Michel Foucault, Against Himself: Arlette Farge Remembers Foucault on the Streets of Paris, Literary Hub, 16 Nov 2015

The following conversation with French historian Arlette Farge is excerpted from Michel Foucault, Against Himself, a collection of interviews and essays exploring the contradictions and conflicts at the heart of Michel Foucault’s life and work.

You met Foucault after the events of May 1968.

Arlette Farge: I first became acquainted with him through his work in 1975, when Discipline and Punish came out. Back then I was a teacher for young educators who wanted to work in the penitentiary system, so I knew a lot about what Michel Foucault was discussing, and the way, for example, he would go into prisons to read Discipline and Punish out loud to the prisoners. I admired him. Back then, street demonstrations, anything concerning freedom, utopia, the prison system, happiness, life that’s…