I’ve been in Paris the last few days, doing some work on the Foucault project. The two main things were some work at the Bibliothèque Nationale and meeting Daniel Defert to talk about Foucault’s work. I’ll say a bit more in the next update on the book.

Given online bookstores, a trip to Paris is no longer quite the same in terms of books bought. I’ve done many trips where at the end the wallet has been much lighter and the suitcase full. This time I just bought the new Foucault collection from Vrin, a reedition of his piece on Bataille, and two books that I’ve read before which I wanted to have for reference – de Certeau’s La possession de Loudun and Arlette Farge Vivre dans la rue… Both were important to Foucault. The last book is one that Defert said I should look at. Duby was a colleague of Foucault’s at the Collège de France, and Defert suggested that this book, in particular, was significant for Foucault’s work. [Update: I’ve since seen that the book is briefly mentioned in The Use of Pleasures.]