Foucault News

On 2 December 1970, Michel Foucault delivered his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France. He was 44 years old. My thanks to Marcelo Hoffman for alerting me to this anniversary. Had this not been such a crazy term, it would have been nice to commemorate this event a bit more, but I did at least want to mark the date.

The text was first published in the series of inaugural lectures by the Collège itself as Leçoninauguralefaite le Mercredi 2 Décembre 1970. It was then published as a short book by Gallimard in February 1971 asL’ordre dudiscours: Leçoninaugurale au Collège de France prononcée le 2 décembre 1970. Although Foucault notes in the Gallimard edition that it is not quite the same as the spoken text, I didn’t know about the Collège de France publication. When the lecture was reprinted in the Pléiade Œuvres the Gallimard version…