The Lives of Michel Foucault

by David Macey

Overview

When he died of an AIDS-related condition in 1984, Michel Foucault had become the most influential French philosopher since the end of World War II. His powerful studies of the creation of modern medicine, prisons, psychiatry, and other methods of classification have had a lasting impact on philosophers, historians, critics, and novelists the world over. But as public as he was in his militant campaigns on behalf of prisoners, dissidents, and homosexuals, he shrouded his personal life in mystery.

In The Lives of Michel Foucault — written with the full cooperation of Daniel Defert, Foucault's former lover — David Macey gives the richest account to date of Foucault's life and work, informed as it is by the complex issues arising from his writings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679757924
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/25/1995
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	624
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

David Macey is a historian, translator, and the author of Lacan in Context, The Lives of Michel Foucault, and Frantz Fanon: A Biography. He is the translator of more than 20 works.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgements	ix
	Textual Note	x
	Introduction: 'I, Michel Foucault ...'	xi
1.	Paul-Michel	1
2.	The Fox, the School and the Party	21
3.	Carnival in Musterlingen	47
4.	North	72
5.	A History of Madness	91
6.	Death and the Labyrinth	120
7.	Words and Things	152
8.	South	183
9.	Vincennes	209
10.	'A Place Where Thought Is Free'	237
11.	'Intolerable'	257
12.	The Professor Militant	290
13.	The Archives of Pain	323
14.	The Use of Pleasures	353
15.	Dissident	378
16.	The Dance of Death Begins	415
17.	The Great, Stubborn Light of Polish Freedom	436
18.	An Unfinished Life	457
	Notes	481
	Bibliography	543
	Other Works Consulted	566
	Index	585

Editorial Reviews

"Admirable...yields a vivid picture of Foucault."

— New Republic



"David Macey's The Lives of Michel Foucault is the third, and probably the last, Foucault biography to appear in English.... It is also the best: fuller in its source and freer in their use...preferable, in terms of moral intelligence, maturity and poise." — The Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

French social philosopher Michel Foucault, whose work was a cry against the confinement or regulation of prisoners, workers, psychiatric patients and sexual desires, shaved his head in order to reveal his true face, or so he told friends. Yet Foucault, who died of AIDS in 1984 at the age of 57, was extremely reticent about his personal life. A homosexual, he generally kept his distance from the gay and feminist movements and, by this account, made surprisingly ignorant remarks about rape. Macey's ( Lacan in Contexts )revealing, careful bigraphy, whichtraces Foucault's constantly evolving thought against the backdrop of his political activism and travels, draws on interviews with friends and colleagues and on the cooperation of Foucault's former lover, Daniel Defert. Details of Foucault's experimentation with LSD and opium, his near-death experience after being hit by a car, and his activism against racism, the Vietnam War and prison conditions round out a portrait of a versatile thinker who remains a personal enigma. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly