Category Archives: Michel Foucault

Le thermomètre de Foucault, 9 Jan 2026, organised by Grégoire Chamayou, Frédéric Keck and Jean-Claude Monod

Le thermomètre de Foucault, 9 Jan 2026, Journée d’étude organisée par Grégoire Chamayou (CNRS-ENS Paris), Frédéric Keck (CNRS-EHESS Paris) et Jean-Claude Monod (CNRS-ENS Paris). Dans sa généalogie des savoirs biopolitiques, Michel Foucault a beaucoup parlé des milieux mais peu du climat. Pourtant, … Continue reading

Posted in Conferences, Michel Foucault | Leave a comment

My favourite academic books of 2025

A list of academic books I liked published in 2025, or late 2024, or in paperback this year. Many of the books I read this year were published years ago; some of the 2025 ones I’ve bought or have been … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Kojève, Books, Boundaries, Clémence Ramnoux, Ernst Kantorowicz, Erwin Panofsky, Gaston Bachelard, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Gilles Deleuze, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, Pierre Bourdieu, Theory, William Shakespeare | Leave a comment

My publications in 2025 – on Koyré, Foucault, Lefebvre and some reviews

Most of this year was spent working on my very long manuscript Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France, which is coming together but has been hard work to reach this point. I have shared a few updates on the research and … Continue reading

Posted in Adam David Morton, Alexandre Koyré, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Henri Lefebvre, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, William Shakespeare | Leave a comment

Books received – Leshem, Arviddson, Natter and Réfrégier, Pawelski

Noam Leshem, Edges of Care: Living and Dying in No Man’s Land, the reedition of Stefan Arviddson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology As Ideology and Science, Henri Natter and Adam Réfrégier, Five Years Behind Hitler’s Barbed Wire:A Diary of French Officers … Continue reading

Posted in Boundaries, Michel Foucault | 1 Comment

On the Trail of a Misplaced Reference in Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic

In Birth of the Clinic, Foucault quotes a passage which he incorrectly references to “S.A.D. Tissot, Avis aux gens de lettres sur leur santé, Lausanne, 1767, p. 28”. As part of the work for the new translation and edition of this text, we are … Continue reading

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Christopher Penfield, Deleuze’s Foucault: A Virtual Force Ontology – Edinburgh University Press, April 2026

Christopher Penfield, Deleuze’s Foucault: A Virtual Force Ontology – Edinburgh University Press, April 2026 Thanks to dmf for the link – looks good but expensive, even for the e-book

Posted in Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault | 1 Comment

Boris Porshnev – from peasant revolts in 17th century France to cryptozoology and the quest for the Soviet Yeti

I first read the work of the Soviet historian Boris Fyodorovich Porshnev because of Michel Foucault. (His name is sometimes transliterated, especially in France, as Porchnev.) In his 1971-72 Collège de France lectures, Penal Theories and Institutions, Foucault spends the first … Continue reading

Posted in Boris Porshnev, Foucault: The Birth of Power, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Books received – Porshnev, Jameson, Coveney, de Menasce, Foucault, Medby, Chimisso, Blencowe, Braudel, Jakobson

A few books bought recently, mostly second-hand; Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, Cristina Chimisso, Hélène Metzger, Historian and Historiographer of the Sciences, Ingrid Medley, Arctic State Identity and Claire Blencowe, Spirits of Extraction, in recompense for review work; and Foucault’s … Continue reading

Posted in Boris Porshnev, Fernand Braudel, Fredric Jameson, Ludwig Binswanger, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Michel Foucault’s 24 May 1979 paper on hermaphrodites to the Arcadie conference

An earlier piece discussed the recently published Les Hermaphrodites, a manuscript by Foucault from the mid-late 1970s, at one point destined for a volume of the History of Sexuality. I also outlined the different plans Foucault discussed for the structure of the History of Sexuality series – … Continue reading

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Paul Veyne, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Foucault’s Multiple Plans for his History of Sexuality

Some years ago, Philippe Chevallier alerted me to the importance of the 1977 German translation of the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality as Sexualität und Wahrheit: Der Wille zum Wissen. This text included a brief preface by Foucault … Continue reading

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment