E-Book Overview
With Michel Foucault , Reaktion Books introduces an exciting new series that brings the work of major intellectual figures to general readers, illuminating their groundbreaking ideas through concise biographies and cogent readings. There is no better thinker than Foucault with which to begin the "Critical Lives" series. Though reticent about his personal life for most of his career, Foucault, in the last years of his life, changed his stance on the relationship between the personal and the intellectual and began to speak of an "aesthetics of existence" in which "the life" and "the work" become one. David Macey, a renowned expert on Foucault, demonstrates that these contradictions make it possible to relate Foucault's work to his life in an original and exciting way. Exploring the complex intellectual and political world in which Foucault lived and worked, and how that world is reflected in his seminal works, Macey paints a portrait of Foucault in which the thinker emerges as a brilliant strategist, one who-while fiercely promoting himself as a maverick-aligned himself with particular intellectual camps at precisely the right moments. Michel Foucault traces the philosopher's career from his comfortable provincial background to the pinnacle of the French academic system, paying careful attention to the networks of friendships and the relations of power that sustained Foucault's prominence in the academy. In an interview in 1966, Foucault said, "One ought to read everything, study everything. In other words, one must have at one's disposal the general archive of a period at a given moment." It is precisely this archive that Macey restores here, accessibly relating Foucault's works to the particular context in which they were given form. (20041226)
E-Book Content
Michel
Foucault David Macey
Michel Foucault
Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works. In the same series
Jean Genet Stephen Barber
Pablo Picasso Mary Ann Caws
Michel Foucault
David Macey
reaktion books
For you, Margaret
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 79 Farringdon Road London ec1m 3ju, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2004 Copyright © David Macey 2004 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound by Biddles Ltd, Kings’s Lynn British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Macey, David, 1949– Michel Foucault. – (Critical lives) 1. Foucault, Michel 2. Philosophers – France – Biography I. Title 194 isbn 1 86189 226 8
Contents
One 7 Two 27 Three 46 Four 63 Five 84 Six 105 Seven 126 References 147 Select Bibliography 156 Photo Acknowledgements 160
One
There is a rue du Dr Foucault in the centre of Nanterre. The street was named in honour of Paul Foucault, a nineteenth-century physician who devoted his life to caring for the poor of what was still an agricultural village and not yet a suburb of Paris. Almost nothing is known about him except that he died penniless, as befits a doctor who treated his patients at little or no cost. The only thing he bequeathed to his family was a silver pen presented to him by a delegation of grateful patients. It remained in the family for three generations but was eventually stolen during a burglary and has never been recovered. The victim of the burglary was Denys Foucault, the younger brother of Paul-Michel Foucault.1 Michel Foucault and his siblings were not children of Paris and its suburbs. They were born i