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Foucault Live: Interviews, 1961-84
Currently in its fourth printing, Foucault Live is the most accessible and exhaustive introduction to Foucault's thought to date. Composed of every extant interview made by Foucault from the mid-60s until his death in 1984, Foucault Live sheds new light on the philosopher's ideas about friendship, the intent behind his classical studies, while clarifying many of the professional and popular misinterpretations of his ideas over the course of his career. As Gilles Deleuze noted, "the interviews in this book go much further than anything Foucault ever wrote, and they are indispensable in understanding his life work." Most notably, Foucault Live includes interviews he made with the gay underground press during his stays in America during the 1970s. In them, Foucault suggests that homosexuality presents a new paradigm for ways of living beyond the predictable, binary couple. All of the philosopher's interests, from madness and delinquency to film and sexuality, and their resultant writings, are probed by knowledgeable critics and journalists. After reading this book, the reader can explore key notions such as episteme, savoir and connaissance, archeology, and archive, without the knitted brow that plagued Foucault's public when he was alive. This is the guide to Foucault's life as an agent provocateur in the world of philosophy and scholarship.
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
11 people are currently reading
298 people want to read
About the author
Michel Foucault
763 books6,480 followersPaul-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.
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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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 2, 2008
I just wish it was called, "Foucault Unplugged." Haha.
June 3, 2010
In his books Foucault seems to foreground history itself - of madness, of sexuality, of the prison, of the clinic, etc. - meaning that it requires close reading to see the philosophical and political import of his thought, though the histories - divided (I think superficially) into "genealogies" and "archaeologies" - only matter inasmuch as they reverberate on the levels of philosophy and politics. "The search for descent," Foucault says in "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," "is not the erecting of foundations; on the contrary, it disturbs what was previously considered immobile; it fragments what was thought unified; it shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself." I maintain that Foucault is a philosopher, but he is a philosopher because of the effects his works, which are not straightforwardly philosophical, have. Althusser defines philosophy as an intervention in science; it is in this sense that Foucault is a philosopher.
But I have said nothing of "Foucault Live"! This is because how good - and essential - "Foucault Live" is will be lost without a certain context, which I have tried to provide above. "Foucault Live" compiles all of the interviews with Foucault - and Foucault is brilliant in conversation: matter-of-fact and clear as he is nowhere else, while still possessed of the same careful intelligence he shows off in his books. Apparently among Foucault's many gifts was the ability to explain himself in person as few can.
This is one of the few places to find Foucault talking openly about the gay rights movement, structuralism and post-structuralism, Sartre's criticisms - most of the time what we are getting is Foucault's thoughts about something current. Foucault also talks about his books, including "The Order of Things," "Archaeology of Knowledge," and "I, Pierre Riviere," a collection of texts about a 19th century murder case that includes the murderer's memoir.
Somewhere Gilles Deleuze, who was Foucault's friend, says that this is the best introduction to Foucault. I agree 100%. I own a number of secondary source Foucault introductions. This is more comprehensive and clearer than all of them - and it is Foucault in his own words.
But I have said nothing of "Foucault Live"! This is because how good - and essential - "Foucault Live" is will be lost without a certain context, which I have tried to provide above. "Foucault Live" compiles all of the interviews with Foucault - and Foucault is brilliant in conversation: matter-of-fact and clear as he is nowhere else, while still possessed of the same careful intelligence he shows off in his books. Apparently among Foucault's many gifts was the ability to explain himself in person as few can.
This is one of the few places to find Foucault talking openly about the gay rights movement, structuralism and post-structuralism, Sartre's criticisms - most of the time what we are getting is Foucault's thoughts about something current. Foucault also talks about his books, including "The Order of Things," "Archaeology of Knowledge," and "I, Pierre Riviere," a collection of texts about a 19th century murder case that includes the murderer's memoir.
Somewhere Gilles Deleuze, who was Foucault's friend, says that this is the best introduction to Foucault. I agree 100%. I own a number of secondary source Foucault introductions. This is more comprehensive and clearer than all of them - and it is Foucault in his own words.
February 15, 2024
I admit that I became interested in Michel Foucault because of his notoriety. His name appears usually when an author wishes to explain the intellectual origin of some pernicious social or political development: "the so-called activists were clearly under the influence of French philosopher Michel Foucault." Foucault, it is said, denied the existence of truth and held rather that all authoritative claims to know the truth are in fact manifestations of raw power. This leads to a politics of both radical liberation and perfect cynicism and to the overthrow of all power from the academy to the clinic.
