Foucault A Critical Introduction

This work provides an introduction to the work of Michel Foucault. It offers an assessment of all of Foucaults work, including his final writings on governmentality and the self. McNay argues that the later work initiates an important shift in his intellectual concerns which alters any retrospective reading of his writings as a whole. Throughout, McNay is concerned to assess the normative and political implications of Foucaults social criticism. She goes beyond the level of many commentators to look at the values from which Foucaults work springs and reveals the implicit assumptions underlying his social critique. The author also provides an account and assessment of recent literature on Foucault, including that of Habermas and Taylor. She discusses Foucaults position in the modernity/postmodernity debate, his own ambivalence to Enlightenment thought and his place in recent developments in feminist and cultural theory.

Lois McNay is the author of Foucault: A Critical Introduction, published by Wiley.