By Bernard E. Harcourt Judith Butler and Stathis Gourgouris have brilliantly framed Foucault’s 1981 lectures on Subjectivité et vérité and Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling. Their comments pose three questions for our discussion: How individualized are we when we bind ourselves, given that we… Continue Reading
By Jesús R. Velasco Welcome to Foucault 10/13! Today we are going to explore the productive intersection of two of Foucault’s lines of inquiry. Here, on the one hand, this as yet untranslated book –or rather, as we always try… Continue Reading
By Stathis Gourgouris Please allow me a philological indulgence as a point of entry. For a while now, in reading through these seminars, I have become intrigued by the homologous sonority between penance and penalty, enough to do a little… Continue Reading
By Judith Butler Foucault’s lectures, Mal faire, dire vrai (Wrong Doing/Truth Telling) tell a history of the practice of avowal in a very quick way, jumping from one set of historical periods to another, developing generalizations that are said to… Continue Reading
By John Owen Havard A View from the Bridge (1955) by Arthur Miller, recently treated to an elemental restaging by director Ivo van Hove, features a narrator—whose role resembles that of a Greek chorus—drawn from the Italian enclave of Brooklyn in… Continue Reading
By Bernard E. Harcourt The avowal is central to Foucault’s project in his 1981 lectures at the Collège de France, Subjectivité et vérité. As he notes on January 7, 1981, “In the case of sexuality, truthful discourse (le discours vrai)… Continue Reading
By Bernard E. Harcourt In 1981, Foucault delivered, back-to-back, two lecture series. First, he gave twelve lessons on Subjectivité et vérité [Subjectivity and Truth, not yet translated into English] at the Collège de France from January 7th to April 1st,… Continue Reading