Bøger af Michel Foucault

With vast erudition, Foucault cuts across disciplines and reaches back into seventeenth century to show how classical systems of knowledge, which linked all of nature within a great chain of being and analogies between the stars in the heavens and the features in a human face, gave way to the modern sciences of biology, philology, and political economy. The result is nothing less than an archaeology of the sciences that unearths old patterns of meaning and reveals the shocking arbitrariness of our received truths.In the work that established him as the most important French thinker since Sartre, Michel Foucault offers startling evidence that "man"-man as a subject of scientific knowledge-is at best a recent invention, the result of a fundamental mutation in our culture.

In this brilliant work, the most influential philosopher since Sartre suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.

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.

"This remarkable volume brings together texts that reveal a unique perspective on Foucault's work on the interrelated topics of madness, language, and literature in the second half of the 1960s. Not only do these texts develop analyses and concepts that cannot be found anywhere else in Foucault's oeuvre, but they also show that Foucault's relation to structuralism in those years was far more complex and rich than he himself was ready to acknowledge. They show, more precisely, that between The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge, and specifically in relation to madness, literature, and literary criticism, Foucault turned to structuralism not only to challenge the central role attributed to the human subject, but also to analyze language and human experience as in a way detached from the historical conditions of their emergence and production. Madness, Language, Literature is organized around three main issues: the status and place of the madman in our societies; the relationship between madness, language, and literature in Baroque theater, the theater of cruelty by Antonin Artaud, and the work of Raymond Roussel; and the evolution of literary criticism in the 1960s. A study of the "absence of a work" in Balzac and of the relationship between desire and knowledge in Flaubert completes this ensemble, presenting a side of Foucault somewhat different from the one we know from the texts he published during this time"--

Denne bogs udgangspunkt er de Magritte-billeder, hvori tegningen af en pibe og sætningen ”Dette er ikke en pibe” indgår.Michel Foucault (1926-1984) gennemgår de forskellige tolkninger af det konceptuelle sammenstød mellem tegningen af piben og teksten for at påvise, at maleriets rolle med især Magritte, men også Klee og Kandinsky, har ændret sig.Magritte undgår det fundament af bekræftelse, som ligheden i det klassiske maleri hviler på, ved at sætte den tro kopi og de verbale tegn i spil – i et rum uden afgrænsninger. Tingene kan ikke ligne hinanden. Enten er de tro kopier eller også er de det ikke. For som Magritte formulerer det i sit brev til Foucault, er det kun tanken, der kan ligne, nemlig ved at blive det, den ser, hører eller kender.Dette er ikke en pibe udkom første gang på dansk i 1998 og genudgives nu i Hans Reitzels Forlags serie Klassikere.

Alle tekster skrives, men ikke alle tekster har forfattere, påpeger Michel Foucault i forelæsningen “Hvad er en forfatter?” fra 1969. At betragte skribenter som forfattere er at betragte deres tekst på en særlig måde. Det er at stille nogle bestemte spørgsmål og forvente nogle bestemte svar. Disse spørgsmål går ofte ud på at afkode forfatterens intention, men denne dyrkelse af ophav leder os kun på vildspor. I stedet foreslår Foucault at lade begrebet forfatterfunktionen erstatte ideen om forfatteren som en person. Forelæsningen kan således ses som et forsøg på at besvare nogle af de spørgsmål, der står tilbage efter Roland Barthes’ essay “Forfatterens død” fra 1967.Citat fra bogen:“Det, man burde gøre, var at identificere det rum, der således er ladet tomt tilbage af forfatterens forsvinding, følge fordelingen af lakuner og revner og spejde efter de placeringer, de frie funktioner, som denne forsvinding lader komme til syne.”

Michel Foucault's interest in the history of sexuality began as early as the 1960s, when he taught two courses on the subject. These lectures offer crucial insight into the development of Foucault's thought yet have remained unpublished until recently. This book presents Foucault's lectures on sexuality for the first time in English.

