foucault's work. But more than a guide to the work, "Michel Foucault: Key Concepts" introduces readers to Foucault's thinking, equipping them with a set of tools that can facilitate and enhance further study. ... Read more

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A Battle of Discourses
The reason Foucault is not attempting to interpret Riviere's deeds is NOT to show simply how "people respond to a crime", as a previous reviewer put it. By publishing this collection of texts, Foucault was attempting to recover the struggles and plays of forces between juridical and psychiatric discourses in their attempt to make sense of the murders and the murderer. The legal and psychiatric discourses attempt to envelop Riviere's own account of his deeds in various power relations (mainly by marginalizing Riviere's voice as either that of a parricide or that of a madman). Had Foucault interpreted Riviere's deeds, he would have subjected them to strategies similar to those employed by the medical and legal experts.

This is a fascinating collection (don't skip Foucault's introduction though!), but a reader would definitely appreciate it more after reading Discipline and Punish or "Two Lectures" in Foucault's Power/Knowledge.

Against Interpetation: The Bald Man Pleads Indecision
Okay, the reason why Foucault did not interpet the reasoning behind the crime was because the issue of guilt or innocence was not his topic.He was more interested in how people treat crimes and approach the issue of criminality.

It is not Riviere who is at trial *again* in Foucault's book, but rather it is a trial described, which could be any trial.A crime after the fact is a story, a memory for those who were involved, but we all become involved in an event as if it were a story we have heard before.What other way to approach a murder that is to us words and the heaving bosom of a witness, the placid tension of the accused?We confront a forced performance with confused or feigned characterizations.

Yet even said, this is not Foucault, nor what Foucault was reaching for.All Foucault does is show how people act in response to crime and reveal the obvious ploys that repeat themselves throughout history, because the story that composes our lives has not died.

And if a man approached you with a mark on him, and claimed to have killed his brother, and the soil did cry out to you, would you raise your hand against him?

This book is a good accompanyment to his work Discipline and Punish.

Fascinating Story--Not Enough Analysis
The story of the young Frenchman who murdered his family is a fascinating piece of documentary work by Foucault and his student assistants.However, I would have liked to know much more about how they interpret this"unusual" behavior.

A fascinating and enlighting read.
First don't be mislead Foucault has a paper in this work, but acts as editor not author. Having said that, it is another great work by Foucault. ... Read more

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Arguing that a Foucauldian feminism is possible, Sawicki rejects the view that the power of the phallocentric is total. Instead, like Foucault, she sees discouse as ambiguous and a source of conflict. ... Read more

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an excellent appropriation of Foucault to feminism
Jana Sawicki identifies the issues that have been most contentious in feminist efforts to appropriate Foucault's concepts on subjectivities, powers, and the social constructions of Western bodies to an activist form of feminism and feminist research.She is able to reconcile many issues, such as those some feminists have had with Foucault's conceptions of power and subjectivity, and Foucault's clear androcentrism into a feminist theory that moves beyond these arguments and appropriates what is beneficial in Foucault to a feminism I find rewarding. ... Read more

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With an eye for the sensual bloom of young schoolgirls, and the torrid style of the romantic novels of her day, Herculine Barbin tells the story of her life as a hermaphrodite. Herculine was designated female at birth. A pious girl in a Catholic orphanage, a bewildered adolescent enchanted by the ripening bodies of her classmates, a passionate lover of another schoolmistress, she is suddenly reclassified as a man. Alone and desolate, he commits suicide at the age of thirty in a miserable attic in Paris.

Here, in an erotic diary, is one lost voice from our sexual past. Provocative, articulate, eerily prescient as she imagines her corpse under the probing instruments of scientists, Herculine brings a disturbing perspective to our own notions of sexuality. Michel Foucault, who discovered these memoirs in the archives of the French Department of Public Hygiene, presents them with the graphic medical descriptions of Herculine's body before and after her death. In a striking contrast, a painfully confused young person and the doctors who examine her try to sort out the nature of masculine and feminine at the dawn of the age of modern sexuality.

"Herculine Barbin can be savored like a libertine novel. The ingenousness of Herculine, the passionate yet equivocal tenderness which thrusts her into the arms, even into the beds, of her companions, gives these pages a charm strangely erotic...Michel Foucault has a genius for bringing to light texts and reviving destinies outside the ordinary."Le Monde, July 1978 ... Read more

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textbook
Very pleased with the text i received. The order was fulfilled in a timely manner. no problems with anything.

