By Bernard E. Harcourt The Cynic militant life: this is a model of struggle, of conflict, of battle that is very similar to the one Foucault had endorsed in the early 1970s when he embraced the model of civil war. The… Continue Reading
By Bernard E. Harcourt The interventions of Frederic Gros, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak—all three extremely insightful and provocative—raise a host of questions. I would like to extract three in particular. Before doing so, though, I should note that it… Continue Reading
By Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Let me begin with Edward Said’s On Late Style: the relationship between bodily condition and aesthetic style seems at first to be a subject so irrelevant and perhaps even trivial by comparison with the momentousness of life,… Continue Reading
This table will accompany Frédéric Gros’ presentation at Foucault 13/13 on « Obedient Truths and Disobedient Truths in Foucault’s Last Lectures at The Collège De France » Obedient Truths Types of obedience Disobedient Truths Types of disobedience Normative Truth… Continue Reading
By Frédéric Gros Before turning to Foucault’s later work on the Greeks, I would like to return to his first major project during the sixties and seventies on the archeology and genealogy of social sciences. Foucault’s critique of the social… Continue Reading
By Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak I was Thomas Flynn’s friend and colleague when he was attending Foucault’s seminars. Is Flynn right in saying that “whereas his [Foucault’s]’s earlier treatment had focused on parrhesia as a political virtue, you told the prince the… Continue Reading
By Frédéric Gros The problem of truth is both central and complicated in Michel Foucault’s work and particularly present in Foucault’s final lectures at the Collège de France, The Courage of Truth (1984), in his analysis of Socrates’ death and the… Continue Reading
By Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Foucault was looking forward to speaking on the contemporary for his next seminar. I want to honor his idea of the construction of the subject of truth-telling and its connection with the care of the self… Continue Reading
By Souleymane Bachir Diagne It is fascinating that in his last lectures Foucault wants to end with an “explication de texte” on Socrates facing death, the figure of the courage of truth. The gesture can be seen as a return to… Continue Reading
By Bernard E. Harcourt Foucault’s 1984 lectures on The Courage of Truth represent a direct prolongation of his study of parrhesia from the 1983 lectures The Government of Self and Others—in fact, the 1984 lectures are subtitled The Government of Self… Continue Reading