Language, Counter-Memory, Practice; Selected Essays and Interviews

Foucault, Michel

ISBN 10: 0801409799 / ISBN 13: 9780801409790

Published by Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1980

About this Item

Edited with an introduction by Donald F. Bouchard. Translated from the French by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. 240p., dj. Seller Inventory # 024212

Bibliographic Details

Title: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice; Selected...

Publisher: Cornell University Press, Ithaca

Publication Date: 1980

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Edition: 2d Printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

Because of their range, brilliance, and singularity, the ideas of the philosopher-critic-historian Michel Foucault have gained extraordinary currency throughout the Western intellectual community. This book offers a selection of seven of Foucault's most important published essays, translated from the French, with an introductory essay and notes by Donald F. Bouchard. Also included are a summary of a course given by Foucault at College de France; the transcript of a conversation between Foucault and Gilles Deleuze; and an interview with Foucault that appeared in the journal Actuel.

Professor Bouchard has divided the book into three closely related sections. The four essays in Part One examine language as a "perilous limit" of what we know and what we are. The essays in the second part suggest the methodological guidelines to which Foucault subscribes, and they record, in the editor's words, "the penetration of the language of literature into the domain of discursive thought." The material in the last section is more obviously political than the essays. It treats language in use, language attempting to impart knowledge and power.

Translated by the editor and Sherry Simon into fluent and lucid English, these essays will appeal primarily to students of literature, especially those interested in contemporary continental structuralist criticism. But because of the breadth of Foucault's interests, they should also prove valuable to anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and psychologists.

About the Author:

Michel Foucault is Professor of History and Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. Donald F. Bouchard is Associate Professor of English at McGill University.