Michel Foucault. Abnormal: Lectures at the College De France 1974-1975

Michel Foucault remains one of the towering intellectual figures of the last half-century. His works on sexuality, madness, the prison, and medicine are classics; his example continues to challenge and inspire. From 1971 until his death in 1984, Foucault gave public lectures at the world-famous Collège de France. These lectures were seminal events. Attended by thousands, they created benchmarks for contemporary social enquiry. 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 developed in earlier works, 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, physical, or spiritual. The Collège de France lectures add immeasurably to our appreciation of Foucault's thought and offer a unique window into his thinking.