On 26 August 1974, Michel Foucault completed work on Discipline and Punish, and on that very same day began writing the first volume of The History of Sexuality. A little under ten years later, on 25 June 1984, shortly after the second and third volumes were published, he was dead.
"The first intellectual history of Foucault's early career"--
On 20 May 1961, Foucault defended his two doctoral theses; on 2 December 1970, he gave his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France. Between these dates, he published four books, travelled widely, and wrote extensively on literature, the visual arts, linguistics, and philosophy. He taught both psychology and philosophy, beginning his explorations of the question of sexuality. Weaving together analyses of published and unpublished material, this is a comprehensive study of this crucial period. As well as Foucault's major texts, it discusses his travels to Brazil, Japan, and the USA, his time in Tunisia, and his editorial work for Critique and the complete works of Nietzsche and Bataille. It was in this period that Foucault developed the historical-philosophical approach he called 'archaeology' - the elaboration of the archive - which he understood as the rules that make possible specific claims. In its detailed study of Foucault's archive, the book is itself an archaeology of Foucault in another sense, both excavation and reconstruction.
Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled politically. This title provides an account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought.