Foucault News

The ‘Truth and Juridical Forms’ lectures

Between 21-25 May 1973, Foucault gave five lectures in Rio de Janeiro. These were under the collective title of ‘Truth and Juridical Forms’. They were published in Portuguese in 1974, in French in 1994 in Dits et écrits (text no 139); and in English in the ‘Power’ volume of Essential Works in 2000 (without the 23 page roundtable discussion that followed the fifth lecture). [Update: I translate a few bits of this here.]

The topics of the five lectures can be briefly summarised as

1. Introduction and Nietzsche
2. Oedipus – a variant of the ‘Oedipal Knowledge’ manuscript
3. The Inquiry, Feudal law and the Carolingian Empire
4. Panopticism
5. Institutions

From the newly published and translated Lectures on the Will to Know (which includes ‘Oedipal Knowledge’ as an appendix), it’s clear that the overall framing of the lectures, and the content of the first two, were very…