The Lives of Michel Foucault

January 3, 1994
French social philosopher Michel Foucault, whose work was a cry against the confinement or regulation of prisoners, workers, psychiatric patients and sexual desires, shaved his head in order to reveal his true face, or so he told friends. Yet Foucault, who died of AIDS in 1984 at the age of 57, was extremely reticent about his personal life. A homosexual, he generally kept his distance from the gay and feminist movements and, by this account, made surprisingly ignorant remarks about rape. Macey's ( Lacan in Contexts )revealing, careful bigraphy, whichtraces Foucault's constantly evolving thought against the backdrop of his political activism and travels, draws on interviews with friends and colleagues and on the cooperation of Foucault's former lover, Daniel Defert. Details of Foucault's experimentation with LSD and opium, his near-death experience after being hit by a car, and his activism against racism, the Vietnam War and prison conditions round out a portrait of a versatile thinker who remains a personal enigma.