Foucault’s Revised Texts

Foucault did not continually revise his earlier texts in the way some other authors do. But some of his books and articles do exist in different versions. This is not always fully recognised, and some of these changes are quite important in tracking his changing ideas and terminology. 

Over the years I’ve been working on Foucault I’ve done quite a lot of comparisons between variant forms of texts, which have informed my writing, and many of which I’ve shared on Progressive Geographies. The list below is the attempt at a comprehensive survey of those texts, with links to comparisons I’ve done or where they can be found elsewhere. There are still texts where comparison is yet to be done.

The list below does not include excerpts from Collège de France lectures which have now been published in full. Nor does it include texts which were published in unauthorised editions which have since been reedited in more reliable versions in the Vrin series Philosophie du présent. This is very valuable work, but in those instances the original unauthorised version is fully superseded by the critical edition. What I’m interested in here are those texts where Foucault himself published two distinct versions, where both retain an importance in tracing Foucault’s ideas.

In some instances, Dits et écrits provides a comparative text, marking the changes, but the English translation in Essential Works simply reprints or lightly amends a previous translation of one or other version instead. This is unfortunate, since Essential Works claims to be a translation of texts from Dits et écrits, and the French editors had already done the hard work.

Below DE stands for Dits et écrits followed by text number. For English translations of texts in that collection see Richard Lynch and Daniele Lorenzini’s useful bibliography. As that listing shows, there are often multiple translations of texts, but that is not my purpose here – it is to point to comparison of different French versions. 

As ever with these research resources it is work in progress and comments and corrections are welcome. I hope people working on Foucault find it useful.

Books

Maladie mentale et personnalité (1954); revised as Maladie mentale et psychologie (1962). A full comparison is here. Only the second is translated into English as Mental Illness and Psychology, which has been reprinted as Madness: The Invention of an Idea.

Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1961). There are several different editions in French, notably the 1961 original text, the 1964 abridged version as Histoire de la folie, and the 1972 reedition as Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique with a different preface and two appendices. The abridged text was the basis for the first English translation as Madness and Civilisation. The full text of the 1972 edition is translated as History of Madness, which includes the original preface (reprinted as DE #4). For more detail on the editions, see here.

Naissance de la clinique (1963); revised as Naissance de la clinique (1972). The English translation The Birth of the Clinic is an inconsistent and unreliable blend of the two editions. A detailed but partial comparison is provided in the Pléiade Œuvres; a more systematic listing of variants in some parts of the textis here. A full comparative apparatus will be provided in the forthcoming new translation of the text.

Inaugural lecture to the Collège de France on 2 December 1970 – transcript of lecture published by the Collège as L’Ordre du discours in 1971; expanded version based on the written text published by Gallimard in 1971 – detailed comparison here. The Gallimard version has been translated three times; but the original text has not.

Articles and Chapters

“Dire et voir chez Raymond Roussel” (DE #10, 1962), revised as the first chapter of Raymond Roussel(1963). The article begins with material that was used for the book, with some changes; there is then an extensive passage in the book which is not in the article; some more material which appears in the book, again with variations, and then some material which does not appear in the book. The English translation of the article “Saying and Saying in Raymond Roussel”, in Essential Works vol 2, does not print the text in the order it appears in Dits et écrits: it puts the material which is not in the book before the final section which is. Essentially, the English reader who wants to see what is in the French should read Essential Works pages in this sequence: 21-25 [From the start to “the light it sheds on the other works”], then 30-31 [“All these perspectives… but a third or more”], and finally 25-30 [“Every esoteric interpretation… procession of masks”].

“Notice historique”, in Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie du point de vue pragmatique (DE #19, 1964) – a short text, most of which is from Foucault’s secondary thesis introduction (1961), published posthumously as Introduction à l’Anthropologie and translated as Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology – comparison here.

Postface to Gustave Flaubert, Die Versuchung des Heiligen Antonius (DE #20, 1964), published in French in 1967; revised edition as “La bibliothèque fantastique” (DE #75, 1970). The text in DE #20 is a comparative edition of the two texts. The version in Essential Works simply reprints an earlier translation of the 1967 text. Neither the 1970 version nor the comparative text have been translated into English.

“«Les Suivantes»” (DE #32, 1965), revised as the first chapter of Les mots et les choses (1966).

“La prose du monde” (DE #33, 1966), revised as the second chapter of Les mots et les choses (1966).