Talens forfatning er den tiltrædelsesforelæsning, som Michel Foucault holdt på Collège de France den 2. december 1970. Forelæsningen i bogform blev første gang udgivet på dansk i 1980. I forbindelse med denne nyudgivelse, der er blevet til i samarbejde med oversætteren Søren Gosvig Olesen, er den tidligere oversættelse og noteapparatet gennemgået kritisk og revideret på en række punkter. Hovedteksten er suppleret med to mindre tekster. Det drejer sig for det første om Foucaults forelæsningsrapport Résumé des cours (Viljen til viden) fra Collège de France (1971), hvor han kort redegør for, hvordan det program han præsenterer i sin tiltrædelsesforelæsning, vil blive videreført i de følgende forelæsninger. Desuden drejer det sig om hans lille, men meget læste artikel ”Nietzsche, genealogien, historien”, som uddyber de ting, Foucault i sin forelæsning siger om genealogien som den nye forskningsstrategi. Endelig afrundes udgivelsen med en samtale, hvor oversætteren taler med Foucault om hans baggrund og forhold til samtiden. Introduktion og oversættelse fra fransk efter L'ordre du discours og La volonté de savoir af Søren Gosvig Olesen. Michel Foucault (1926-1984), fransk idéhistoriker, filosof og psykolog; professor ved Collège de France fra 1970-1984.

Offers an introduction to Foucault's thought.

The Hermeneutics of the Subject is the third volume in the collection of Michel Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France, where faculty give public lectures on any topic of their choosing. Attended by thousands, Foucault's lectures were seminal events in the world of French letters, and his ideas expressed there remain benchmarks of contemporary critical inquiry.Foucault's wide-ranging lectures at this school, delivered throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, clearly influenced his groundbreaking books, especially The History of Sexuality and Discipline and Punish. In the lectures comprising this volume, Foucault focuses on how the "self" and the "care of the self" were conceived during the period of antiquity, beginning with Socrates. The problems of the ethical formation of the self, Foucault argues, form the background for our own questions about subjectivity and remain at the center of contemporary moral thought.This series of lectures continues to throw new light on Foucault's final works, and shows the full depth of his engagement with ancient thought. Lucid and provocative, The Hermeneutics of the Subject reveals Foucault at the height of his powers.

The sixth volume in Foucault's prestigious, groundbreaking series of lectures at the College de France from 1970 to 1984.

This lecture, given by Michel Foucault at the College de France, launches an inquiry into the notion of parresia and continues his rereading of ancient philosophy. Through the study of this notion of truth-telling, of speaking out freely, Foucault re-examines Greek citizenship, showing how the courage of the truth forms the forgotten ethical basis of Athenian democracy. The figure of the philosopher king, the condemnation of writing, and Socrates' rejection of political involvement are some of the many topics of ancient philosophy revisited here.

An examination of the relation between war and politics, by one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkersFrom 1971 until 1984 at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures ranging freely and conversationally over the range of his research. In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault deals with the emergence in the early seventeenth century of a new understanding of war as the permanent basis of all institutions of power, a hidden presence within society that could be deciphered by an historical analysis. Tracing this development, Foucault outlines the genealogy of power and knowledge that had become his dominant concern.

Galskaben er, hvad vi gør den til. I dag klassificerer vi galskab som en ”sygdom”, der skal diagnosticeres og behandles af psykiatere og psykologer. I middelalderens samfund accepterede man de gale som en del af dagliglivet. Først fra omkring 1650 – da orden og struktur kom øverst på dagsordenen – blev de gale isoleret og spærret ind sammen med invalide, fattige, libertinere, folk med kønssygdomme og andre uønskede elementer, der afveg fra eller ”forstyrrede” fornuftens, moralens og samfundets orden. Foucault viser, hvordan de gale individers ekslusion modsvares af en vidensproduktion, der udelukker fornuften i alle dens former og manifestationer. Den psykiatriske beskrivelse af sindslidelserne er, skriver Foucault, forbundet med magten, hvis mål det er at korrigere og normalisere efter den rationelle fornufts rettesnor. Ved at isolere de gale kan de blive objekt for en egentlig psykologi, der hævder at befri eller kurere de gale, men i lige så høj grad er med til at fastholde nogle rigide forestillinger om normalitet og patologi. Sindssygdom og psykologi kan læses som en kort, kondenseret udgave af Foucaults disputats Galskabens historie i den klassiske periode fra 1961. Bogen blev brugt som antipsykiatrisk kampskrift i 1960erne og 70erne, men er i dag lige så aktuel som en analyse af magt og viden i moderne samfund. Sindssygdom og psykologi er oversat fra Maladie mentale et psychologie af Esbern Krause-Jensen. Oversættelsen udkom første gang på dansk i 1972. Denne nye, let reviderede udgave er forsynet med nyskrevet forord ved Jens Erik Kristensen, lektor i idéhistorie, Aarhus Universitet. MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984), professor i idéhistorie ved Collège de France, hører til blandt de seneste årtiers mest indflydelsesrige tænkere. Han er forfatter til en lang række artikler og bøger, deriblandt Ordene og tingene, Seksualitetens historie og Klinikkens fødsel.

