Power: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984

Essential Works of Foucault (1954-1984) #3

by Michel Foucault

'Who since Weber, or perhaps even Hobbes, has done as much to show why power is such a profound, elusive and treacherous presence throughout our experience?' The Times Higher Education

The third and final volume of the Essential Works of Foucault series, Power brings together his writings on the issues that he helped make the core agenda of Western political culture: medicine, prisons, psychiatry, government and sexuality, in particular showing his concerns with human rights, discrimination and exclusion. It also includes articles and open letters published directly in response to the issues of the time, calling for reform in abortion, asylum and the death penalty. All the pieces here bring a new sense of Foucault's huge influence on the politics of personal freedom.

Edited by James D. Faubion
Translated by Robert Hurley and Others

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Politics, Psychology, Academic, France

ebook

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Paul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationships between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.

Reviews

[Priya · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an acceptable reference book since it collects most of his works on power and that, in itself, is both a good and a bad thing. Good because if you have that one quote of Foucault that you can't remember, you are likely to find it here (and the index is well-organised). Bad because, to be all Foucauldian about it, who decides these writings (and not others) are his works on power? Also, it misses out on how Foucault's thinking shifted from the (more) structural foundations of Archaelology... to later writings. These writings do not quite show how Foucault struggled with the concept of writing itself and how he saw the writer's role in creating and communicating texts. Surprisingly, my last book here--Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland --goes well with this one. Next up on the Foucault front, the latest book from his series of lectures-- Security, Territory, Population

[Kate Savage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather than saying what lesson intellectuals should give to others, I would prefer to give you the one I try to give myself. I don’t really know what they mean by “intellectuals,” all the people who describe, denounce, or scold them. I do know, on the other hand, what I have committed myself to, as an intellectual, which is to say, after all, a cerebro-spinal individual: to having a brain as supple as possible and a spinal column that’s as straight as necessary.

Foucault's longer works have a lyricism and depth that maybe can't ever be reached in this collection of interviews, lectures, short essays, and other tid-bits -- but I love the pace of these works, the movement to them. More than just respecting the ideas, I started to feel an immense appreciation for the PERSON who was Michel Foucault, watching him question himself, change, concede to his critics, mock his critics, dig down into real projects of resistance with those at the wrong end of a power imbalance.

The interviews are great for this -- to see him surprised, or harried by a dogged interviewer, and still maintain a kind of easy brilliance and patience. Every interviewer wants to complain that Foucault doesn't tell us What To Do, and each gets a delightful response from a person who never wanted to craft a policy, but rather wanted to make facile answers by policy-crafters impossible, so the real work could be done by large groups of the most affected.

A lot of us who are interested in anarchist thought have been reading David Graeber, who sees Foucault as a paralyzer and distraction. I still think Graeber's more fundamental point is right -- academics who just write essays and want more personal choice can't claim to be The Radicals -- but this volume redeemed Foucault for me as a rebel-thinker.

[Niko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foucault dissects power, restructuring its origins and proving to us, that power is built within societal structures, as well as personal behaviour.
At its core the Penguin Modern Classics work: Power Essential works 1954-1984 examines the power relations between different institutionalised systems established throughout humanity: we move through history to modern theory, with Foucault basically telling us, that modern capitalistic, imperialist systems destabilise our view of the world.

[Nour · Rating 4 out of 5]

The rating is based on it’s importance and impact on my university studies and writings. If it were for Foucaults writing style it would be a 3.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up solely to read "The Lives of Infamous Men" (also available here: http://signsoflife10.files.wordpress....) and, jeez, it does not disappoint. Here is Foucault in transition, Foucault in microcosm, Foucault at his scintillating best. From approximately 6 paragraphs of primary sources (although he's clearly read hundreds more), he fashions an account of power/no-power, fame/infamy, and fable/fiction that is about as good as a twenty-page essay could get. Highly recommended.

