Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34916 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Customer Reviews

How about being in one of Foucault's lectures?
One certainly got that experience from reading the book. The lectures were reconstructed using Foucault's personal lecture notes and actual taped audio recordings of his lectures. You get a stream-of-consciousness style which works rather well, compared with Foucault's personally-written work.

The subject matter is rather more interesting than first appears. What Foucault was primarily talking about was the history of governmentality (governementalité), and the move from the medieval dynastical state to the early modern administrative state, elaborating on the relationships of power and the bodies of knowledge that were debated and formulated to allow this change.

Foucault's notions of biopower and biopolitique also loom large and the book allows you to get to grips with those concepts. Things may not be clear in the first couple of chapters (each lecture is a chapter), but as you progress towards the end of the book you will feel much better for it.

I recommend this book.