Gregg Lambert, The Elements of Foucault, University of Minnesota Press | 152 pages | May 2020
Posthumanities Series, volume 55
ISBN 978-1-5179-0878-2 | paper | $23.00
ISBN 978-1-5179-0877-5 | cloth | $92.00

A new conceptual diagram of Foucault’s original vision of the biopolitical order

The history around the critical reception of Michel Foucault’s published writings is troubled, according to Gregg Lambert, especially in light of the controversy surrounding his late lectures on biopolitics and neoliberal governmentality. In this book, Lambert’s unique approach distills Foucault’s thought into its most basic components to more fully understand its method and its own immanent rules of construction.

The Elements of Foucault presents a critical study of Foucault’s concept of method from the earlier History of Sexuality, Volume 1, to his later lectures. Lambert breaks down Foucault’s post-1975 analysis of the idea of biopower into four elements: the method, the conceptual device (i.e…