Reading Foucault, even in this collection of brief interviews, I came to feel that the reputation is almost entirely unrelated to the man. Foucault says many interesting things in these interviews especially about how he sees himself as a historian of thought, but whenever he is asked the really political questions "what is to be done?" he becomes reticent. Foucault sees himself as analyzing the ways of thinking that become dominant at certain times in history and the way that these ways of thinking influence claims of knowledge. It is not that he denies the truth of these claims of knowledge, as is usually claimed. It's more that the truth and goodness of the ways of thinking that he analyzes is beyond the scope of his analysis. To say that a claim of knowledge involves one in power relations is not at all to say the claim of knowledge is false or that truth is irrelevant. Foucault says nothing at all to diminish my belief that objective truth can be a source of the power of one's claims. Because he does not try to deny truth, Foucault avoids the problems that embroil advocates of real skepticism. To confuse "power" in Foucault's writings with the "power" that political pamphleteers encourage us to stand up against is to completely misunderstand his position. "Power" for Foucault is a term of description. When something happens and we wish to postpone the question of goodness and truth, it is reasonable to use the word "power." That he has been so badly interpreted is regrettable. In the end, Foucault turns out to be--a cautious historian.
All of this said, I prefer Foucault's books to this collection of interviews. Interviews are good at communicating opinions, not arguments. I find Foucault making sustained arguments for certain historical interpretations to be the much more interesting speaker.
Reading Foucault, even in this collection of brief interviews, I came to feel that the reputation is almost entirely unrelated to the man. Foucault says many interesting things in these interviews especially about how he sees himself as a historian of thought, but whenever he is asked the really political questions "what is to be done?" he becomes reticent. Foucault sees himself as analyzing the ways of thinking that become dominant at certain times in history and the way that these ways of thinking influence claims of knowledge. It is not that he denies the truth of these claims of knowledge, as is usually claimed. It's more that the truth and goodness of the ways of thinking that he analyzes is beyond the scope of his analysis. To say that a claim of knowledge involves one in power relations is not at all to say the claim of knowledge is false or that truth is irrelevant. Foucault says nothing at all to diminish my belief that objective truth can be a source of the power of one's claims. Because he does not try to deny truth, Foucault avoids the problems that embroil advocates of real skepticism. To confuse "power" in Foucault's writings with the "power" that political pamphleteers encourage us to stand up against is to completely misunderstand his position. "Power" for Foucault is a term of description. When something happens and we wish to postpone the question of goodness and truth, it is reasonable to use the word "power." That he has been so badly interpreted is regrettable. In the end, Foucault turns out to be--a cautious historian.
All of this said, I prefer Foucault's books to this collection of interviews. Interviews are good at communicating opinions, not arguments. I find Foucault making sustained arguments for certain historical interpretations to be the much more interesting speaker.
May 8, 2023
Wish this was the first work from Foucault I could have experienced, without the rest of his work hanging over it like a grid.
Want to read
April 29, 2025"Film and Popular Memory." In Foucault Live. Ed. Sylvère Lothringer. New
York: Semiotexte, 1989. Pp. 89-106.
York: Semiotexte, 1989. Pp. 89-106.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 13, 2025
'I was putting forth the hypothesis that there was a specificity to power relationships, a density, an inertia, a viscosity, a course of development and an inventiveness which belonged to these relationships and which it was necessary to analyze. I was simply saying this: maybe everything is not as easy as one believes; and in order to say this I was basing my message on analyses and experience at the same time.'
'It is precisely the heterogeneity of power which I wanted to demonstrate, how it is always born of something other than itself...there is no Power, but power relationships which are being born incessantly, as both effect and condition of other processes.
...If mine were an ontological conception of power, there would be, on one side, Power with a capital P, a kind of lunar occurrence, extra-terrestrial; and on the other side, the resistance of the unhappy ones who are obligated to bow before power. I believe an analysis of this kind to be completely false, because power is born out of a plurality of relationships which are grated onto something else, born from something else, and permit the development of something else.
Hence the fact that these power relationships, on one hand, enter into the heart of struggles which are, for example, economic or religious—and so it is not against power that struggles are fundamentally born. On the other hand, power relationships open up a space in the middle of which the struggles develop.
...Instead of this ontological opposition between power and resistance, I would say that power is nothing other than a certain modification, or the form, differing from time to time, of a series of clashes which constitute the social body, clashes of the political, economic type, etc. Power, then, is something like the stratification, the institutionalization, the definition of tactics, implements and arms which are useful in all these clashes. It is this which can be considered in a given moment as a certain power relationship, a certain exercising of power.
As long as it is clear that this exercising (to the degree to which it is, in the end, nothing other than the instant photograph of multiple struggles continuously in transformation)—this power, transforms itself without ceasing. We need not confuse a power situation, a certain distribution or economy of power in a given moment, with the simple power institutions such as the army, the police, the government, etc.
...In reality, what I want to do, and here is the difficulty of trying to do it, is to solve this problem: to work out an interpretation, a reading of a certain reality, which might be such that, on one hand, this interpretation could produce some of the effects of truth; and on the other hand, these effects of truth could become implements within possible struggles. Telling the truth so that it might be acceptable. Deciphering a layer of reality in such a way that the lines of force and the lines of fragility come forth; the points of resistance and the possible points of attack; the paths marked out and the shortcuts. It is the reality of possible struggles that I wish to bring to light... This polemics of reality is the effect of truth which I want to produce...I am making an interpretation of history, and the problem is that of knowing—but I don't resolve the problem—how these analyses can possibly be utilized in the current situation.
