Let's dispense with the niceties. This is Foucault for Dummies. I think it says a lot about Foucault that his greatest work and ideas can be distilled into the most readable, digestible nuggets of information possible, supplemented with witty and incisive cartoons, and the man's work is still incomprehensible.
This is probably not fair, but I am beginning to become of the mind that there are Those Who Understand, and The Rest Of Us. Quite frankly, if you are one of TWU, then you don't really need INTRODUCING FOUCAULT. On the other hand, the thicket of reasoning that encompasses Foucault's ideas don't really suit themselves well for encapsulation and "nuggetizing" -- so that the captions to the cartoons often seem like intense bursts of Foucault-speak.
Still, if you are asking, "How do I expose myself to that wacky Foucault without actually having to read one of his gnarly texts?" INTRODUCING FOUCAULT is about as well as you can do for your cause. Wittier than Cliff's Notes, Horrocks does summarize the principal points behind what are perceived to be his major texts while placing each of these concepts within Foucault's biography. Once you get over the fact that artist Jevtic uses the same five bald-head icons to represent Foucault throughout the book, the coordination of the cartoons and the text is exceptional. Seeing Foucault's head as a rat may be one of the more base pleasures of this book, but Jevtic uses some interesting image manipulations to communicate Horrocks' interpretations in as lucid a manner as possible. This book needs its pictures.
While Foucault has become a popular icon to postmodernists, his personal life and political judgements continue to offend, shock, and sometimes amuse conservative intellectuals. This concise biography provides brief summaries of his most important intellectual works, introduces some of his key concepts, and acknowledges the profoundly deluded political predictions of this controversial French philosopher. If the personal is political, then Foucault's private life as a hyper-sexual gay hedonist and seducer of young boys - and death from AIDS - can be seen as the logical consequences of his peculiar belief systems where there is no objectivity and everything is subjective.
This comic book biography explores the paradox of Foucault, one of the most influential modern philosophers, right from the first page. "Should we look at the life of the man himself, who as a boy wanted to be a goldfish, became a philosopher and historian, political activist, leather queen, bestseller, tireless campaigner for dissident causes? What about his literary skill, combined with painstaking historical inquiry, his excellence as a pasta cook, captivating lecturing style, passion for sex with men, occassional drug-taking, barbed sense of humour, competitiveness, fierce temper - and the fact that he came from a family of doctors and dearly loved his mother?" The cartoon of the bald intellectual includes the caption/quote from Foucault: "Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same." Fairness and multidimensional from the beginning.
While many academics will inevitably find this introduction too brief and too superficial, this thin and accessible book draws readers into Foucault's ideas, passions, and lives. Far more lively and engaging than than most secondary sources for undergraduate philosophy students, this black and white, adult comic book provides a comfortable entry point into some of the great intellectual debates of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It also delights in contradictions and paradoxes.
Did you know that the man who subtley explored the connections between order and brutality promoted the new Islamic Government in Iran in 1979? How could a gay, leftist western intellectual support religious fanatics? "An Islamic government cannot restrict people's rights because it is bound by religious duty," claimed Foucault to reporters while visiting Tehran. "The people will know what is right." The harsh objective reality of public executions and stonings -including women who refused to wear the proscribed veil- soon silenced Foucault. The authors cover this embarrassing situation with an admirable directness on p.79. His other questionable political crusades are also examined in a sympathetic, yet critical light.
This thin book, digestible in a few hours, would make an excellent companion text for both undergraduate and graduate philosophy students confronted with reading a Foucault tome. It would be a valuable addition to college libraries and belongs on the bookshelves of postmodernists - and Foucault's critics.
