Stuart Elden is Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick and Monash Warwick Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Monash University.
Foucault: The Birth of Power opens an illuminating window into the process of political awakening and philosophical transformation as intellectual history. Drawing on lectures, talks and unpublished as well as published material, Stuart Elden has marshalled the contents of a massive archive to substantiate this pivotal period in the development of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Caren Kaplan, University of California, Davis This is a brilliant prequel to Elden s masterful book, Foucault s Last Decade. Here, Elden offers a meticulous, erudite reading of the thinker s early years at the College de France a critical time in the arc of his research, which included seminars and conferences on disciplinary power, with deep political engagement and activism on behalf of prisoners. With his unmatched knowledge of Foucault, Elden unearths key intellectual moments and carefully traces Foucault s intellectual journey to the mid-1970s, the publication of Discipline and Punish and the lectures on psychiatric power. Foucault: The Birth of Power is the perfect reading companion to Foucault s power-knowledge period. Bernard Harcourt, Columbia University