Series Foreword, by Bernard E. Harcourt
Foreword to the French Edition, by François Ewald
Rules for Editing the Texts, by Claude-Olivier Doron
Translator’s Note, by Graham Burchell
Abbreviations
Part I. Sexuality: Lectures at the University of
Clermont-Ferrand (1964)
Lecture 1. Introduction
Lecture 2. The Scientific Knowledge of Sexuality
Lecture 3. Sexual Behavior
Lecture 4. The Perversions
Lecture 5. Infantile Sexuality
Part II. The Discourse of Sexuality: Lectures at the University
of Vincennes (1969)
Lecture 1. The Discourse of Sexuality
Lecture 2. The Transformations of the Eighteenth Century
Appendix to Lecture 2
Lecture 3. The Discourse of Sexuality (3)
Appendix to Lecture 3
Lecture 4. Legal Forms of Marriage Up to the Civil Code
Lecture 5. Epistemologization of Sexuality
Lecture 6. The Biology of Sexuality
Lecture 7. Sexual Utopia
Appendix to Lecture 7
Appendix. Extract from Green Notebook no. 8, September 1969
Course Context, by Claude-Olivier Doron
Sexuality: Course at the University of Clermont-Ferrand (1964)
The Discourse of Sexuality: Course at the University of Vincennes
(1969)
Detailed Contents
Index of Notions
Index of Names
Michel Foucault (1926-1984), a French philosopher, historian, and
social theorist, was one of the most important figures in
twentieth-century thought.
Claude-Olivier Doron is a professor of history and philosophy of
science at the University of Paris and an editor of the works of
Foucault.
François Ewald is a political philosopher and historian, and
oversaw, with Alessandro Fontana, the publication of Foucault's
lectures at the Collège de France.
Bernard E. Harcourt is a chaired professor at Columbia University
and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and
has edited a range of works by Foucault in French and English.
Graham Burchell is coeditor of The Foucault Effect: Studies in
Governmentality (1991) and has translated a range of works by
Foucault, including his lectures at the Collège de France.
What comes to my mind when traversing these extraordinary lectures
is a variant of the famous motto: 'same is another.' Foucault
claimed that he was writing texts to depart from himself. And he
succeeded. But in doing so he delved deeper and deeper into his own
truth. And into ours.
*Étienne Balibar, author of Violence and Civility: On the Limits
of Political Philosophy*
This volume of Foucault’s early lectures on sexuality offers
readers a chance to follow the ebbs and flows of theoretical
thought as ideas take shape under very specific historical
conditions. With a brilliant introduction by Bernard Harcourt
guiding the way, the lectures gathered here provide deep insight
into the braided structures of power, knowledge and desire that
continue to regulate bodies. At the same time, this deep archive
provides opportunities for linking to other moments of rebellion,
opposition and, even, abolition.
*Jack Halberstam, author of Wild Things: The Disorder of
Desire and Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Guide to Gender
Variation*
Finally published in English, these 1964 and 1969 early lectures of
Foucault, given at a time when homosexuality was still considered a
clinical pathology and a crime and when the notion of gender was
not yet a leverage of political emancipation for feminist and trans
movements, allow us to grasp the archeology of contemporary queer
and trans critical languages. We discover a young Foucault thinking
sexuality anew, using Sade, Bataille, Restif de la Bretonne, or
Fourier, and fighting with Freud, Marx, Melanie Klein, Marcuse, or
Wilhelm Reich in order to pierce an academic, political, and
discursive field dominated by epistemic violence against sexual
minorities. A necessary, controversial, and fascinating reading to
understand not only Foucault’s critical project but also the way in
which different discourses on desire, pleasure, and sexuality shape
our present.
*Paul B. Preciado, author of Countersexual Manifesto*
These lectures offer a really important insight into Foucault’s
work in the 1960s on the question of sexuality—a topic on which his
more famous works come from the 1970s and 1980s. This volume shows
how he proposed a study of scientific knowledge about sexuality
from biology to psychology, with some explicit engagement with
figures who are only discussed obliquely elsewhere. Graham Burchell
is the most important translator of Foucault’s work into English,
and Anglophone readers remain much in his debt.
*Stuart Elden, author of The Early Foucault*
This volume will be of interest to all scholars working on
sexuality across many disciplines, particularly those whose study
is informed by Foucauldian analyses of power, knowledge, and
desire.
*Modern Language Review*
Will be invaluable to readers interested in any aspect of
Foucault's intellectual development. Highly recommended.
*Choice*
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