Rewriting the History of Madness Studies in Foucault's Histoire De LA Folie

Michel Foucault has had an extraordinary impact on writers in the human sciences since his first bookMadness and Civilizationappeared in English. When it appeared in Britain in 1967, it was read as part of the anti-psychiatry movement of the time. Only retrospectively has it been seen as the start of a profoundly original and influential theory on the nature of knowledge and power. Rewriting the History of Madnessis a collection of essays centered around a provocative paper by Colin Gordon, which claims that major critics have failed to take note of the depth of Foucault's researches because of their excessive dependence on the English translation of the abridged 1965 edition. This collection--which contains some of the most incisive critique of Foucault on madness ever--takes Gordon's essay as a starting point, but ranges widely in drawing out the significance of Foucault's writings for modern thought in a variety of disciplines. With its annotatedbibliography of anglophone reactions toMadness and Civilization, this book provides an excellent, lively and disputatious approach to the literature on Foucault, and is an exciting assessment of the implications of his work in the history of madness and the historiography of the human sciences. Contributors: Peter Barham, Paul A. Bove, Robert Castel, Mark Erickson, Jan Goldstein, Colin Gordon, Dominick LaCapra, Allan Megill, H. C. Erik Midelfort, Geoffrey Pearson, Roy Porter, Anthony Pugh, Nikolas Rose, Andrew Scull, Arthur Still and Irving Velody.Still, Arthur is the author of 'Rewriting the History of Madness Studies in Foucault's Histoire De LA Folie' with ISBN 9780415066549 and ISBN 0415066549.