Herculine Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite)

Foucault, Michel. Herculine Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite). Translated by Richard McDougall. New York: Vintage, 1980.

With an eye for the sensual bloom of young schoolgirls, and the torrid style of the romantic novels of her day, Herculine Barbin tells the story of her life as a hermaphrodite. Herculine was designated female at birth. A pious girl in a Catholic orphanage, a bewildered adolescent… More

I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century

Foucault, Michel. I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century. Translated by Frank Jellinek. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.  

To free his father and himself from his mother’s tyranny, Pierre Rivière decided to kill her. On June 3,1835, he went inside his small Normandy house with a pruning hook and cut to death his mother, his eighteen-year-old sister, and his seven-year-old brother. Then, in jail, he… More

Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel

Foucault, Michel. Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel. Translated by Charles Ruas. New York: Doubleday, 1986.

Death and the Labyrinth is unique, being Foucault’s only work on literature. For Foucault this was “by far the book I wrote most easily and with the greatest pleasure.” Here, Foucault explores theory, criticism and psychology through the texts of Raymond Roussel, one of… More

This Is Not a Pipe

Foucault, Michel. This Is Not a Pipe. Translated and edited by James Harkness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

René Magritte’s famous canvas provides the starting point for a delightful homage by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Much better known for his incisive and mordant explorations of power and social exclusion, Foucault here assumes a more playful stance. By… More

Mental Illness and Psychology

Foucault, Michel. Mental Illness and Psychology. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Harper and Row, 1976.

Foucault’s Mental Illness and Psychology (originally titled Maladie mentale et Personnalité; then, Maladie Mentale et Psychologie, 1954; English translation, 1958) was Foucault’s first book, but it was also a commissioned piece. Later repudiating his argument, Foucault rewrote… More

Madness and Civilization

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Vintage, 1988.

Foucault dated his own scholarly career from the publication of Madness and Civilization. Madness and Civilization (Folie et Déraison: histoire de la folie à l’âge classique, 1961; abridged by Foucault in 1964; translated as Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age… More

The Order of Things

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

The Order of Things (Les Mots et les Choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines; French publication 1966; English translation, 1970) became a bestseller in France. In it, Foucault analyzes the human sciences that thematize “life, labor, and language”: biology, economics, and… More

The Birth of the Clinic

Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

In the eighteenth century, medicine underwent a mutation. For the first time, medical knowledge took on a precision that had formerly belonged only to mathematics. The body became something that could be mapped. Disease became subject to new rules of classification. And doctors begin to… More

The Archaeology of Knowledge

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge: and the Discourse on Language. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1982.

The Archaeology of Knowledge (L’Archéologie du savoir, 1969; English translation, 1972) is a supplement to The Order of Things. In it, Foucault focuses on the human sciences as autonomous systems of discourse without analyzing social institutions. –Chris Barker

Discipline and Punish

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 2nd edition. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Discipline and Punish, which begins with a famously gruesome description of the execution of the would-be assassin of King Louis XV, Damiens, summarizes one of Foucault’s most well-known and attractive ideas: theorists can help us to see the scope and extent of the surveillance under… More

The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

In the first volume of the History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Histoire de la sexualité: La volonté de savoir), published in 1976 (English translation, 1978), Foucault explores and rejects the Freudian hypothesis that civilization represses our sexual natures. Instead, the… More

The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Originally, Foucault announced The History of Sexuality as a six-volume study, with one volume to appear each year, but the poor reception of the first volume caused a crisis for Foucault, and only two more volumes were published. –Chris Barker

The History of Sexuality, Volume 3: The Care of the Self

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 3: The Care of the Self. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.

The Care of the Self is the third and possibly final volume of Michel Foucault’s widely acclaimed examination of “the experience of sexuality in Western society.” Foucault takes us into the first two centuries of our own era, into the Golden Age of Rome, to reveal a subtle but… More