Foucault's boundaries

※Masterpiece by Wang Min'an, professor and renowned scholar at Tsinghua University※
Explore the pervasive power,
Resisting the discipline of modern society on people,
Complete and clear outline of Foucault's ideological lineage [Editor's Recommendation]
Most of the subjects Foucault explored had never entered the academic sphere. Each of his books was a brand new world, sometimes abstract, sometimes concrete, sometimes strange, sometimes obscure. With the exception of Nietzsche, one can't even discern a source for his work. His books seemed to have descended from nowhere, outside the academic system and tradition. Yet, to this day, the themes and ideas he pioneered have almost completely conquered the academy, becoming a fashionable trend within the academic world and attracting countless followers.
Foucault was a disciple of Nietzsche, and Professor Wang Min'an also "wrote this book as a disciple," presenting his own version of Foucault. In the early 21st century, he spent countless late nights immersed in Foucault's words, both menacing and radiant, and was completely captivated. In a dimly lit high-rise building, he wrote this book with perseverance and passion. "Foucault's Limits" is a summary of his early reading of Foucault's major works. He continued to study Foucault for over twenty years, as each of his works captivated him intensely, offering a satisfaction unattainable in other works. "As a reader, finding an author who captivates me for such an enduring period is a unique blessing in life."
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【Book Introduction】
Foucault is a leading thinker in the contemporary world. He ambitiously attempted to offer a panoramic overview of Western culture, covering everything from Greek thought to 20th-century liberalism, philosophy to literature, religion to law, politics to history. He profoundly influenced contemporary trends, including poststructuralism and postmodernism, postcolonialism, New Historicism, feminism, and queer theory, and his influence surpasses that of any other contemporary thinker.
In this book, Professor Wang Min'an offers a profound and lucid exposition of Foucault's overarching thought from four perspectives: rationality/madness, discourse/knowledge, power/body, and ethics/aesthetics. Examining madness and irrationality, archaeology and genealogy, the author reveals Foucault's transgression of norms and his yearning for poetry. Foucault is renowned for his theories of power, but Wang Min'an argues that his overarching theme is not power but the subject. He seeks to understand: How is today's subject formed? In other words, what technologies of power and power/knowledge, over two thousand years of European culture, have shaped today's subject and its subjective experience? Foucault's work was so impactful that it split the historical chasm of thought like a bolt of lightning: after him, thought could no longer remain static.

2023-09-01

南京大学出版社

Nanjing University Press·Watchman

344

9787305269097