Wonderfully Catholic
I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir of a fascinating but so troubled human being.As a Catholic myself, I am especially impressed by how wonderful the people who surrounded Herculine were.Here these simple people were faced with a most complex and mystifying problem and they treated Herculine with so much kindness.As all were Catholics, I enjoy this memoir as a fine Catholic book.

A very deep and intriguing novel!
I had the pleasure of reading this novel for a college class, and I must admit that it was psychologically stimulating in one sense, and poignant in another sense. The fact that the story is actually based on true eventsmakes the novel all the more appealing. ... Read more

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This volume gathers a series of lectures Michel Foucault gave on the Greek notion of parrhesia, or fearless speech. Parrhesia is the speech of someone who has the moral qualities required to speak the truth, even if it differs from what the majority of people believes and one faces danger for speaking it. ... Read more

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Brave speech too
Interesting ideas from a Brave Man, he is not afraid of being politically incorrect he says what he thinks and there is a good basement in his ideas.

An inspiring read that deserves more attention
This compact volume makes a good read and a great gift to any thinking person.A series of transcribed lectures, Fearless Speech introduces the notion of parrhesia - roughly "telling of the unvarnished truth" - as it has developed from Greek thought onwards.Foucault, acting here as the master historian of ideas, is precise and erudite, his language is clear, and his story inspires.The discussion begins with the origins of the word in early Greek thought and its use by Euripides in tragedy, and then moves on to discuss the place of parrhesia in democratic institutions, and ultimately its practices and its games.

Parrhesia is a type of speech that is neither rhetoric nor dialectic, though it has historically occupied an important space among both - forming perhaps a trialectic.Parrhesia is a species of truth that mandates its own telling, in a quasi-spiritual fashion if need be: the parrhesiastes, or truth-teller, is one who puts him- or herself at considerable risk, including the risk of death, with his or her words.It can easily be seen that parrhesia is an essential antecedent to criticism and critical theory, but it is also ubiquitous in many forms of discourse.The Jeremiads of prophetic speech, the jokes of court jesters, Che's formative travelogues around South America, Taussig's defacing messages to the academy, and the best-selling literature of Rushdie that was in the 1990s so ill-received by the Muslim community - all of these are examples of this powerful discourse-form at work and play.

I first ran across the term in Arpad Szakolczai's excellent volume on Weber and Foucault, "Parallel Life-Works."After reading FS, I was frankly amazed that the idea is not more widely discussed in university rhetoric classes.The concept is extremely fruitful, first of all, for anyone interested in rhetoric, dialectic, philosophy, and law.Moreover, for anyone studying Foucault's life or epistemic universe (orders of discourse, manifestation, dispositifs, and so on), parrhesia needs to be on the list of terms.For those interested in neo-Enlightenment thinkiers like Habermas and the communicative ethics thinkers like Benhabib and Miller, Rorty and the pragmatists, or the large and diverse group of scholars studying ideology (such as Teun van Dijk) within Critical Discouse Analysis, it's also a very worthwhile read.

Most of all, though, the book shows everyone - and not just the intellectual - that parrhesia needs to be incorporated within our everyday modes of thinking and speaking.To what extent are "we" speaking, and to what extent is ideology speaking through us?What power does our speech reproduce, and what might it transform?Is our speech emancipatory?Does it contribute to the complexity of thought?Does it leave more questions open than closed?Do we break new ground, or just re-hash the useless play of words?This is a book that will fuel the mind and inspire questions like these like few others I've recently read.If you're tired of reading about the "end of history" and post-post-everything thought, try this slim volume.Highly recommended. ... Read more

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May offers a clear and cogent response to the question which other philosophers have most often found troubling in Foucault's work:how can Foucault's genealogies of power/knowledge in the human sciences be justified?-Joseph Rouse, Wesleyan University"In spite of the immense industry of Foucault scholarship, Todd May has managed to write a very trim study that shows how Foucault avoids certain self-referential paradoxes almost always brought against him:in particular, the perils of relativism and the normalization of discourse.The result is notably uncluttered."-Joseph Margolis, Temple UniversityMichel Foucault introduced a new form of political thinking and discourse.Rather than seeking to understand the grand unities of state, economy, or exploitation, he tried to discover the micropolitical workings of everyday life that have often founded the greater unities.He was particularly concerned with how we understand ourselves psychologically, and thus with how psychological knowledge developed and came to be accepted as true.In the course of his writings, he developed a genealogy of psychology, an account of psychology as a historically developed practice of power.The problem such an account raises for much of traditional philosophy is that Foucault's critique of psychological concepts is ultimately a critique of the idea of the mind as a politically neutral ontological concept.As such, it renders politically suspect all forms of subjective foundationalism, and the epistemological justification for Foucault's own writings is then called into question.Drawing on the writings of such Anglo-American philosophers as Wilfrid Sellars and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Todd May refutes the idea that Foucault's critiques of knowledge, and especially psychological knowledge, undermine themselves. ... Read more

