Today is the fortieth anniversary of Foucault’s death. The Collège de France are putting the surviving audio recordings of his lectures online – Le Pouvoir psychiatrique is up now, with others to follow.

I’ve previously listed audio and video recordings of Foucault, which included some of these lectures, but this seems like a more systematic editing project – and I hope the links remain stable.

À l’occasion du quarantième anniversaire de la disparition de Michel Foucault, le 25 juin 1984, le Collège de France met en ligne à disposition du public les enregistrements de certains de ses cours au Collège de France, effectués par les auditeurs et confiés au service des archives de l’établissement.

Si ces documents sont connus et ont fait l’objet d’une édition critique au Seuil, cette mise en ligne des enregistrements est aujourd’hui possible avec l’aimable autorisation des ayants droit de Michel Foucault et des éditions du Seuil.

Les enregistrements correspondants au cours de l’année 1973-1974 sur Le Pouvoir psychiatrique sont d’ores et déjà disponibles sur la page de la chaire de Michel Foucault.

There are no known surviving recordings of the first three courses – though a course elsewhere was recently rediscovered, so it’s not impossible they are out there somewhere. For the early courses they used Foucault’s manuscripts, or a transcription made at the time, as the basis for publication; with the later courses they were transcribed from these recordings, with the course manuscript used to a greater or lesser extent – manuscripts were used less for the first courses published, and progressively more over time. The courses are now being reedited for the Points series.

Much less is known about what happened in the parallel seminars Foucault ran for his first decade teaching at the Collège. Although some publications developed from these, I still think more work could be done on these. There are rumours of some recordings of these too. For a list of the pre-announced titles see here.