Michael Foucault
Foucault Live
Collected Interviews, 1966-84
| All
human behavior is scheduled and programmed through rationality.
There is a logic of institutions and in behavior and in
political relations. In even the most violent ones there
is a rationality. What is most dangerous in violence is
its rationality. Of course violence itself is terrible.
But the deepest root of violence and its permanence come
out of the form of the rationality we use. The idea had
been that if we live in the world of reason, we can get
rid of violence. This is quite wrong. Between violence
and rationality there is no incompatibility. |
| Currently in its fourth printing, Foucault
Live is the most accessible and exhaustive introduction
to Foucault’s thought to date. Composed of every
extant interview made by Foucault from the mid-60s until
his death in 1984, Foucault Live sheds new light
on the philosopher’s ideas about friendship, the
intent behind his classical studies, while clarifying many
of the professional and popular misinterpretations of his
ideas over the course of his career. Most notably, Foucault
Live includes interviews he made with the gay underground
press during his stays in America during the 1970s. In
them, Foucault suggests that homosexuality presents a new
paradigm for ways of living beyond the predictable, binary
couple. All of the philosopher’s interests, from
madness and delinquency to film and sexuality, and their
resultant writings, are probed by knowledgeable critics
and journalists. After reading this book, the reader can
explore key notions such as episteme, savoir and connaissance,
archeology, and archive, without the knitted brow that
plagued Foucault’s public when he was alive. This
is the guide to Foucault’s life as an agent provocateur
in the world of philosophy and scholarship. |
|
order
this book
“The interviews
in this book go much further than anything Foucault ever wrote,
and they are indispensable in understanding his life work”
-Gilles Deleuze |
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