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For Michel Foucault, philosophy was a way of questioning the allegedly necessary truths that underpin the practices and institutions of modern society. The essays in this volume provide a comprehensive overview of Foucault's major themes and texts, from his early work on madness through his history of sexuality. Special attention is also paid to thinkers and movements, from Kant through current feminist theory, that are particularly important for understanding his work and its impact. This revised edition contains five new essays and revisions of many others, and the extensive bibliography has been updated. First Edition Hb (1994) 0-521-40332-4 First Edition PB (1994) 0-521-40887-3 ... Read more

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The Cambridge Companion to Foucault
Excellent series of articles on the major work of Foucault--It includes two great articles on the focus of his last works relative to --Ethics of the Self--vis-a-vis the Care of the Self. Interestingly the previous edition also included a breakdown of Ethics from a Foucault perspective--the three articles are very much a great sequence on these concepts--they should all be included on the next edition since the evolution of his thought is evident in their progression. A great research asset on this major figure of social, political and philosophic thought in the twentieth century.

Important commentaries on an important philosopher
In various interviews and commentary on his work, Michel Foucault had constantly offered conflicting interpretations and elusive pronouncements exemplifying the complex and dynamic nature of meaning which was a critical subject of his writings.In the positive spirit of this tendency, the twelve essays in the Cambridge Companion to Foucault provide differing and illuminating considerations of Foucault's thought as well as incisive descriptions of the greater philosophical debates which have been affected by Foucault's work. Editor Gary Gutting offers an instructive introduction to the volume which provides a valuable framework for interpreting Foucault in general, and the subsequent commentaries in particular.Following Foucault himself, Gutting describes the need for a (re)thinking of the concept of interpretation.Instead of engaging in a futile search for the essential interpretation of a text, multiple and conflicting accounts of a work should be lauded as the outcome of a process of critical consideration.As such, Gutting invokes a conception of esthetics--redolent of the trajectory of Foucault's last works--to orient a consideration of Foucault and his commentators.He likens Foucault to an artisan whose histories and narratives are valuable in their specific context as products of a particular intellectual endeavor; like any work of art, however, they are subject to varying uses and interpretations when they are presented to an audience.Thus the essayists in this volume represent an audience of admiring critics who provide unique insight into Foucault's work. The essays by Flynn, Gutting, Canguilhem and Rouse confront the major issues of Foucault's early career: most notably what kind of "histories" was he writing and how do concepts of subjectivity, power and knowledge operate in these histories.Perhaps the most illuminating essay in the book is that on "Power/Knowledge" by Joseph Rouse.Rouse's intention is to clarify Foucault's position on the relationship between power and knowledge and answer criticisms as to the source of sovereignty in Foucault's thought.Rouse demonstrates how Foucault conceived of power not as an entity ontologically exogenous to social relations but rather as a dynamic process which is conceived and executed in a multiplicity of social locations.Knowledge, similarly, is born of distinct social relations and likewise mutable.Rouse grounds Foucault's conception of power in an embodied lived existence which finds its ethical legitimacy from historical experience without resorting to universal essentialisms which concepts like sovereignty intimate. The chapters by Davidson and Bernauer and Mahon illuminate Foucault's notions of ethics in a useful fashion.Davidson discusses Foucault's debt to ancient Greek philosophy in elucidating the self's relationship to itself by placing this relationship in the realm of a lived style of life.This chapter and Bernauer and Mahon's complement each other in thatthe former outlines the fundamental workings of a Foucauldian ethic and how it is grounded in lived experience while the latter illuminates the political ramifications of such an ethic in light of criticisms of it being essentially apolitical. This theme of defending Foucault from criticisms of postmodern nihilism is evident throughout the book.Bernauer and Mahon, Rouse, Norris, Ingram, and Davidson all make strong arguments on Foucault's behalf with references to explicit theoretical concerns of ethics, reason, and the Enlightenment.Similarly, Sawicki discusses how Foucault can be useful for conceiving a certain form of feminist identity politics regardless of certain androcentric predilections. The final essays of the volume investigate the Foucault's interjection in fundamental philosophical debates.Norris' article elucidates Foucault's fragile relationship with Kant and the Enlightenment, Rabinow draws fundamental distinctions and similarities between Foucault and Heidegger with specific regard to modernity, while Ingram examines the Foucault-Habermas debate on reason concluding that the two were similar in their advocacy for an empowered subject. The book concludes with a philosophical dictionary entry written under the pseudonym of Maurice Florence which Gutting attributes to Foucault himself as one of his last writings.In a characteristically Foucauldian manner, this last essay attempts to somewhat obliquely synthesize all of his previous works by placing them in a grand project of discussing subjectivity and objectivity.While this last essay presents a brief interpretation of a seemingly disparate group of works, its theoretical position underscores the vitality and mutability of Foucault's thought which made him one of the more enigmatic and fascinating philosophers of the twentieth century. ... Read more

