This major collection brings Foucault's later work into sharp focus and illustrates some of the ways in which it is informing developments in the social sciences. Concise, clear and wide-ranging it provides an essential accessory to the understanding one of the key thinkers in the twentieth century.

This collection brings Foucault's later work into focus and illustrates some of the ways in which it explores developments in the social sciences.

“An invaluable book” of late-career lectures that reveal Foucault’s perspective on truth, truth-telling, and the nature of discourse (Choice). This volume collects a series of lectures given by the renowned French thinker Michel Foucault. The first part presents a talk, Parresia, delivered at the University of Grenoble in 1982. The second presents a series of lectures entitled “Discourse and Truth,” given at the University of California, Berkeley in 1983, which appears here for the first time in its full and correct form. Together, these lectures provide an unprecedented account of Foucault’s reading of the Greek concept of parresia, often translated as “truth-telling” or “frank speech.” The lectures trace the transformation of this concept across Greek, Roman, and early Christian thought, from its origins in pre-Socratic Greece to its role as a central element of the relationship between teacher and student. In mapping the concept’s history, Foucault’s concern is not to advocate for free speech; rather, his aim is to explore the moral and political position one must occupy in order to take the risk to speak truthfully. These lectures—carefully edited and including notes and introductory material to fully illuminate Foucault’s insights—are a major addition to Foucault’s English language corpus.

In Foucault’s Discipline, John S. Ransom extracts a distinctive vision of the political world—and oppositional possibilities within it—from the welter of disparate topics and projects Michel Foucault pursued over his lifetime. Uniquely, Ransom presents Foucault as a political theorist in the tradition of Weber and Nietzsche, and specifically examines Foucault’s work in relation to the political tradition of liberalism and the Frankfurt School. By concentrating primarily on Discipline and Punish and the later Foucauldian texts, Ransom provides a fresh interpretation of this controversial philosopher’s perspectives on concepts such as freedom, right, truth, and power. Foucault’s Discipline demonstrates how Foucault’s valorization of descriptive critique over prescriptive plans of action can be applied to the decisively altered political landscape of the end of this millennium. By reconstructing the philosopher’s arguments concerning the significance of disciplinary institutions, biopower, subjectivity, and forms of resistance in modern society, Ransom shows how Foucault has provided a different way of looking at and responding to contemporary models of government—in short, a new depiction of the political world.

Foucault’s late work on biopolitics and governmentality has established him as the fundamental thinker of contemporary continental political thought and as a privileged source for our current understanding of neoliberalism and its technologies of power. In this volume, an international and interdisciplinary group of Foucault scholars examines his ideas of biopower and biopolitics and their relation to his project of a history of governmentality and to a theory of the subject found in his last courses at the College de France. Many of the chapters engage critically with the Italian theoretical reception of Foucault. At the same time, the originality of this collection consists in the variety of perspectives and traditions of reception brought to bear upon the problematic connections between biopolitics and governmentality established by Foucault’s last works.

Foucault, Christianity and Interfaith Dialogue develops a new model for interfaith dialogue using the work of the French historian of ideas, Michel Foucault. The author argues that it is the injustice done to the 'Other' by Roman Catholic, Protestant and other centred and unitary models of religious pluralism that allows the introduction of Foucault's de-centring of transcendence and human reason as an alternative model for understanding religious diversity and the role it ought to play, in the constitution of the self and the making of society. This Foucaultian approach provides a new direction for interfaith dialogue in the modern world and leads to an ethical rather than a nihilistic position while fostering a non-unitary theology of religious pluralism and an open-textured process of self-transformation. The author's original and imaginative application and expansion of Foucault's concept of the 'More' from The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) makes important and original contributions to academic work on Foucault and contemporary theology.

A new and important study of the relationship between two key thinkers of the twentieth century.