“La «Grammaire générale» de Port-Royal” (DE #49, 1967), published in Langages 7; revised as preface to the reedited text of the Grammaire générale (DE #60, 1969). DE #60 compares the two versions.

“«Qui êtes-vous, professeur Foucault?»”, (DE #50, 1967), republished in 1969 (DE #61). DE #50 marks the differences. The translation in Jeremy Carrette (ed.), Religion and Culture is of DE #50, and marks the differences with the 1969 additions in brackets.

“Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (DE #53, 1968), revised and expanded as a book in 1973. The book version is translated as This is Not a Pipe. The translation in Essential Works claims to be a translation of the essay, but it is rather an edited version of the book, missing some important differences. Comparison of the texts and detail of why the translation in Essential Works is an inaccurate rendering of the 1968 text, here.

“Réponse à une question” (DE #58, 1968), part of the final two pages (pp. 694-95) used in L’Archéologie du savoir, 1969. 

“Sur l’archéologie des sciences. Réponse au Cercle d’épistémologie” (DE #59, 1968), edited for L’Archéologie du savoir, 1969. 

“Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?”, lecture given in Paris in 1969 (DE #69), translated as “What is an Author?” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice and elsewhere. A different version was given in Buffalo in 1970. The Buffalo lecture was quite different, but the publication claiming to be that text – in Textual Strategies and reprinted elsewhere (see note in #258) – is actually a different translation of the Paris lecture, with some material amended to make it closer to what was said in Buffalo. The comparative edition in Dits et écritscompares these two versions of the Paris text, not the Paris and Buffalo versions. The Buffalo manuscript and recording have recently been rediscovered and are being edited for publication. For a much longer discussion, see here.

“Foreword to the English edition”, The Order of Things, 1970. The French version in Dits et écrits (#72) is a back-translation into French from the English translation. The original French manuscript is in the Foucault archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

“Reply to Derrida” (DE #104, 1972), earlier and different version of “My Body, this Paper, this Fire” (DE #102, 1972), both translated in History of Madness.

“Em torno de Édipo [Autour d’Œdipe]” (DE #122, 1973), excerpt from roundtable discussion in “A Verdade e as formas juridicas [La verité et les formes juridiques]” DE #139, 1974).

“(Sur D. Byzantios)” (DE #135, 1974), text for a gallery catalogue; variant published as “Les Rayons Noirs de Byzantios”, Le Nouvel Observateur, 11 February 1974, 56-57, with some material cut.

“La politique de la santé au XVIII^e siècle” (DE #168, 1976), revised as “La politique de la santé au XVIII^esiècle” (DE #257, 1979). The first version is translated in Power/Knowledge; the second in Foucault Studies 18, 2014.

“Crimes et châtiments en U.R.S.S. et ailleurs” (DE #172, 1976), partly translated as “The Politics of [Soviet] Crime” in Partisan Review and Foucault: Live. The text was also published in Italian in Il manifesto which has some differences from the French. The French and Italian versions were both cut from a longer, unpublished manuscript, which is in the IMEC archives. For some more detail, see here.

“About the Concept of the Dangerous Individual” – 1977 lecture, first published in English, and existing in a few different versions in English and French (DE #220, 1978). For a detailed reconstruction of the textual history, see here.

Introduction to the English translation of Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological (DE #219, 1978); revised as “La Vie: Expérience et Science” (DE #364, 1985) – detailed comparison here.

Introduction to Herculine Barbin, published first in English (see DE #276, 1980); revised and expanded in French as “Le vrai sexe” (DE #287, 1980). The text reprinted as DE #287 marks the variants.

“On Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress”, originally published in English in Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2^nd edition (DE #326, 1983). Foucault revised many of his answers for the French translation (DE #344, 1984).

Foucault’s interview on his book Raymond Roussel, included in the English translation Death and the Labyrinth (conducted 1983; published 1986). The text included in Dits et écrits (#343) claims to be a translation of the English, but it is actually a reprint of a French version of the interview, published in 1985. There are differences between the two versions – the French text is the original. For more details, see here.

Part of the first chapter of Le Souci de soi (1984) was published in 1983 as “Rêver de ses plaisirs: Sur l’«Onirocritique» d’Artémidore” (DE #332). Detailed comparison here.

Introduction to L’Usage des plaisirs (1984) – an earlier version was published as an article in 1983 “Usage des plaisirs et techniques de soi” (DE #338); a version preceding that was published in The Foucault Reader(1984; included as DE #340). Detailed comparison here.