Foucault News

Elisabetta Basso,Young Foucault:The Lille Manuscripts on Psychopathology, Phenomenology, and Anthropology, 1952–1955- Columbia University Press, September 2022, translated by Marie Satya McDonough, foreword by Bernard E. Harcourt

In the 1950s, long before his ascent to international renown, Michel Foucault published a scant few works. His early writings on psychology, psychopathology, and anthropology have been dismissed as immature. However, recently discovered manuscripts from the mid-1950s, when Foucault was a lecturer at the University of Lille, testify to the significance of the work that the philosopher produced in the years leading up to the “archaeological” project he launched withHistory of Madness.

Elisabetta Basso offers a groundbreaking and in-depth analysis of Foucault’s Lille manuscripts that sheds new light on the origins of his philosophical project. She considers the epistemological style and methodology of these writings as well as their philosophical context and the scholarly networks in which Foucault was active…