I've been reading Foucault for years now and have always been mystified by apparent dramatic changes in his method and focus. But I've always assumed I'm missing something, not fully grasping his point. I remain confident that I have at no time fully grasped his point, but I read Paras's book with growing relief and joy -- it turns out my instincts were sound all along, and Foucault really did change his method and focus from Madness and Civilization to Discipline and Punish and then through his trilogy on the History of Sexuality.

Foucault 2.0 traces the emergence of the subject in Foucault's works, and his gradual trajectory toward existentialism from his initial (somewhat nasty) rejection of Sartre's project.

Paras's style is refreshingly straightforward and his book serves as a terrific primer, though it helps, of course, to have read the works he discusses already. I'd never made it through The Order of Things or The Archaeology of Knowledge but I feel I have a tenuous understanding of those works after reading Paras.

This is a great book to read if you've struggled with and engaged Foucault somewhat already. But an even better introduction to Foucault is Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. I wish I'd figured that out sooner than I did.