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boundary 2 28.1 (2001) 91-105



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The Constitution of the Normal:
Monsters and Masturbation at the Collège de France

Stuart Elden

Michel Foucault, Les Anormaux: Cours au Collège de France (1974–1975) (Paris: Seuil/Gallimard, 1999).

“No posthumous publications.” In the letter written a year before his death, which has been legally interpreted as his will, Michel Foucault made his views on this subject clear. As a result, the fourth volume of the History of Sexuality series, Les Aveux de la chair [The confession of the flesh], which Foucault was working on at the time of his death, remains unpublished.1 And yet texts under the name of Michel Foucault continue to appear: the collected shorter works in Dits et écrits [Sayings and writings] in 1994; <<Il faut défendre la société>> [“Society must be defended”] in 1997; and Les Anormaux [The abnormals] in 1999.2 The last two are courses from the [End Page 91] Collège de France—from the years 1975–76 and 1974–75 respectively. In order to circumvent the legal restrictions, Foucault’s executors have used not the still extant lecture notes but rather the audio recordings made at the time, which for some years have been accessible at both the Collège and the Centre Michel Foucault in Paris. Other than allowing these books’ very existence, the advantage of such an approach is that the texts we have are those Foucault actually delivered, along with extemporizations, developments, and elucidations. This fidelity to the spoken word is, however, also the greatest problem. Most of the notes are those of the editors, as is the punctuation and the division into paragraphs, and because the oral form can read rather awkwardly at times, the editors have exercised some discretion in sentence formulation. More seriously, some passages substitute ellipses for inaudible delivery. But despite these problems, we now have the courses in a much more accessible form than the Paris tapes.

The Collège de France is a peculiar institution, and these are peculiar lecture courses. Rather than have students, professors there are said to have listeners; and rather than teach, they are expected to present their ongoing research. One would assume, therefore, that these lecture courses would provide a valuable insight into the development of Foucault’s research project from 1971 until his death, in much the same way that Heidegger’s lecture courses in his Gesamtausgabe have done. However, Pierre Nora reports a conversation in which Foucault himself was rather disparaging about the material in his lectures: “There is a lot of throwaway material, but also plenty of work and ways to take it that might be useful to the kids.”3 Reading Les Anormaux shows why both these views are correct, as the course both opens up a number of interesting areas but is itself ultimately part of a discarded project.

Delivered between January and March 1975, Les Anormaux is clearly a course from a crucially important time in Foucault’s career. Surveiller et punir [Discipline and Punish], the culmination of several years’ courses at the Collège, appeared about half way through this set of lectures, and the first volume of the History of Sexuality series was clearly well under way. This volume, La Volonté de savoir [The will to knowledge], translated as [End Page 92] An Introduction, appeared toward the end of 1976. As is well known, between then and the publication of L’Usage de plaisirs [The Use of Pleasures] and Le Souci de soi [The Care of the Self] in 1984, Foucault changed his project radically. Realizing that some of the first volume’s claims were misleading, he moved to a far more historical study, tracing the subject backward, through early Christianity initially and then back to antiquity. Originally, though, Foucault had intended a more thematic approach, and the initial plan—found on the back cover of the first volume—was for the following titles:

1. La Volonté de savoir [The will to knowledge]

2. La Chair et le corps [The flesh and the...

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