Leçon inaugurale de Michel Foucault – L’ordre du discours

Quelle est cette volonté de vérité dans nos discours, qui a traversé tant de siècles de notre histoire ? demande Michel Foucault dans sa leçon inaugurale. Qu’est ce qui est en jeu, sinon le désir et le pouvoir? Quelles sont les procédures de contrôles et de délimitation du discours?

https://www.franceculture.fr/player/export-reecouter?content=23619276-1b2b-43d1-93ba-5e3ca08ac882 [update: the audio is no longer available; see here]

This isn’t nearly as interesting as I’d imagined when I found the link. Foucault’s inaugural lecture at the Collège de France from 2 December 1970 has been re-recorded by Léon Bonnaffé. As far as I am aware, there are no recordings of the original lecture, which is a shame for two reasons – first, obviously it would be nice to be able to hear Foucault give the talk; but also because the version published as L’ordre du discours is not the text as actually delivered, as it includes some additional passages.

However, at the beginning of this recording, there is a short snippet of Foucault himself speaking, talking about the role of professors at the Collège de France .

There are many audio and video recordings of Foucault found in various places online. I’ve tried to compile all these and put them in chronological order on a page on this site.