Product Description

Foucault overturned many assumptions about madness, sexuality and criminality, and highlighted the brutal social practices of confinement and confession. This book describes his approaches to these problems through psychiatry and clinical medicine.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53559 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Customer Reviews

Fails to Deliver
The book has the noble aim of explaining Foucault. Foucault has the reputation of being difficult to understand; yet he is one of the most influencing writers in sociology in recent years. The book covers many aspect of Foucault's live, but it generally fails to introduce Foucault's thinking and ideas. You might gain an insight of Foucault's life, but the attempts to make the theorist easier to understand fail. The illustrations add nothing to the text. At times, the even distract from what is written. The language used is not accessible enough for a book with this title (and part of this series). If you are interested to learn more about Foucault, do not be fooled by this book's title. Get something else.

Completely unintelligible
I read this book because I knew a little about Foucault and wanted to know more. By the end of it, however, I knew less than when I began. It presupposes you know more than this supposed introduction purports to explain. The explanations are obscure and the language pretentious. This is just the sort of thing that gives cultural studies and sociology a bad name. I wish I could get my money back.

A lucid introduction to a difficult writer
I've always had a problem with people who mention Foucault because they're never clear when they try to explain his ideas. This book puts it pretty plainly. The illustrations are a bit pornographic but I guess they show a bit more about the man's life than the stuff I've read shows. I think the book could do a bit more with the way Foucault has been used since the 1980s, but I can't argue with the witty and intelligent way this writer and illustrator deals with this difficult subject. My friend has stolen my copy!