Writing Updates – Foucault’s Last Decade and Foucault: The Birth of Power

I’ve been making a series of posts on these two book projects as I’ve been working on them.

Updates – Foucault: The Birth of Power

1. Aug 10th 2015 – initial work and another visit to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
2. Aug 28th 2015 – work on early period at the Collège de France and another visit to the Bibliothèque Nationale
3. Sept 17th 2015 – drafting discussion of Théories et institutions pénales and on activist work on health and asylums
4. Oct 2nd 2015 – collaborative work and a complete draft of Chapter One on the Lectures on the Will to Know and related materials
5. Oct 21st 2015 – more on his early Collège de France work and drafting Chapter Two on Théories et institutions pénales
6. Nov 16th 2015 – working on The Punitive Society, drafting Chapter Three, work on Chapter Six and giving some talks
7. Nov 23rd 2015 – working at the Bibliothèque Nationale and a meeting with Foucault’s nephew
8. Dec 7th 2015 – working at the IMEC archive and another visit to the Bibliothèque Nationale
9. Dec 17th 2015 – restructuring the drafts of Chapters Four and Six
10. Jan 4th 2016 – Chapter Five and a complete first draft
11. Jan 19th 2016 – clearing the decks and beginning to move from Foucault to Shakespeare
12. March 9th 2016 -Another trip to Paris and submission of the manuscript
13. April 11th 2016 – Another (final?) trip to the Bibliothèque Nationale archive
14. April 28th 2016 – receiving the reader reports, and working on Farge and Foucault, Le désordre des familles
15. May 16th 2016 – revision and resubmission of the manuscript, and table of contents

Updates – Foucault’s Last Decade

1. July 22nd 2013, on the opening parts of the introduction, building a timeline as a work tool, etc.
2. July 29th 2013, on the first chapter ‘Introducing Power’ and Foucault’s lectures on Nietzsche.
3. August 9th 2013, on the ‘Truth and Juridical Forms’ lectures and the 1974 Rio lectures on medicine.
4. October 25th 2013, on the Psychiatric Power course and drafting the second chapter (an amendment of the proposal’s plan, above).
5. November 25th 2013, on initial work for the third chapter, ‘Pervert, Hysteric, Child’
6. December 30th 2013, continuing work on the third chapter, a little of chapter five, initial work on La société punitive, and on lettres de cachet.
7. January 10th 2014, finishing the draft of Chapter Three, a bit more on La société punitive, drafting Chapter Four on ‘Society Must be Defended‘, and some work on Foucault’s collaborative projects.
8. February 7th 2014, working on La société punitive, Surveiller et punir and Discipline and Punish.
9. February 24th 2014, drafting Chapter Five on the first volume of the History of Sexuality; incorporating material on the problem of confession; some difficulties in writing a book.
10. March 9th 2014, finishing the draft of Chapter Five, moving onto some later lecture courses.
11. April 6th 2014, lots of small details, and a temporary hiatus.
12. July 24th 2014, after a long break, returning to the project and drafting Chapter Six.
13. September 5th 2014, further work on Chapter Six, including Foucault’s collaborative projects and his writings on Iran; and drafting Chapter Seven on Du governement des vivants and Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling
14. November 5th 2014, working with the translation On the Government of the Living in Chapter Seven, a review for Berfrois and a forthcoming essay in Historical Materialism, and beginning work on Chapter Eight, with a reading of Subjectivité et vérité.
15. December 1st 2014, further work on Subjectivité et vérité, including for a lecture at Nottingham Contemporary gallery; initial work on The Hermeneutic of the Subject; the relation between lecture courses and History of Sexuality II and III.
16. December 22nd 2014, completing a draft of Chapter Eight, including discussion of The Hermeneutic of the Subject and Technologies of the Self, audio and video recordings, and some issues of dating.
17. January 5th 2015, drafting the first half of Chapter Nine on the two different historical plans of the History of Sexuality and volumes II and III as published. Some comments on the two versions of ‘On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress’.
18. January 21st 2015, drafting the sections on the final two lecture courses, the various discussions of Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’, reference work in the British Library, and searching for obscure texts of Foucault’s.
19. January 23rd 2015, a nearly complete first draft of Foucault’s Last Decade
20. February 11th 2015, lots of work on the manuscript
21. April 23rd 2015 – a second book on The Birth of Power, work at the Bibliothèque Nationale, and a meeting with Daniel Defert
22. May 12th 2015 – work with the Semiotext(e) archive and submission of the Foucault’s Last Decade manuscript for review (see also three updates on the days I spent at the Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley, working through the texts and recordings they have – May 4th, May 5th and May 6th 2015).
23. May 19th 2015 – finishing work with the Semiotext(e) archive.
24. June 26th 2015 – other work while waiting for the reports, and the draft cover blurb
25. July 13th 2015 – revision of manuscript and resubmission, and table of contents
26. March 21st 2016 – advanced copy received and some final reflections