Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Translated by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper; edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
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.
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