I have discussed Foucault’s two visits to Buffalo before. First, most briefly, in Foucault: The Birth of Power (2017). In that book, which is on the first half of the 1970s, I simply indicated that Foucault gave some lectures in Buffalo (pp. 12, 31, 40). I mention the ones on Flaubert, Sade, Nietzsche and ‘What is an Author?’ in 1970, and a course in 1972, giving the title ‘The Will to Truth in Ancient Greece’, and mentioning that it discussed Oedipus, Hesiod, Homer, Sophocles and Euripides’ Bacchae, and the history of money. At that time, my key sources were Daniel Defert’s chronology in Dits et écrits and his editorial material in Lectures on the Will to Know. I also discussed Foucault’s side-trip to Attica prison in April 1972, which he visited with John K. Simon, his main host at Buffalo (pp. 136-37). A discussion between them about Attica was published and is reprinted here; which followed their earlier discussion in Partisan Review which, among other themes, reflects on the University in France and North America, available here.

There is more detail about Foucault’s visits to Buffalo in The Archaeology of Foucault (2023). Even though that book concentrates on the 1960s, in the Coda it felt appropriate to discuss the 1970 visit (pp. 198-204), with some other comments on his lectures (pp. 44, 56, 128, 133-35, 149, 192-93). Part of the reason for a focus again on 1970 is that there a thematic link – Foucault was mainly teaching on literature, which I discuss in the book. The other reason was that because a new source became available to me – there is a copy of some of the material from the University at Buffalo archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. I was told about this material and was able to make use of it in The Archaeology of Foucault. One of the things I was able to stress there is that the different lectures in 1970 had been part of a course with the title “The desire for knowledge or the phantasms of knowledge in French literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”. This was the theme which linked together various lectures on Sade, Balzac and Flaubert, and, outside the French focus, Nietzsche. I also added a little detail about the 1972 courses, the visit to Attica, which was with law professor Herman Schwartz as well as with Simon, and Foucault’s support of the prison activist Martin Sostre, which I took from newspaper reports (pp. 207-8).

Until now I had not been able to get to the Buffalo archives myself. It had been on a wish list for some time, and I’d hoped it would have been possible in 2020. But the pandemic restrictions on travel and more recently my own health problems meant I wasn’t able to get to Buffalo until March 2025. An invitation to give a lecture at the University, in the Just Theory series of the Department of Comparative Literature, gave me the opportunity for a short visit to the archives. 

There are three folders in the Buffalo archives, and eight digital recordings, transferred from older tapes. One of the folders is a brief biographical file; the other two relate to the 1970 and 1972 visits. The richness of the material is mainly due to John K. Simon’s correspondence with Foucault being included, but there is a lot beyond this. There are over 400 pages across the files – mostly letters, internal memos, flyers, offprints but also some original photographs, including ones by Bruce Jackson, newspaper clippings, voting slips, and even Foucault’s nameplate from what I assume was his office door. Some material has been redacted, and some is copied in Paris, but there is a lot of information beyond what I knew before. The recordings last for over twenty hours. It would have been great if there was a comparable amount of material for Foucault’s autumn 1972 visit to Cornell, but my requests to archivists there have yielded almost nothing. What I do know of Foucault in Cornell is outlined here.

My fuller treatment of the Buffalo archives will be published in Foucault Studies, along with a detailed discussion of the 1972 course by Leonhard Riep. Both essays, as all pieces in that journal, will be open access. The 1972 Buffalo course, whose final title was “Histoire de la vérité”, is due to be published later this year [Update: here]. Almost all of the recordings at Buffalo relate to that course. But two lectures seem to be part of the 1970 course. 

Equally, as I realised a few years ago, the version of “What is an Author?” published in Textual Strategies is not the Buffalo lecture. Rather it is an edited version of the Paris lecture, in a different translation to the one in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, with a few additions from Buffalo at the end. The complete Buffalo lecture is transcribed in the Buffalo archive and its manuscript is in Paris. The Buffalo lecture will be published in a future volume of Foucault’s texts.

On the basis of these materials these were the courses Foucault gave in Buffalo:

1970 lecture series: “The desire for knowledge or the phantasms of knowledge [désir de savoir ou les fantasmes du savoir] in French literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” 

There were also lectures on Manet and ‘What is an Author?’

1972 seminar: “The Criminal in the Literature of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries”

1972 lecture series: “The Origins of Culture”; renamed as “History of Truth”

(Although the 1970 course title might be better rendered as “The desire to know…”, the above is the way Simon translates it for Buffalo advertising.)