Oh, and if you're ever looking for a riposte to Spivak's assertion about the subaltern not speaking (what a terrible article that is!), check out pp. 161-162: "Is not one of the fundamental traits of our society that destiny takes the form of a relation with power, of a struggle with or against it? The brief and strident words that went back and forth between power and the most inessential existences doubtless constitute, for the latter, the only monument they have ever been granted; it is what gives them, for the passage through time, the bit of brilliance, the brief flash that carries them to us. It is doubtless impossible to ever grasp them again in themselves, as they might have been 'in a free state'; they can no longer be separated out from the declamations, the tactical biases, the obligatory lies that power games and power relations presuppose."

[Theryn Fleming]

Power is volume 3 of the Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984. It includes Foucault's essays, lectures, and position papers, as well as interviews, from the years 1972 – 1984. The aim of the Essential Works series is to compile the works that do not appear in Foucault's books, in particular those that seem "central to the evolution of [his] thought" (p.viii). In this volume are Foucault's responses to charges that he "considered truth to be no more than an effect of power, that his thought is a wholesale and nihilistic rejection of the values of the Enlightenment, that he and his work are incapable of contributing to any form of rational and morally responsible action" (p.xvii). The introduction gives an overview of Foucault's work, including main themes, controversies, misinterpretations.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, short, readable, concise essays on Foucault. The interviews with him are really interesting. All three volumes were invaluable in helping me write papers for school:).

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

new modes of subjectivity can be generated via judicial discourse's conceptualization of accountability. and lots of other things, more than I can name.

[Shae C R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's like being in a class taught by Foucault.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm honestly always a bit shocked at how easy Foucault is to read, and how straightforward his arguments are while they also revel in the complexity of the world and the challenges of human relations. This collection of essays focused on power and power relations is a gift that really provides a clear introduction to Foucault's thinking on power and thinking on the methods by which power is both constructed and analyzed, which are more strangely casual than I would have anticipated coming into a book such as this. The first 3/4 of this collection are phenomenal, useful, interesting essays that provide a lot of material to think through and grapple with. The last 1/4 is comprised of smaller essays that kind of demonstrate Foucault's ideas in action, but I found these much less useful than I anticipated, as they seem to lean into the specificity of the situations they're addressing without providing much context, so while the writing is clear the context is gone and with that goes the applicability of the ideas. Still, a phenomenal read from start to finish--and an easier, more convicting one than I'd have thought.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this at the current stage of my intellectual development as I was able to have an insight that Foucault is really laying out the rationale for what eventually became the logic of Neoliberalism. Foucault at his core is a philosophy of control based on the incorrect notion that we cannot ever fully appreciate how our current actions may affect future states and therefore we must necessarily delimit what actions 'free' agents can make through the modes of governance.

In essence Foucauldian philosophy is a philosophy of cowardness and inaction. It is a rejection of the beauty manifest through uniqueness inherent in each person, and a rejection of the concept that the sum of societies constitutive parts can ever be greater than the intentional construction of formal modes of governance which necessarily restrict individuality and creativity.

It makes complete sense that Foucault has been so thoroughly institutionalized into higher education. This orientation to the world is exactly the grist needed to reproduce the social conditions of Neoliberalism.

[Chandar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foucault's analysis shows how power plays an insidious and ubiquitous role in almost every aspect of our lives. Power play is at work be it education, health, psychiatry, sexuality, prisons, government...almost every walk of life. And it has a bearing on human rights and freedom. Foucault's meticulous research on the innocuous origins of these power equations make for fascinating reading.

[Oguz Albayrak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a really good collection of articles, interviews and lecture notes from Michel Foucault, concerning power.
It is possible to trace ideas back and forth between the book, the political reflections of his analyses, ideas and his publications.

[Lobna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not widely familiar with Foucault’s works but this felt like a wide over view of the general areas he wrote in. I would have loved for end notes to be footnotes, especially that I read this as a digital book and going back and forth was not easy with endnotes

[Waris Ahmad Faizi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative!

