{"product_id":"michel-foucault-9780674572874","title":"Michel Foucault","description":"\u003cp\u003eAt the time of his death in 1984  at the age of fifty-eight  Michel Foucault was widely regarded as one of the most powerful minds of this century. Hailed by distinguished historians and lionized on his frequent visits to America  he continues to provoke lively debate. The nature and merits of his accomplishments remain tangled in controversy. Rejecting traditional liberal and Marxist \"dreams of solidarity \" Foucault became the very model of the modern intellectual  replacing Sartre as the figure of the eminent Parisian and cosmopolitan master thinker. Foucault himself discouraged biographical questions  claiming that he was \"not at all interesting.\" Didier Eribons captivating account overthrows that assertion. As a journalist well acquainted with Foucault for years before his death  Eribon was particularly well placed to conduct the dozens of interviews which are the cornerstone of this book. He has drawn upon eyewitness accounts by Foucaults closest associates from all phases of his life--his mother  his schoolteachers  his classmates  his friends and enemies in academic life  and his celebrated companions in political activism  including Simone Signoret and Yves Montand. Eribon has methodically retraced the footsteps of his peripatetic subject  from France to Sweden to Poland to Germany to Tunisia to Brazil to Japan to the United States. The result is a concise  crisply readable  meticulously documented narrative that debunks the many myths and rumors surrounding the brilliant philosophe--and forces us to consider seriously the idea that all his books are indeed  just as Foucault said near the end of his life  \"fragments of an autobiography.\" Who was this man  Michel Foucault? In the late 1950s Foucault emerged as a budding young cultural attach  friendly with Gaullist diplomats. By the mid-1960s he appeared as one of the avatars of structuralism  positioning himself as a new star in the fashionable world of French thought. A few months after the May 1968 student revolt  with Gaullism apparently shaken  he emerged as an ultra-leftist and a fellow traveler of Maoists. Yet during this same period  Eribon shows  he was quietly and adroitly campaigning for a chair in the College de France--the very pinnacle of the French academic system. This book does more than follow the career of one extraordinary intellectual. It reconstructs the cultural  political  and intellectual life of France from the postwar years to the present. It is the story of a man and his time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45650520244277,"sku":"ByrdShop_0674572874","price":103.77,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780674572874.jpg?v=1781798794","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/michel-foucault-9780674572874","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}