Michel Foucault takes us into the first two centuries of our own era, into the Golden Age of Rome, to reveal a subtle but decisive break from the classical Greek vision of sexual pleasure. He skillfully explores the whole corpus of moral reflection among philosophers (Plutarch, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca) and physicians of the era, and uncovers an increasing mistrust of pleasure and growing anxiety over sexual activity and its consequences.

Arrogant, brillant, provokerende, oprørende, men aldrig kedelig er nogle af de ord pressen igennem årene har taget i brug, når den har omtalt Klinikkens fødsel. Her foreligger bogen i en oversættelse og med introduktion af Henning Silberbrandt.Foucaults udgangspunkt er den kendsgerning, at medicinen undergår en afgørende forandring i det attende århundrede. For første gang i historien bliver det muligt at beskrive medicinsk viden med den samme præcision, som tidligere kun tilhørte matematikken. Kroppen bliver et objekt, der kan kortlægges. Sygdom bliver genstand for klassifikation. Og lægerne begynder at beskrive fænomener, som i århundreder har befundet sig på tærsklen til det synlige, og det der var muligt at udtrykke.I Klinikkens fødsel giver filosoffen og den intellektuelle historiker et billede af denne dramatiske forandring i den medicinske viden. Michel Foucault viser i hvor høj grad, det vi betragter som ren videnskab også er et produkt af sociale og kulturelle holdninger – i dette tilfælde af den stemning, der herskede under den franske revolution. Hans bog kaster et nyt lys over oprindelsen til vores nuværende opfattelse af sundhed og sygdom, liv og død.Bogen genudgives nu i Hans Reitzels Forlags serie Klassikere og udkom første gang på dansk i 2000.

"The working hypothesis is this:  it is true that sexuality as experience is obviously not independent of codes and systems of prohibitions, but it needs to be recalled straightaway that these codes are astonishingly stable, continuous, and slow to change.  It needs to be recalled also that the way in which they are observed or transgressed also seems to be very stable and very repetitive. On the other hand, the point of historical mobility, what no doubt change most often, what are most fragile, are modalities of experience." - Michel Foucault  In 1981 Foucault delivered a course of lectures which marked a decisive reorientation in his thought and of the project of a History of Sexuality outlined in 1976.  It was in these lectures that arts of living became the focal point around which he developed a new way of thinking about subjectivity.  It was also the moment when Foucault problematized a conception of ethics understood as the patient elaboration of a relationship of self to self.  It was the study of the sexual experience of the Ancients that made these new conceptual developments possible.  Within this framework, Foucault examined medical writings, tracts on marriage, the philosophy of love, or the prognostic value of erotic dreams, for evidence of a structuration of the subject in his relationship to pleasures (aphrodisia) which is prior to the modern construction of a science of sexuality as well as to the Christian fearful obsession with the flesh.  What was actually at stake was establishing that the imposition of a scrupulous and interminable hermeneutics of desire was the invention of Christianity.  But to do this it was necessary to establish the irreducible specificity of ancient techniques of self. In these lectures, which clearly foreshadow The Use of Pleasures and The Care of Self, Foucault examines the Greek subordination of gender differences to the primacy of an opposition between active and passive, as well as the development by Imperial stoicism of a model of the conjugal bond which advocates unwavering fidelity and shared feelings and which leads to the disqualification of homosexuality.