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Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977

Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

Michel Foucault has become famous for a series of books that have permanently altered our understanding of many institutions of Western society. He analyzed mental institutions in the remarkable Madness and Civilization; hospitals in The Birth of the Clinic; prisons in Discipline and Punish; and schools and families in The History of Sexuality. But the general reader as well as the specialist is apt to miss the consistent purposes that lay behind these difficult individual studies, thus losing sight of the broad social vision and political aims that unified them.

Now, in this superb set of essays and interviews, Foucault has provided a much-needed guide to Foucault. These pieces, ranging over the entire spectrum of his concerns, enabled Foucault, in his most intimate and accessible voice, to interpret the conclusions of his research in each area and to demonstrate the contribution of each to the magnificent - and terrifying - portrait of society that he was patiently compiling.

For, as Foucault shows, what he was always describing was the nature of power in society; not the conventional treatment of power that concentrates on powerful individuals and repressive institutions, but the much more pervasive and insidious mechanisms by which power "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives."

Foucault's investigations of prisons, schools, barracks, hospitals, factories, cities, lodgings, families, and other organized forms of social life are each a segment of one of the most astonishing intellectual enterprises of all time - and, as this book proves, one which possesses profound implications for understanding the social control of our bodies and our minds.

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

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About the author

Michel Foucault

811 books6,832 followers
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.

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Profile Image for Tasniem Sami.
88 reviews95 followers
August 29, 2015
من فترة كنت لقيت دة
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اكيد مش من الكوميك ستريب الاصلي بتاع calvin and hobbes
بيبقي مُصمم قرر استخدام حيلة اختلاف السياق ، عشان يحط جملة مضمونها صادم وسوداوي علي لسان شخصية شكلها برئ ومُسالم .. حيلة انتشرت مؤخراً خصوصاً مع شخصيات الكوميك ستربس
المُهم ان الكوميك حلو :D
ساعتها فعلاً حاولت أدقق في موضوع "القيمة " خصوصاً ان الموضوع دة بقي من اكتر المواضيع حساسية بالذات في الجانب الاجتماعي ، لا في الحياة كلها حتي الجوانب الاقتصادية منها ، لدرجة ان ساعات المفاضلة بين الاشياء او الاشخاص او المواضيع المجردة بيجيبلي neurosis
المهم ان فوكو خصص جزءكبير من حياته في دراسة الموضوع دة ...السلطة بكل اشكالها من ضمنها السلطة المانحة للقيمة او للحق -موضع اهتمامي الشخصي وأكيد طبعاً السلطة السياسية اللي هي موضع اهتمام اي شخص طبيعي ...
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يعني هو بمعني اصح مش شايف للسلطة مصدر، او انها بتجي من الفوق دة علي العكس هي مجموعة من العلاقات المُتواترة اللي جاية من تحت ، ودة شئ بديهي يعادي يعني كان عندي القدرة علي اني اتوقع انطلاقاً من حقل اللُغويات والتحليل النفسي عالأقل .
الشئ الجديد بقي هو ربطه ابموضوع الجنسانية- اللي هو تقريباً تاني اكتر حاجة درسها فوكو تقريباً والربط كان من منظور اركيولوجي اللي ادي لذكر موضوع المعرفة ، ودة ان كان اكتر جزء مُمتع،،، لاني بشكل شخصي يُعتبر "الكلمات والأشياء" واحد من طرق عرضي المُفضلة ..
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