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Michel Foucault left a rich legacy of ideas and approaches, many of which still await exposition and analysis. The Final Foucault is devoted to his last published (and some as yet unpublished) work and includes a translation of one of his last interviews, a comprehensive bibliography of his publications, and a biographical chronology.Foucault was still working on his history of sexuality when he died in 1984, but his main concern remained, as throughout his career, a deeper understanding of the nature of truth. His final set of lectures at the College de France, described here by Thomas Flynn, focused on the concept of truth-telling as a moral virtue in the ancient world.In the other essays, Karlis Racevskis examines the questions of identity at the core of Foucault's work; Garth Gillan takes up the problems inherent in any attempt to characterize Foucault's philosophy; James Bernauer explores the ethical basis of Foucault's work and offers a context for understanding his late interest in the Christian experience; and Diane Rubenstein offers a Lacanian interpretation of the last work.James Bernauer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. The Final Foucault is based on a special issue of the Journal Philosophy and Social Criticism, edited by David Rasmussen and published at Boston College. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

change in foucault?
great overview of what most consider a slight change in emphasis forfoucault: consideration of self and its constitution. the interviews arethe best part. foucault is candid and possibly more accessible than usual;although maybe as a consequence more vague at points as well. ... Read more

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Another book on Foucault?Yes, but this one is different...
One would think that the last thing the world needs is another book about Michel Foucault.With much relief, I discovered that this collection of essays is not simply another exegesis of the late philosopher's work but instead focuses rather specifically on his implied political theory. This volume seeks to introduce the reader to several political themes running through Foucault's writings and to offer "an analysis of political reason itself, of the mentalities of politics that have shaped our present, the devices invented to give effect to rule, and the ways that these have impacted upon those who have been the subjects of these practices of government" (p.2).This is ambitious agenda, and, on balance, the book succeeds well, despite some of its jargon and abstractions.The focus of the twelve chapters is the "ethical" and "technical" character of liberalism and neo-liberalism as a form of governing.The chapters are a mix of more or less accessible and relevant theoretical papers and ones addressing particular topics such as schooling, urban government, the insurance industry, and forms of communication technologies ... Read more

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In investigating the major works of Michel Foucault, Barry Smart focuses on the analysis of the relations of power and knowledge and modes of objectification through which human beings are made subjects; and addresses controversial issues concerning the state and resistance to power. The development of Foucault's work from the early text on madness to the final studies of sexuality, and the question of the work's methodological value and status as a form of critical analysis, are reviewed comprehensively.
Barry Smart's detailed discussion of the contribution of Foucault's work to social analysis and research will promote fresh interest in the stimulating originality of Foucault's project. ... Read more

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Foucault and the practice of philosophy
Excellent book. Thoroughly researched and creatively but faithfully constructed to provide the reader with a guiding thread linking the various stages of Foucault's work together in a compelling way. Through attention to Foucault's late work, on ancient practices of the self, McGushin is able to understand Foucault's own philosophical work as itself an exercise in self-fashioning. From this perspective Foucault's various methods or periods, whether archeological, genealogical or otherwise, can be seen as different manners in which Foucault took up a relation to his past both as a way of diagnosing the present and as a way of transforming himself, inventing a new form of subjectivity as an effective resistance to the subject produced by bio-power. ... Read more