At this point I think we need to bring into the discussion the problem of the function of the intellectual. It is absolutely true that when I write a book I refuse to take a prophetic stance, that is, the one of saying to people: here is what you must do—and also: this is good and this is not. I say to them: roughly speaking, it seems to me that things have gone this way; but I describe those things in such a way that the paths of attack are delineated. Yet even with this approach I do not force or compel anyone to attack. So then, it becomes a completely personal issue when I choose, if I want, to take certain courses of action with reference to prisons, psychiatric asylums, this or that issue.
But I say that political action belongs to a category of participation completely different from these written or bookish acts of participation. It is a problem of groups, of personal and physical commitment. One is not radical because one pronounces a few words; no, the essence of being radical is physical; the essence of being radical is the radicalness of existence itself.' (184-191)
'It is precisely the heterogeneity of power which I wanted to demonstrate, how it is always born of something other than itself...there is no Power, but power relationships which are being born incessantly, as both effect and condition of other processes.
...If mine were an ontological conception of power, there would be, on one side, Power with a capital P, a kind of lunar occurrence, extra-terrestrial; and on the other side, the resistance of the unhappy ones who are obligated to bow before power. I believe an analysis of this kind to be completely false, because power is born out of a plurality of relationships which are grated onto something else, born from something else, and permit the development of something else.
Hence the fact that these power relationships, on one hand, enter into the heart of struggles which are, for example, economic or religious—and so it is not against power that struggles are fundamentally born. On the other hand, power relationships open up a space in the middle of which the struggles develop.
...Instead of this ontological opposition between power and resistance, I would say that power is nothing other than a certain modification, or the form, differing from time to time, of a series of clashes which constitute the social body, clashes of the political, economic type, etc. Power, then, is something like the stratification, the institutionalization, the definition of tactics, implements and arms which are useful in all these clashes. It is this which can be considered in a given moment as a certain power relationship, a certain exercising of power.
As long as it is clear that this exercising (to the degree to which it is, in the end, nothing other than the instant photograph of multiple struggles continuously in transformation)—this power, transforms itself without ceasing. We need not confuse a power situation, a certain distribution or economy of power in a given moment, with the simple power institutions such as the army, the police, the government, etc.
...In reality, what I want to do, and here is the difficulty of trying to do it, is to solve this problem: to work out an interpretation, a reading of a certain reality, which might be such that, on one hand, this interpretation could produce some of the effects of truth; and on the other hand, these effects of truth could become implements within possible struggles. Telling the truth so that it might be acceptable. Deciphering a layer of reality in such a way that the lines of force and the lines of fragility come forth; the points of resistance and the possible points of attack; the paths marked out and the shortcuts. It is the reality of possible struggles that I wish to bring to light... This polemics of reality is the effect of truth which I want to produce...I am making an interpretation of history, and the problem is that of knowing—but I don't resolve the problem—how these analyses can possibly be utilized in the current situation.
At this point I think we need to bring into the discussion the problem of the function of the intellectual. It is absolutely true that when I write a book I refuse to take a prophetic stance, that is, the one of saying to people: here is what you must do—and also: this is good and this is not. I say to them: roughly speaking, it seems to me that things have gone this way; but I describe those things in such a way that the paths of attack are delineated. Yet even with this approach I do not force or compel anyone to attack. So then, it becomes a completely personal issue when I choose, if I want, to take certain courses of action with reference to prisons, psychiatric asylums, this or that issue.
But I say that political action belongs to a category of participation completely different from these written or bookish acts of participation. It is a problem of groups, of personal and physical commitment. One is not radical because one pronounces a few words; no, the essence of being radical is physical; the essence of being radical is the radicalness of existence itself.' (184-191)
August 24, 2011
Foucault's interviews are useful because in them he provides explanations of his more controversial theses and responds to critics. Also interesting because within the interviews he often discusses topics which he does not address elsewhere, or only touches on elsewhere.
Interesting read--although I don't think it's so necessary for anyone building a Foucault library. My advice: get it from the library, photocopy the best parts.
Interesting read--although I don't think it's so necessary for anyone building a Foucault library. My advice: get it from the library, photocopy the best parts.
Currently reading
April 25, 2012Exploring connections among the following interviews: "Friendship as a Way of Life," "The Ethics of the Concern for Self," "The Aesthetics of Existence," and "Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity." Foucault generously gives so much thought to work with. Creativity is the name of the game here when utilizing his ideas, making creative connections among and with them within the context and concerns of cultivating discourses of criticality... :)
January 17, 2008
I thought Foucault was god as an undergrad and I read whatever I could lay my slimy paws on.
This is a bunch of interviews and lectures. Some good, some rehashed, some filthy. Not an intro to his thought or writing, but interesting if you're familiar with his work.
This is a bunch of interviews and lectures. Some good, some rehashed, some filthy. Not an intro to his thought or writing, but interesting if you're familiar with his work.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews