Foucault, Michel 1926-1984

Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison by Michel Foucault ( Book )
58 editions published between 1977 and 2013 in English and Portuguese and held by 3,433 WorldCat member 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 )
126 editions published between 1978 and 2013 in English and Undetermined and held by 3,299 WorldCat member 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

Madness and civilization; a history of insanity in the age of reason by Michel Foucault ( Book )
102 editions published between 1961 and 2013 in English and Undetermined and held by 2,994 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Traces the literary, philosophical, and moral themes of madness as well as its social and theological impact in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries

The order of things : an archaeology of the human sciences by Michel Foucault ( Book )
119 editions published between 1966 and 2013 in 4 languages and held by 2,644 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
When one defines 'order' as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear what Foucault is doing here. He weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology

The archaeology of knowledge by Michel Foucault ( Book )
100 editions published between 1972 and 2013 in 3 languages and held by 2,296 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Madness, sexuality, power, knowledge'are these facts of life or simply parts of speech' In a series of works of astonishing brilliance, historian Michel Foucault excavated the hidden assumptions that govern the way we live and the way we think. The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of "things aid" and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal. A summing up of Foucault's own methadological assumptions, this book is also a first step toward a genealogy of the way we live now. Challenging, at times infuriating, it is an absolutey indispensable guide to one of hte most innovative thinkers of our time

The birth of the clinic; an archaeology of medical perception by Michel Foucault ( Book )
76 editions published between 1973 and 2012 in English and held by 2,010 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
"In this book Michel Foucault, one of the most influential thinkers of recent times, calls us to look critically at specific historical events in order to uncover new layers of significance. In doing so, he challenges our assumptions not only about history, but also about the nature of language and reason, even of truth. By analysing the methods of observation that underpinned the origins of modern medical techniques, Foucault is able to identify 'that opening up of the concrete individual, for the first time in Western history, to the language of rationality, that major event in the relationship of man to himself and of language to things'. The scope of such an undertaking is vast, but it is Foucault's skill that, by means of his uniquely engaging narrative style, his penetrating gaze is able to confront our own. After reading his words our perceptions are never quite the same again."--BOOK JACKET

The Foucault reader by Michel Foucault ( Book )
28 editions published between 1984 and 2010 in English and Undetermined and held by 1,536 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Michael Foucault's writing has shaped the teaching of half a dozen disciplines, ranging from literary criticism to the history of criminology. But none of his books offers a satisfactory introduction to the entire complex body of his work. The Foucault Reader precisely serves that purpose. It contains selections from each area of Foucault's thought, a wealth of previously unpublished writings, and an interview with Foucault during which he discusses his philosophy with unprecedented candor

Power/knowledge : selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 by Michel Foucault ( Book )
56 editions published between 1977 and 2010 in English and held by 1,507 WorldCat member 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

Death and the labyrinth the world of Raymond Roussel by Michel Foucault ( Book )
18 editions published between 1986 and 2004 in English and held by 1,450 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
"Death and the Labyrinth in unique, being Foucault's only work on literature. For Foucault this was "by far the book I wrote most easily and with the greatest pleasure". Here, Foucault explores theory, criticism and psychology through the texts of Raymond Roussel, one of the fathers of experimental writing, whose work has been celebrated by the likes of Cocteau, Duchamp, Breton, Robbe Grillet, Gide and Giacometti." "This revised edition includes an Introduction, Chronology and Bibliography to Foucault's work by James Faubion, an interview with Foucault, conducted only nine months before his death, and concludes with an essay on Roussel by the poet John Ashbery."--BOOK JACKET

History of madness by Michel Foucault ( Book )
19 editions published between 2005 and 2009 in English and held by 1,380 WorldCat member 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