Introducing Foucault, 2nd Edition [Paperback]

Chris Horrocks (Author), Zoran Jevtic (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Introducing | Publication Date: June 1, 2001

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Christopher Horrocks is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Design at Kingston University. His previous books include Introducing Baudrillard and Baudrillard and the Millennium (both published by Icon/Totem). Zoran Jetvic is hugely renowned illustrator. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Totem Books; Second Edition edition (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1840460865
• ISBN-13: 978-1840460865
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,423,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Better introductions available, September 23, 2006

By 

Fred Jefferson "common reader" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Introducing Foucault (Paperback)

As someone who has studied Foucault, I can say (despite my adherence to his ideas to some degree) that he can be criticized and very convincingly by opponents. In fact, his conflicts with critics are quite entertaining. However, I do not expect his opponents (such as Chris Horrocks appears to be) to write an introduction to Foucault's work. It seemed odd as well that an art historian, and not a philosophical academic or critical theorist, wrote an introduction to Foucault but he explained the given texts fairly accurately. My problem is not whether or not to like Foucault but that the introduction to him was liberally peppered with ad hominem attacks on both his thought and life. Particularly, as another commentator has said, the 'straight-jacket' comment and the rest of the end sections go into a criticism of his thought and deviate from simply introducing Foucault into interjecting a collection of personal ideas and thoughts. Again, criticize him until you turn blue but do it in a place that is a more appropriate forum such as a critical reader or published article.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent teaser, April 29, 2001

By 

Fernando Ärias - See all my reviews

This review is from: Introducing Foucault (Paperback)

As a student new to 20th century intellectuals, this book on Foucault is a great tease into the life and work of this great thinker. After reading this book, and having closely studied his "Discipline and Punish" work, I agree that this title is NOT AN IN-DEPTH study of Foucault, but rather a refreshing "short film" on his life and work which ought to snag the attention of more interested readers, thereby leading to further readings which the "suggested readings" page is most generous to list.

If anyone is seeking a great introduction to Foucault, this book is invaluable for its ability to springboard the reader onto the different focuses of Foucault's writtings.

Get it first, read the texts thereafter. It could serve as a coordinate map to help the reader navigate the thickets of Foucaults work.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Balanced Primer to a Post-Modern Icon, June 4, 2002

By 

Eric H. Roth "English teacher/conversationali... (Venice Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Introducing Foucault, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

While Foucault has become a popular icon to postmodernists, his personal life and political judgements continue to offend, shock, and sometimes amuse conservative intellectuals. This concise biography provides brief summaries of his most important intellectual works, introduces some of his key concepts, and acknowledges the profoundly deluded political predictions of this controversial French philosopher. If the personal is political, then Foucault's private life as a hyper-sexual gay hedonist and seducer of young boys - and death from AIDS - can be seen as the logical consequences of his peculiar belief systems where there is no objectivity and everything is subjective.

This comic book biography explores the paradox of Foucault, one of the most influential modern philosophers, right from the first page. "Should we look at the life of the man himself, who as a boy wanted to be a goldfish, became a philosopher and historian, political activist, leather queen, bestseller, tireless campaigner for dissident causes? What about his literary skill, combined with painstaking historical inquiry, his excellence as a pasta cook, captivating lecturing style, passion for sex with men, occassional drug-taking, barbed sense of humour, competitiveness, fierce temper - and the fact that he came from a family of doctors and dearly loved his mother?" The cartoon of the bald intellectual includes the caption/quote from Foucault: "Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same." Fairness and multidimensional from the beginning.

While many academics will inevitably find this introduction too brief and too superficial, this thin and accessible book draws readers into Foucault's ideas, passions, and lives. Far more lively and engaging than than most secondary sources for undergraduate philosophy students, this black and white, adult comic book provides a comfortable entry point into some of the great intellectual debates of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It also delights in contradictions and paradoxes.

Did you know that the man who subtley explored the connections between order and brutality promoted the new Islamic Government in Iran in 1979? How could a gay, leftist western intellectual support religious fanatics? "An Islamic government cannot restrict people's rights because it is bound by religious duty," claimed Foucault to reporters while visiting Tehran. "The people will know what is right." The harsh objective reality of public executions and stonings -including women who refused to wear the proscribed veil- soon silenced Foucault. The authors cover this embarrassing situation with an admirable directness on p.79. His other questionable political crusades are also examined in a sympathetic, yet critical light.

This thin book, digestible in a few hours, would make an excellent companion text for both undergraduate and graduate philosophy students confronted with reading a Foucault tome. It would be a valuable addition to college libraries and belongs on the bookshelves of postmodernists - and Foucault's critics.