The Early Foucault is the latest volume of my sequence of studies of Foucault for Polity Press, published in June 2021. It examines Foucault’s work from 1949 to the publication of History of Madness in 1961. The first post below gives some more detail on the initial idea; subsequent posts provide updates on the research undertaken. There is a post at the Polity blog which discusses the book here.
And for the British Academy I discuss the book in one of their 10 minute talks here.
While doing the research for this book and the previous two, I have been sharing some research tools such as bibliographies, short translations, textual comparisons and so on. They can all be found here.
Further details of my earlier books Foucault’s Last Decade (Polity Press 2016), Foucault: The Birth of Power (Polity Press 2017) can be found here, including updates on their writing. I have now begun work on the fourth and final (or second, chronologically) volume of this sequence, under the working title of ‘The Archaeology of Foucault’. Research updates for that book can be found here.
A side project led to a book on Canguilhem, for Polity’s Key Contemporary Thinkers series, published in 2019 (more details here).
The Early Foucault – beginning work on a possible book – December 2nd 2016
The Early Foucault update 1: a week at the Bibliothèque Nationale – December 7th 2016
The Early Foucault update 2: Uppsala, Binswanger, Lacan and Bedlam – January 11th 2017
The Early Foucault update 3: Another week at the Bibliothèque Nationale – January 23rd 2017
The Early Foucault update 4: Merleau-Ponty, Canguilhem, a week in the archive and a book contract… – February 21st 2017
The Early Foucault update 5: Canguilhem, Merleau-Ponty, Politzer, Lacan… – April 4th 2017
The Early Foucault update 6: Foucault’s teachers, and returning to his work on Binswanger – April 12th 2017
The Early Foucault update 7: Canguilhem, Barraqué, von Weizsäcker, and a short trip to the Bibliothèque Nationale – June 2nd 2017
The Early Foucault update 8: two days in the Carolina Rediviva library, Uppsala – June 22nd 2017
The Early Foucault update 9: from Shakespeare back to Foucault and Canguilhem – August 9th 2017
The Early Foucault update 10: translations of Binswanger, von Weizsäcker and by ‘G-J Verdeaux’ – August 25th 2017
The Early Foucault update 11: working in the Canguilhem archive at the École normale supérieure and at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève – September 8th 2017
The Early Foucault update 12: A writing/cycling retreat and some time in London’s libraries – September 29th 2017
The Early Foucault update 13: Writing during termtime – October 20th 2017
The Early Foucault update 14: another month of slow, steady progress – November 20th 2017
The Early Foucault update 15: Working on Maladie mentale et personnalité and some archival and library work in Paris – December 15th 2017
The Early Foucault update 16: Other writing, and working on the Lille courses, the Hegel thesis and Canguilhem in Paris – February 9th 2018
The Early Foucault update 17: Canguilhem, Beinecke library and back to Foucault – April 19th 2018
The Early Foucault update 18: back to work, and thinking about the 1960s – August 10th 2018
The Early Foucault update 19: A Writing and Cycling Retreat in the Peak District – August 27th 2018
The Early Foucault update 20: Paris, some cautions and future work – October 1st 2018
The Early Foucault update 21: Pushing gravel uphill – November 1st 2018
The Early Foucault update 22: Acéphale, Critique, Foucault’s thesis, Uppsala, Sussex -December 14th 2018
The Early Foucault update 23: the Hegel thesis and other manuscripts, Jean Wahl and Maladie mentale – February 1st 2019
The Early Foucault update 24: textual comparisons and archive work at BnF, CAPHÉS and IMEC – February 15th 2019
The Early Foucault update 25: back after a long break on other projects – July 26th 2019
The Early Foucault update 26: Defert, Wahl, Warsaw, Hamburg, Dumézil – August 23rd 2019
The Early Foucault update 27: Paris, Kant, Wales – September 30th 2019
The Early Foucault update 28: second half of the manuscript, Swiss archives and asylums – November 12th 2019
The Early Foucault update 29: Paris, Tübingen and a book on the 1960s – 23rd January 2020
The Early Foucault update 30: working at the BnF, Collège de France, Archives Nationales, and Sorbonne – 10th February 2020
The Early Foucault Update 31: IMEC, Paris, Uppsala and the impact of the coronavirus – 24th March 2020
The Early Foucault Update 32: Unable to finish a manuscript during lockdown – 4th May 2020
The Early Foucault Update 33: Completion of the manuscript, expanded table of contents, and moving into production – 2nd October 2020
Progressive Geographies 