Shortly before his death in 1984, Michel Foucault spoke of an idea for a new book on ?technologies of the self.? He described it as ?composed of different papers about the self. . . . about the role of reading and writing in constituting the self. . . . and so on.? The book Foucault envisioned was based on a faculty seminar on ?Technologies of the Self,? originally presented at the University of Vermont in the fall of 1982. This volume is a partial record of that seminar.
In many ways, Foucault's project on the self was the logical conclusion to his historical inquiry over twenty-five years into insanity, deviancy, criminality, and sexuality. Because Foucault died before he completed the revisions of his seminar presentations, this volume includes a careful transcription instead...as a prolegomenon to that unfinished task.
Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic.
This volume was edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton.