Category Archives: Michel Foucault

Discipline, Punish, Examine and Produce: Foucault’s La société punitive – Stuart Elden @berfrois

Update September 2025: the Berfrois site is now closed and the archive has been removed. My piece can now be found here. My review of Foucault’s La société punitive has now been published at Berfrois.

Posted in Michel Foucault | 3 Comments

‘Territory and Transgression: A Conversation with Stuart Elden’ @thepolisblog

A long interview with me, conducted by Peter Sigrist, has just been published at Polis. It covers most of my current and past interests, including territory, Lefebvre, Foucault, Sloterdijk, Heidegger, politics,  my time in Israel/Palestine, publishing, literature and film… Many … Continue reading →

Posted in Bruno Latour, Foucault's Last Decade, Mapping the Present, Michel Foucault, My Publications, Peter Sloterdijk, Politics, Publishing, Ray Brassier, Society and Space, Speaking Against Number, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Birth of Territory, Travel, Universities, urban/urbanisation, Writing | 1 Comment

State, Power, Freedom: European Political Theory – outline for teaching next year

One of the things I was looking forward to, now back in a Politics department, was to teach some political theory. So, this is the outline of a planned module for either final year undergraduates or MA students. It revolves … Continue reading →

Posted in Giorgio Agamben, Henri Lefebvre, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, teaching | 1 Comment

Beyond Discipline and Punish: Is it time for a new translation of Foucault’s Surveiller et punir?

Alan Sheridan’s translation of Foucault’s Surveiller et punir as Discipline and Punish is almost forty years old, and it is sometimes said that great works of literature need to be retranslated each generation. (For some examples of this for works … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Publishing | 39 Comments

Foucault, Ann Radcliffe and the geography of crime – a question on La société punitive

[Update: apologies, but the editor of the course, Bernard Harcourt, notes that this text is an ‘apocryphal novel’ on p. 62 n. 18. Don’t know how I missed that. Nonetheless, it does rather the question of whether the translation into … Continue reading →

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Progressive Geographies’s Foucault and Lefebvre resource pages

There are now two pages of Foucault resources and Lefebvre resources – gathering a few different posts on this site together. They include short translations, the reading guide to Lefebvre and a few other bits and pieces. There is not … Continue reading →

Posted in Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault | 1 Comment

Works of twentieth-century theory that exist in new or revised translations – further examples wanted

As I said I would last week, I’m preparing a detailed post on why we need a new translation of Foucault’s Surveiller et punir, and was thinking of other major works of twentieth-century theory that exist in more than one translation. There … Continue reading →

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Publishing | 7 Comments

Re-reading the first two chapters of Discipline and Punish and Surveiller et punir

I’ve spent the day in the State Library of Victoria, re-reading the first two chapters of Discipline and Punish and comparing them carefully to Surveiller et punir. This took me much longer than anticipated. I knew this text well – I’ve taught it quite a … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Publishing | 3 Comments

In Melbourne, visiting Monash University

I’m spending the next several weeks in Melbourne, visiting Monash University as part of the Monash-Warwick alliance. As anyone following the tennis will know, it’s extremely hot here at the moment. But I’m finding libraries and offices to work in, … Continue reading →

Posted in Conferences, Michel Foucault, Travel | 2 Comments

Foucault’s Last Decade – seventh update

Recent work has been across a number of chapters. First, further work on Chapter Three entitled ‘Pervert, Hysteric, Child’. As well as the pieces I wrote on Psychiatric Power and The Abnormals, in my files I also had a draft … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault | Leave a comment