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Philosophy General

Foucault against Himself

edited by Francois Caillat

translated by David Homel

Publisher
Arsenal Pulp Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2015
Category
General, Philosophers, Gay Studies, Critical Theory
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781551526027
    Publish Date
    Oct 2015
    List Price
    $17.95

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Description

A thought-provoking collection of essays on Michel Foucault that reframes his legacy.

In his private life, as well as in his work and political attitudes, Michel Foucault often stood in contradiction to himself, especially when his expansive ideas collided with the institutions in which he worked. In Francois Caillat's provocative collection of essays and interviews based on his French documentary of the same name, leading contemporary critics and philosophers reframe Foucault's legacy in an effort to build new ways of thinking about his struggle against society's mechanisms of domination, demonstrating how conflict within the self lies at the heart of Foucault's life and work.

Includes a foreword written specially for this edition by Paul Rabinow, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California (Berkeley) and an influential writer on the works of Foucault; he is the co-editor of The Essential Foucault.

Foucault against Himself features essays and interviews by

Leo Bersani, American Professor Emeritus of French at the University of California (Berkeley) and the author of Homos

Georges Didi-Huberman, French philosopher and art historian; his most recent book is Gerhard Richter: Pictures/Series

Arlette Farge, French historian and the author of The Allure of the Archives

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, French philosopher and the author of La derniere lecon de Michel Foucault

About the authors

Francois Caillat is a documentary filmmaker who has taught philosophy; his documentary Foucault contre lui-meme was broadcast in France in 2014. He lives in Paris.

Francois Caillat's profile page

David Homel was born in Chicago in 1952 and left that city in 1970 for Paris, living in Europe the next few years on odd jobs and odder couches. He has published eight novels, from Electrical Storms in 1988 to The Teardown, which won the Paragraph Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2019. He has also written young adult fiction with Marie-Louise Gay, directed documentary films, worked in TV production, been a literary translator, journalist, and creative writing teacher. He has translated four books for Linda Leith Publishing: Bitter Roase (2015), (2016), Nan Goldin: The Warrior Medusa (2017) and Taximan (2018). Lunging into the Underbrush is his first book of non-fiction. He lives in Montreal.

David Homel's profile page

Editorial Reviews

An excellent introduction to [Foucault's] thinking because readers are guided through it by individuals who speak in a conversational and direct way about how Foucault's life informed his work ... Foucault against Himself presents an engaging portrait of the man and his overall refusal to be pinned down to any one category, whether professional or personal. -Gay & Lesbian Review

Gay & Lesbian Review

Michel Foucault is one of the great exemplars of an intellectual never content to rest with the resolutions at which he arrives from one moment to the next. He charts a discernable path from start to finish, but a path that regularly folds back on itself, corrects its wrong turns and takes new substantive directions as the quest for a continuous transformation of himself through his work compels him to do. Foucault against himself: if we heed his precedent, we might avoid falling into the hollow and blind abyss into which the intellectually complacent almost always fall. -Prof. James D. Faubion, Rice University and editor of Foucault Now

Jim Faubion

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