The Foucault Reader

It has been the particular achievement of Michel Foucault to show how seemingly neutral descriptive terms used by doctors and judges, teachers and sexologists, are in fact weapons in the never-ending conflict between desire and power. For as soon as an action is declared 'unnatural' or 'sick', it becomes legitimate to use force on 'deviants', or even imprison them, in order to try and make them 'normal'. We need to unmask terms like 'justice' and 'labour' and even 'human nature'. The 'Foucault reader' is anl introduction to one of the century's most stimulating and influential thinkers and contains lengthy excerpts from all his detailed historical studies as well as much new material and several very revealing interviews.