Michel Foucault did not continually revise his earlier texts in the way some other authors do. But some of his books and articles do exist in different versions. This is not always fully recognised, and some of these changes are quite important in tracking his changing ideas and terminology. 

Over the years I’ve been working on Foucault I’ve done quite a lot of comparisons between variant forms of texts, which have informed my writing, and many of which I’ve shared here on Progressive Geographies. I’ve now made a list with an attempt at a comprehensive survey of those texts, with links to comparisons I’ve done or where they can be found elsewhere. There are still texts where comparison is yet to be done.

The list does not include excerpts from Collège de France lectures which have now been published in full. Nor does it include texts which were published in unauthorised editions which have since been reedited in more reliable versions in the Vrin series Philosophie du présent. This is very valuable work, but in those instances the original unauthorised version is fully superseded by the critical edition. What I’m interested in are those texts where Foucault himself published two distinct versions, where both retain an importance in tracing his ideas.

In some instances, Dits et écrits provides a comparative text, marking the changes, but the English translation in Essential Works simply reprints or lightly amends a previous translation of one or other version instead. This is unfortunate, since Essential Works claims to be a translation of texts from Dits et écrits, and the French editors had already done the hard work.

For English translations of short texts by Foucault see Richard Lynch and Daniele Lorenzini’s useful bibliography. As that listing shows, there are often multiple translations of texts, but that is not my purpose with this list – it is to point to comparison of different French versions.

The list is here. As ever with these research resources it is work in progress and comments and corrections are welcome. I hope people working on Foucault find it useful.