Michel Foucault began the first of his 1983 lectures on The Government of Self and Others with a few comments on the peculiar challenges of lecturing to a public with whom — given the nature of the Collège de France — he could have little direct contact, went on to offer a concise (and elegant) review of the line of research he had been pursuing, and closed with a few comments on the text he had chosen as his point of departure:

This week I would like to start with, how to put it, not exactly an excursus: a little epigraph (exergue). As epigraph, I would like to study a text which may not be situated exactly within the reference points I will choose for most of this year. Nevertheless, it appears to me to be very exactly in line with, and to formulate in rigorous terms…