Taylor - The Routledge guidebook to Foucault’s History of Sexuality.

Routledge Guides to the Great Books

The Routledge Guidebook to Foucaults The History of Sexuality

Michel Foucaults The History of Sexuality is one of the most influential philosophical works of the twentieth century and has been instrumental in shaping the study of gender theory, feminist theory and queer theory. Foucaults writing can, however, make it a difficult book to grasp, as he assumes a familiarity with the intellectually dominant theories of his time and at times adopts an ironic tone, which renders many passages obscure for newcomers to his work.

The Routledge Guidebook to FoucaultsThe History of Sexuality offers a clear and comprehensive guide to this groundbreaking work, examining:

the historical context in which Foucault wrote;

a critical discussion of the text, which examines the relationship between the history of sexuality, the use of pleasure and the care of the self; and

the reception and ongoing influence of The History of Sexuality.

Offering a close reading of the text, this is essential reading for anyone studying this enormously influential work.

Chlo Taylor is Associate Professor of Womens and Gender Studies and Philosophy at the University of Alberta, Canada. She has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a Tomlinson Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at McGill University.

THE ROUTLEDGE GUIDES TO THE GREAT BOOKS

Series Editor: Anthony Gottlieb

The Routledge Guides to the Great Books provide ideal introductions to the texts which have shaped Western Civilization. The Guidebooks explore the arguments and ideas contained in the most influential works from some of the most brilliant thinkers who have ever lived, from Aristotle to Marx and Newton to Wollstonecraft. Each Guidebook opens with a short introduction to the author of the great book and the context within which they were working and concludes with an examination of the lasting significance of the book. The Routledge Guides to the Great Books will therefore provide students everywhere with complete introductions to the most significant books of all time.

Available:

Augustines Confessions

Catherine Conybeare

Aquinas Summa Theologiae

Jason T. Eberl

Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling

John A. Lippett

Mills On Liberty

Jonathan Riley

Einsteins Relativity

James Trefil

Gramscis Prison Notebooks

John Schwarzmantel

Thoreaus Civil Disobedience

Bob Pepperman Taylor

Descartes Meditations

Gary Hatfield

Hobbes Leviathan

Glen Newey

Galileos Dialogue

Maurice A. Finocchiaro

Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations

Marie McGinn

Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics

Gerard J. Hughes

Heideggers Being and Time

Stephen Mulhall

Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit

Robert Stern

Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding

E. J. Lowe

Platos Republic

Nickolas Pappas

Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Sandrine Bergs

Routledge Guides to the Great Books

The Routledge Guidebook to Foucaults The History of Sexuality

Chlo Taylor

Contents

The past is a foreign country, wrote a British novelist, L. P. Hartley: they do things differently there.

The greatest books in the canon of the humanities and sciences can be foreign territory, too. This series of guidebooks is a set of excursions written by expert guides who know how to make such places become more familiar.

All the books covered in this series, however long ago they were written, have much to say to us now, or help to explain the ways in which we have come to think about the world. Each volume is designed not only to describe a set of ideas, and how they developed, but also to evaluate them. This requires what one might call a bifocal approach. To engage fully with an author, one has to pretend that he or she is speaking to us; but, to understand a texts meaning, it is often necessary to remember its original audience, too. It is all too easy to mistake the intentions of an old argument by treating it as a contemporary one.

The Routledge Guides to the Great Books are aimed at students in the broadest sense, not only those engaged in formal study. The intended audience of the series is all those who want to understand the books that have had the largest effects.

AJG

October 2012

To James Merleau, thank you for giving me my first copy of The History of Sexuality twenty years ago, when I was twenty, and for half a lifetime of best friendship since then. I am also immensely grateful to Hasana Sharp and Lisa Guenther, for the friendships that have nurtured and inspired my philosophical work and my life for over a decade now. I am also grateful to Ladelle McWhorter, for her support and mentorship over the last ten years. Thanks also to more recent friends and colleagues at the University of Alberta, whose Foucauldian and social justice scholarship has stimulated my own, particularly Danielle Peers, Cressida Heyes and Robert Nichols. I am also deeply appreciative of my colleagues in the Department of Womens and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta Susanne Luhmann, Lise Gotell, Felice Lifshitz, Michelle Meagher and Philomina Okeke-Ihejirika for the supportive and stimulating intellectual community that you provide. I am also indebted to two (former, now graduated) feminist philosophy doctoral students at the University of Alberta, Catherine Clune-Taylor and Kristin Rodier. Along with Cressida, you have helped make being a woman in philosophy bearable, and at times even delightful; thanks for your solidarity and brilliance over the last seven years. I am also grateful to feminist philosopher friends whom I see less often, particularly Alexis Shotwell and Ada Jaarsma. Finally, I am appreciative of Randi Nixon, who read this entire manuscript and provided always helpful and insightful feedback and encouragement along the way. I dedicate this book to Pablo and Artemisia.

In 1950, and again in 1951, Michel Foucault undertook the agrgation de philosophie