A well read on Power by Michel Foucault for all Sociologists, Anthropologists, and all the people who in the field of political and social science.

[Raina Isabela · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beginner easy-to-read book to introduce you to Foucault.

[Dyfan Dyfans Dyfanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

He looks like Nosferatu.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting series of essays that will challenge your thinking. Does not mean you will concur and that is a good thing.

[Negusa Nagast · Rating 1 out of 5]

My impression of what Foucault was selling is that everything is oppression.
Families, societies, hospitals, schools, governments.
All the institutions that allow humanity to function is supposedly oppression.
If I were to be facetious, this kind of thinking is akin to believing the electrostatic bonds stabilising our DNA is oppressive, or that the bond a mother has for her baby is a manipultive one of control and power differentials.
My belief is that this kind of pessimissim and cynicism is antihumanist in its core.
I believe it fuels the fires of resentment.
The destruction of our institutions would only bring a deluge of chaos.
Lawlessness is not freedom.
Lawlessness is the enemy of liberty.

[Hudson · Rating 4 out of 5]

can't really remember

[D. Travers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the others in this series, it's a hit and miss collection. For me, this has too many interviews digressing into Foucault's current and past stances on French politics, when certain essays on power, such as the Jan. 15, 1975 lecture in "Abnormal," would have been better to include.

But this is like quibbling about what b-sides should have been included in your favorite band's rarities collection, and I love this series in the same way: It offers an alternate illumination of its subject--through limits, margins, false starts, and apocrypha--that is very different from a book or album, but nonetheless insightful. And, in some ways, more fun.

One essay, "The Subject and Power," provides the most clear and concise explanation of those concepts I've yet to find in his own words. For teachers, a good alternate or addendum to History of Sexuality, v. 1.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of interviews, reviews, prefaces, and op-ed pieces by Foucault on the issues of power and social control. The essays on "Governmentality", the rise of what Foucault calls "social medicine", and the various brief pieces on the role of the intellectual are a very readable introduction to Foucault's ideas on discourse and bio-power. He reminds us in the later pieces that the role of the public intellectual is and should be to create discomfort--- to question those received ideas that make thinking about society and politics too easy, and he repeats something that needs to be said again and again: that to assert human rights is always and ever to seek to limit state power, to force governments to respect the individual subject.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

probably the most useful of the three volumes in the set for political theorists. in this book, some of the better known essays on politics are collected (i.e., 'the subject and power,' 'governmentality,' etc.) however, there were a couple of things in here that i had not read before that were particularly good, such as 'truth and juridical forms' and 'the political technologies of individuals.' the ideas in these essays/lectures aren't unfamiliar to those who have read 'discipline and punish' or 'governmentality' or 'two lectures' (the last of which is conspicuously absent from the collection). however, they are stated or developed in different ways here--often with more citations and references than there were in the other, better known essays.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would not recommend reading this book, but would any of his completed works. There are set of lecture series in this book Foucault gave before publishing his book that was really interesting, and makes one want to read more. However there are small essays or lectures done after a book has been released which feels like walking into an advanced philosophy class four weeks into the semester. Also there are interviews that are shrouded in academic language that seems meaningless, for this I blame the interviewer. So go get another one of his studies and drink Gin and Tonics and learn that every institution we think is eternal(police, courts, hospitals, or the courts) are relative newborns.

[Joel Silverberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've purchased 5 or so books on Foucault's lectures, this being one of them. As far as I can tell, if you like Foucault's ideas, you will love his lectures. Essentially all of them. You can't really go wrong. They are all bangers. It is what it is.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosophy, Foucault, power structures... what else do you need?

[Thorsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed it, and hopefully helped me pass my social science exam! *i hope*!

[Shirin Heidari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nowadays "Ponopticism reigns" over society; Foucault calls it "a Ponoptic society" (70).

[John Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tedious - but covered the subject of power from many angles, in many contexts.