My piece for Foucault Studies will give some more details of the 1970 course, and in particular indicate that some of its parts have been published, but that the order of the material and their integrated treatment as a course has generally not been recognised. It comprised lectures on Sade, Balzac, Flaubert, and Nietzsche, and possibly other figures. My fuller treatment also discusses what the archives indicate about Foucault’s other lectures in North America during these early 1970s visits. Together with Leonhard Riep’s piece it will comprise a ‘Buffalo dossier’ for Foucault Studies, shedding some new light on Foucault’s early visits to North America.

Update November 2025: my article in Foucault Studies is now available here (open access).

References

Stuart Elden, Foucault: The Birth of Power, Cambridge: Polity, 2017.

Stuart Elden, The Archaeology of Foucault, Cambridge: Polity, 2023.

Stuart Elden, “Foucault at Buffalo in 1970 and 1972: The Desire for Knowledge; The Criminal in Literature; and The History of Truth”, Foucault Studies, forthcoming 2025. [now available here]

Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits 1954–1988, eds. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Paris: Gallimard, 4 vols, 1994.

Michel Foucault, Leçons sur la volonté de savoir: Cours au Collège de France, 1970–1971, suivi de Le savoir d’Œdipe, ed. Daniel Defert, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2011; Lectures on the Will to Know: Lectures at the Collège de France 1970–1971, trans. Graham Burchell, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013.

Michel Foucault, La Grande étrangère: À propos de littérature, ed. Philippe Artières, Jean-François Bert, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville and Judith Revel, Paris: Éditions EHESS, 2013; Language, Madness, Desire: On Literature, trans. Robert Bononno, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Michel Foucault, Théories et institutions pénales: Cours au Collège de France (1971–1972), ed. Bernard E. Harcourt, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil/EHESS, 2015; Penal Theories and Institutions: Lectures at the Collège de France 1971-1972, trans. Graham Burchell, London: Palgrave, 2019.

Michel Foucault, Folie, langage, littérature, ed. Henri-Paul Fruchaud, Daniele Lorenzini and Judith Revel, Paris: Vrin, 2019; Madness, Language, Literature, trans. Robert Bononno, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023.

Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Cours, conférences et travaux, ed. Bernard Harcourt, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil/EHESS, 2024.

Michel Foucault, Histoire de la verité: Cours au département de français de l’Université d’État de New York à Buffalo Mars et avril 1972, ed. Henri-Paul Fruchaud and Orazio Irrera, Paris: Vrin, forthcoming, 2025.

Michel Foucault and John K. Simon, “Michel Foucault on Attica: An Interview”, Social Justice 18 (3), 1991, 26-34 (originally published in Telos 19, 1974, 154-61).

Leonhard Riep, “‘The History of Truth’—Foucault in Buffalo, 1972”, Foucault Studies, forthcoming 2025. [now available here]

John K. Simon, “A Conversation with Michel Foucault”, Partisan Review 38 (2), 1971, 192-201.

Archives

Bibliothèque nationale de France – 

• NAF 28730, Fonds Michel Foucault
• NAF 29005, Archives personnelles et professionnelles Michel Foucault – Daniel Defert

University at Buffalo special collections – 

• 16-6-596: Department of Modern Languages Personnel Files, 1960-1980, box 2, Foucault, Michel, Spring 1970
• 16-1-444: Faculty of Arts and Letters Personnel Files, 1972-1973, box 2, “Foucault, Michel, Visiting Professor 8/31/72”
• Biographical File Collection, “Michel Foucault”
• Audio recordings WBFOUK1010, four parts and WBFOUK1011, four parts

Thanks to Leonhard Riep for sharing his article ahead of publication, and for helpful orientations; Marcelo Hoffman and Daniele Lorenzini for useful discussions; Luke Folk and Krzysztof Ziarek for the invitation to Buffalo; and William Offhaus and Hope Dunbar and their colleagues at the University at Buffalo special collections for access to archival material about Foucault’s time there.

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This is the sixteenth post of an occasional series, where I try to post short essays with some indications of further reading and sources, but which are not as formal as something I’d try to publish more conventionally. They are usually tangential to my main writing focus, a home for spare ideas, asides, dead-ends and possible futures. I hope there is some interest in them. They are provisional and suggestions are welcome. 

The full list of ‘Sunday histories’ is here.