I’m very happy to be working with Tony Bruce at Routledge, Stefanos Geroulanos (as co-editor) and Marie Satya McDonough (as translator) on a new translation and critical edition of Michel Foucault’s classic book Birth of the Clinic.
This will be a translation of the 1972 second edition of Naissance de la clinique, with all the variant passages from the 1963 first edition in notes or appendices. We will check, complete and correct Foucault’s references, add some supplementary material by Foucault and others, and write an editorial introduction.
The existing translation by Alan Sheridan is wholly unreliable, a hybrid of parts of the first edition and parts of the second, often switching in the same paragraph or even sentence. The English is a book Foucault never wrote. I have complained about this before.
There are also problems of how the text is translated, especially with medical and philosophical terminology, voice and style. We began work thinking we could amend the existing translation but decided that a fresh version was needed as the basis for the new edition. We believe that through this process the text can become both more accurate and more readable.
It will take a while to bring Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of the Medical Gaze together, but should be a really interesting project.
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On the off-chance you haven’t noticed, and hoping it saves you a little bit of work, the English translation (p. 242 of the Routledge Classics edition) changes “Désastres” to “Désastres de Soya” — which follows neither French edition — and adds a note (p. 246) claiming it’s a work by Sade. In actuality, of course, it’s by Goya and should read “Desastres of Goya”. The changing of G to S and the addition of a note (also present in neither French edition) which is not marked as being by the translator would suggest Sheridan asked Foucault for clarification via letter and misread Foucault’s handwriting. Hope that’s useful
We haven’t got to the Conclusion yet, but thanks for the note. That’s quite a slip.
I’m working on the conclusion today and am so grateful for this note! I found myself even more confused by Sheridan’s emendation “de Soya” than I was by Foucault’s original “Désastres”…
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Any possibility of a publication date on the horizon?
Thanks, Megan in Sydney, Australia.
I think 2027 is likely – we plan to complete the work in early summer 2026.
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