Abnormal

Lectures at the College de France, 1974-1975

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by Michel Foucault,

Introduction by Arnold Davidson

Picador USA

Due/Published September 2004, 400 pages, paper

ISBN 0312424051

New in paper (F04)

The is the second volume in the complete Collège de France lectures of Michel Foucault. From 1971 until his death in 1984, Foucault gave public lectures at the Collège de France. Attended by thousands, they created benchmarks for contemporary critical inquiry.

The lectures comprising Abnormal begin by examining the role of psychiatry in modern criminal justice, and its method of categorizing individuals who "resemble their crime before they commit it." Building on the themes of societal self-defense in the first volume of this series, Foucault shows how and why defining "abnormality" and "normality" were prerogatives of power in the nineteenth century, shaping the institutions--from the prison system to the family--meant to deal in particular with "monstrosity," whether sexual, phsyical, or spiritual.