Foucault, Michel 1926-1984

Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison by Michel Foucault ( Book )
203 editions published between 1975 and 2010 in 21 languages and held by 3,030 libraries worldwide
In this work, the author 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.

The history of sexuality by Michel Foucault ( Book )
291 editions published between 1976 and 2010 in 20 languages and held by 2,539 libraries worldwide
Michel Foucault's 'The History of Sexuality' pioneered queer theory. In it he builds an argument grounded in a historical analysis of the word "sexuality" against the common thesis that sexuality always has been repressed in Western society. Quite the contrary: since the 17th century, there has been a fixation with sexuality creating a discourse around sexuality. It is this discourse that has created sexual minorities. In 'The History of Sexuality', Foucault attempts to disprove the thesis that Western society has seen a repression of sexuality since the 17th century and that sexuality has been unmentionable, something impossible to speak about. In the 70s, when the book was written, the sexual revolution was a fact. The ideas of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, saying that to conserve your mental health you needed to liberate your sexual energy, were popular. The past was seen as a dark age where sexuality had been something forbidden.

The order of things : an archaeology of the human sciences by Michel Foucault ( Book )
235 editions published between 1966 and 2011 in 14 languages and held by 2,214 libraries worldwide
Les sciences humaines d'aujourd'hui sont plus que du domaine du savoir: déjà des pratiques, déjà des institutions. Michel Foucault analyse leur apparition, leurs liens réciproques et la philosophie qui les supporte. Au début du XIXe siècle, une philologie se constitue, une biologie également, une économie politique. Il ne s'agit pas là d'une "histoire" des sciences humaines, mais d'une archéologie de ce qui nous est contemporain. Et d'une conscience critique: car le jour, prochain peut-être, où ces conditions changeront derechef, l' "homme" disparaîtra, libérant la possibilité d'une pensée nouvelle.

The archaeology of knowledge by Michel Foucault ( Book )
186 editions published between 1969 and 2010 in 19 languages and held by 1,991 libraries worldwide
Analyse des ruptures historiographiques qui définissent l'histoire des sciences, considérées ici comme domaines de la connaissance. A partir de la notion d'actes et de seuils épistémologiques définie par G. Bachelard, et de celle de déplacement et de transformation des concepts de G. Canguilhem, le philosophe examine les enchaînements et les hiérarchies qui façonnent l'actualité du savoir.

Madness and civilization : a history of insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault ( Book )
125 editions published between 1961 and 2009 in 14 languages and held by 1,832 libraries worldwide
Challenging entrenched views of madness and reason, History of Madness is one of the classics of 20th century thought. It is Foucaultʼs first major work, written in a dazzling and sometimes enigmatic literary style. It also introduces many of the inspiring and radical themes that he was to write about throughout his life, above all the nature of power and social exclusion. History of Madness begins in the Middle Ages with vivid descriptions of the exclusion and confinement of lepers. Why Foucault asks, when the leper houses were emptied at the end of the Middle Ages, were they turned into places of confinement for the mad? Why, within the space of several months in 1656, was one out of every hundred people in Paris confined? Foucaultʼs bold and controversial answer is that throughout modern history, madness has meant isolation, repression and exclusion. Even the Enlightenment, which attempted to educate and include the mad, ended up imprisoning them in a moral world. As Foucault famously declared to a reporter from Le Monde in 1961, ʺMadness exists only in society. It does not exist outside the forms of sensibility that isolate it, and the form of repulsion that expel it or capture it.ʺ Shifting brilliantly from Descartes and early Enlightenment thought to the founding of the Hopital General in Paris and the work of philanthropists and early psychiatrists such as Philippe Pinel and Samuel Tuke, Foucault focuses throughout not only on the philosophical and cultural values attached to the mad. He also urges us to recognize the creative forces that madness represents, drawing on examples from Goya, Nietzsche, Van Gogh and Artaud. History of Madness is an inspiring and classic work that challenges up to understand madness, reason and power and the forces that shape them. Also includes information on alienation, animal spirits, asylums, Hieronymus Bosch, brain, burning at the stake, Christ and symbolism, classical age, confinement, convulsions, crime, delirium, dementia, dreams, alienation and exclusion, fear, God, hallucinations, hospitals, houses of confinement, houses of correction, hysteria, the insane, lunatics, mania, melancholy, mind, morality, positivism, prisons, poverty, punishment, the Renaissance, the French Revolution, sin, soul, suicide, symbolism, treatments, vapours, venereal disease, water, wisdom, witchcraft, women, work, workhouses, etc.

The birth of the clinic; an archaeology of medical perception by Michel Foucault ( Book )
159 editions published between 1963 and 2009 in 13 languages and held by 1,821 libraries worldwide
Philosophische Abhandlung Michel Foucaults über die Macht und Hierarchie in staatlichen Institutionen sowie deren Auswirkung auf die Personen, die sich in diesen Institutionen aufhalten.

The Foucault reader by Michel Foucault ( Book )
24 editions published between 1984 and 2010 in English and held by 1,465 libraries worldwide

Madness and civilization; a history of insanity in the age of reason by Michel Foucault ( Book )
34 editions published between 1963 and 2007 in 5 languages and held by 1,450 libraries worldwide

Power/knowledge : selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 by Michel Foucault ( Book )
38 editions published between 1977 and 2009 in English and Undetermined and held by 1,315 libraries worldwide
"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." http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/random046/79003308.html.

This is not a pipe by Michel Foucault ( Book )
45 editions published between 1968 and 2010 in 9 languages and held by 1,239 libraries worldwide
This volume contains the author's classic essay on the complex relationship between language and image in René Magritte's iconic painting. What does it mean to write "This is not a pipe" across a bluntly literal painting of a pipe? The painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe, which was Magritte's point. By exploring the nuances and ambiguities of Magritte's visual critique of language, he finds the painter less removed than previously thought from the pioneers of modern abstraction. The author's essay offers a view of a painter whose influence and popularity continue to grow unchecked.