Michel Foucault has become famous for a series of books that have permanently altered our understanding of many institutions of Western society. He analyzed mental institutions in the remarkable Madness and Civilization; hospitals in The Birth of the Clinic; prisons in Discipline and Punish; and schools and families in The History of Sexuality. But the general reader as well as the specialist is apt to miss the consistent purposes that lay behind these difficult individual studies, thus losing sight of the broad social vision and political aims that unified them. Now, in this superb set of essays and interviews, Foucault has provided a much-needed guide to Foucault. These pieces, ranging over the entire spectrum of his concerns, enabled Foucault, in his most intimate and accessible voice, to interpret the conclusions of his research in each area and to demonstrate the contribution of each to the magnificent -- and terrifying -- portrait of society that he was patiently compiling. For, as Foucault shows, what he was always describing was the nature of power in society; not the conventional treatment of power that concentrates on powerful individuals and repressive institutions, but the much more pervasive and insidious mechanisms by which power "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives" Foucault's investigations of prisons, schools, barracks, hospitals, factories, cities, lodgings, families, and other organized forms of social life are each a segment of one of the most astonishing intellectual enterprises of all time -- and, as this book proves, one which possesses profound implications for understanding the social control of our bodies and our minds.

In 1978 Michel Foucault went to Iran as a distinguished intellectual – but novice political journalist – controversially reporting on the unfolding revolution, undeniably compromising and wounding his reputation in the European intellectual community. Given the revolution’s bloody aftermath and its violent theocratic development, is Foucault’s Iranian expedition simply to be understood as a critical error in judgement, with disastrous consequences for his legacy? What exactly did Foucault hope to achieve in Iran in 1978-1979, explicitly supporting the cause of the revolting masses and effectively isolating himself from the European intellectual community and the Western liberal tradition? The book investigates this open nerve in the Foucault scholarship by interpreting Foucault's primary texts from this period, commenting on the various positions in the scholarship over the past three decades, and eventually proposes that Foucault's 'mistake', resulting from his 'self-consciousness' and 'uncertainty', was indeed a highly philosophical endeavour, but was completely misinterpreted by his contemporaries and even his most noteworthy biographers. The issue of Foucault's involvement in Iran is still a relatively unexplored theme in Foucault research and one that is actually bypassed by the majority of Foucault scholars, since the general view is that it was a breathtaking mistake, comparable to Heidegger's flirtation with National Socialism. This book will provide value and advance knowledge in this area, firstly, by presenting the three concepts that are in my opinion key to understand Foucault's involvement in the Iranian revolution (Otherness, Present history and Political spirituality). Secondly, by providing a thorough overview of what really happened in Iran after Foucault arrived in Tehran in September 1978 (and what really happened was not conforming to the West's idea of progression, but an Iranian idea of progression, on its own terms). Thirdly, by disseminating Foucault's reports back to France, in a detailed and forensic fashion. Fourthly, by providing a solid overview of the interpretations on this issue (however reluctant and scarce) from the scholarship over the past three decades. Fifthly, by presenting Foucault's involvement in the Iranian revolution not as a mistake or a critical error in judgement, but as a deeply philosophical position that actually corresponds to many of Foucault's theoretical positions on power, death, madness, uncertainty, spirituality, Orientalism and Otherness, preceding the revolution in Iran. The detailed historical overview of Foucault's involvement in the Iranian revolution, the responsible and non-polemical overview of the scholarship's attempts to deal with the issue and the author's original interpretation and presentation of the legitimacy of Foucault's presence in Iran from September 1978 to April 1979. In an age where it has become urgent to reinterpret both Shia and Sunni legacies within the context of radicalised Islam, the book argues for a Foucaultian recognition of the 'Orient Other' - as nothing more than 'An Other Self'.

A Companion to Foucault comprises a collection of essays from established and emerging scholars that represent the most extensive treatment of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s works currently available. Comprises a comprehensive collection of authors and topics, with both established and emerging scholars represented Includes chapters that survey Foucault’s major works and others that approach his work from a range of thematic angles Engages extensively with Foucault's recently published lecture courses from the Collège de France Contains the first translation of the extensive ‘Chronology’ of Foucault’s life and works written by Foucault’s life-partner Daniel Defert Includes a bibliography of Foucault’s shorter works in English, cross-referenced to the standard French edition Dits et Ecrits