Though Michel Foucault is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, little is known about his early life. Even Foucault’s biographers have neglected this period, preferring instead to start the story when the future philosopher arrives in Paris.Becoming Foucault is a historical reconstruction of the world in which Foucault grew up: the small city of Poitiers, France, from the 1920s until the end of the Second World War. Beyond exploring previously unexam...

Michel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transformation that characterized the postwar period. In the decades following his death, neoliberalism has triumphed and attacks on social rights have become increasingly bold. If Foucault was not a direct witness of these years, his work on neoliberalism is nonetheless prescient: the question of liberalism occupies an important place in his last works. Since his death, Foucault's conceptual apparatus h...

Madame de Pompadour's famous quip, "Après nous, le deluge," serves as fitting inspiration for this lively discussion of postwar French intellectual and cultural life. Over the past thirty years, North American and European scholarship has been significantly transformed by the absorption of poststructuralist and postmodernist theories from French thinkers. But Julian Bourg's seamlessly edited volume proves that, historically speaking, French intellecutal and cultural life since World War Tw...

Though Michel Foucault is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, little is known about his early life. Even Foucault’s biographers have neglected this period, preferring instead to start the story when the future philosopher arrives in Paris.Becoming Foucault is a historical reconstruction of the world in which Foucault grew up: the small city of Poitiers, France, from the 1920s until the end of the Second World War. Beyond exploring previously unexam...

One of the most influential Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, Henri Lefebvre pioneered the study of the modern state in an age of accelerating global economic integration and fragmentation. Shortly after the 1974 publication of his landmark book The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre embarked on one of the most ambitious projects of his career: a consideration of the history and geographies of the modern state through a monumental study that linked several disciplines, ...

étienne Balibar has been one of Europe's most important philosophical and political thinkers since the 1960s. His work has been vastly influential on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the humanities and the social sciences. In We, the People of Europe?, he expands on themes raised in his previous works to offer a trenchant and eloquently written analysis of "transnational citizenship" from the perspective of contemporary Europe. Balibar moves deftly from state theory, national...

A new edition of the highly acclaimed book Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition," this paperback brings together an even wider range of leading philosophers and social scientists to probe the political controversy surrounding multiculturalism. Charles Taylor's initial inquiry, which considers whether the institutions of liberal democratic government make room--or should make room--for recognizing the worth of distinctive cultural traditions, remains the centerpiece of...

Far from creating a borderless world, contemporary globalization has generated a proliferation of borders. In Border as Method, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson chart this proliferation, investigating its implications for migratory movements, capitalist transformations, and political life. They explore the atmospheric violence that surrounds borderlands and border struggles across various geographical scales, illustrating their theoretical arguments with illuminating case studies...

The language of human rights has become the public vocabulary of our contemporary world. Ironically, as the political influence of human rights has grown, their philosophical justification has become ever more controversial.Building on a theory of discourse ethics and communicative rationality, this book addresses the politics and philosophy of human rights against the background of the broader social transformations that are shaping the modern world. Rejecting the reduction of int...

A "marvelously readable" critique of Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir, and other French postwar intellectuals that "consistently entertains and provokes" ( The Washington Post).The uniquely prominent role of French intellectuals in European cultural and political life following World War II is the focus of this book by the acclaimed author of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Tony Judt analyzes this intellectual community's most divisive conflict...

Political conflict in our society is inevitable, and the results are often far from negative. How then should we deal with the intractable differences arising from complex modern culture?In Agonistics, Mouffe develops her philosophy, taking particular interest in international relations, strategies for radical politics and the politics of artistic practices. In a series of coruscating essays, she engages with cosmopolitanism, post-operaism, and theories of multiple modernit...

With the perspective of a walker moving through a fluid landscape of neighbourhoods and eras Sherry Simon experiences Montreal as a voyage across languages. She traces an evocative history of literary passages across familiar sites - the mythical boulevard Saint-Laurent Mile End Mont Royal - as she follows adventurous cultural translators such as Malcolm Reid A.M. Klein and Pierre Anctil and contemporary writer-translators such as Gail Scott Erin Moure Jacques Brault Nicole Brossard and Emile...