Eric Paras - Foucault 2.0: Beyond Power and Knowledge

A FTER MORE THAN FOUR YEARS OF LABOR IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF Michel Foucault, I have developed a tremendous admiration for the man, both as a philosopher and as an individual. Foucaults concern for the preservation and expansion of human freedom was unwavering. In its service, he deployed a critical intellect matched by a writing style of rare sublimity. He had a rich sense of humor, one that perhaps came across most forcefully when he spoke. As I listened in their entirety to twelve of the thirteen semester-length lecture courses that Foucault offered at the Collge de France, Foucault made me gape, reflect, and laugh out loud on a number of occasions, often to my considerable embarrassment. He also taught me more than any other single scholar under whom it has been my privilege to study.

Arnold I. Davidson observed that, with the 1994 publication of the more than three thousand pages of text comprising Foucaults Dits et crits, it had become possible, and even necessary, to undertake a reevaluation of Foucaults place in twentieth-century intellectual life. But, Davidson hastened to add, We have still not yet reached a firm and stable position, since his courses from the Collge de France, still unpublished, go well beyond anything that can be found in his books or in Dits et crits. Davidsons reflection was, in a way, the starting point for this work.

This book represents the first broad-based historical study to make full use of Foucaults lecture courses from the Collge de France. It employs the courses as a complement to publicly available sources, and treats each course as a discrete work with a distinct message. Davidsons contention that access to the course material would have a transformative effect upon our understanding of Foucaults project is, in the event, more than vindicated. Each individual course is a unique and original foray into a research topic that Foucault considered to be of present importance. As distinct from Foucaults major published works, no time lag separated the appearance of these lectures from the spark of interest that prompted them, while three or more years would often elapse between the genesis of one of Foucaults projects and the appearance of a book on the subject. The courses have a stunning immediacy: the lectures are filled with references to current world events, to books that have recently come into print, and even to headlines from the mornings newspaper.

Taken together, the courses represent nearly two hundred hours worth of speech: a remarkable expansion of the documentation available to us. They reveal a side of Foucault with which many devoted readers of the philosopher would be unfamiliar. Speaking before a large audience week after week on ideas that were typically half-formed and conjectural, the philosopher invariably appeared composed, prepared, and engaged; yet his seriousness of demeanor was a powerful foil for a personality that tended to the playful and irreverent. No transcription of these courses is likely to convey the fact that Foucaults audiences rarely escaped his lectures without laughtereven when the topic of discussion was as grisly as multiple homicide, or as dry as fifth-century baptismal practices.