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A review by mburnamfink
Passion of Michel Foucault by James Miller
4.0
Every semester when finals roll around, I sigh and reach for my Foucault shelf, which is what I deserve for being a grad student studying mental illness and institutional power. But after a few years of cursing his name, I figured it was time to find out who this Foucault guy was, and if his life could shed any insight on his work.
In that regard, James Miller makes a heroic attempt to contextualize the events of Foucault's life with his scholarship. I say heroic, because Foucault was an evasive man who deliberately sought the death of the author in his public statements, and because his texts are legendarily dense. Miller more or less succeeds, finding in Foucault an attempt to fulfill the Nietzschean quest to "become oneself" through the practice of "limit-experiences" in radical politics, physical pleasure/pain, intellectual rigor, and ultimately death.
So why only four stars? Well, first, I only half buy it. I'm not an expert in Foucault scholarship by any means, but somehow it seems a little pat. And second, this is a dense book, and took me several weeks to trudge through. Someone with a lesser interest in Foucault might give up. Somebody with greater knowledge might through the book through a window.
In that regard, James Miller makes a heroic attempt to contextualize the events of Foucault's life with his scholarship. I say heroic, because Foucault was an evasive man who deliberately sought the death of the author in his public statements, and because his texts are legendarily dense. Miller more or less succeeds, finding in Foucault an attempt to fulfill the Nietzschean quest to "become oneself" through the practice of "limit-experiences" in radical politics, physical pleasure/pain, intellectual rigor, and ultimately death.
So why only four stars? Well, first, I only half buy it. I'm not an expert in Foucault scholarship by any means, but somehow it seems a little pat. And second, this is a dense book, and took me several weeks to trudge through. Someone with a lesser interest in Foucault might give up. Somebody with greater knowledge might through the book through a window.