The Japan Lectures: A Transnational Critical Encounter

Synopsis

This book makes available, for the first time in English, lectures and interviews that Foucault gave in Japan in 1978, reconstructing their context, and isolating the question of their singular relevance for us today. In these forgotten lectures, in a free and often informal style, Foucault explores, together with his Japanese interlocutors, what it would mean to take up, from outside Europe, the questions he was raising at the time about Revolution and Enlightenment in the traditions of European critical thought. In a series of wide-ranging discussions, on sexuality and its history, non-Christian forms of spirituality, new forms of political movements, and the role of knowledge, power, and truth in them, Foucault examines these questions in relationship to Asia. He had hoped these questions, very much debated at the time in postwar Japan, would be the start of new forms of translation, publication, and exchange. At the heart of the lectures is thus a search for the creation of a new sort of transnational collaboration, recasting the history of European colonialism and opening to a philosophy no longer simply Western, yet to come. The Japan Lectures thus contribute to the new scholarship in Asian and in translation studies which has long since moved away from earlier "Area Studies"; at the same time, it participates in the new scholarship about Foucault’s own work and itinerary, following the publication of an extraordinary wealth of materials left unfinished or unpublished by his untimely death. In these ways, The Japan Lectures help us to better see the implications of Foucault’s work for philosophy in the 21st century.

Copyright:

2024

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781003813590

Related ISBNs:

9781003303763, 9781032286051, 9781032301747

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

12/01/23

Copyrighted By:

Shiguéhiko Hasumi / CTB Inc. Texts by Michel Foucault from Dits et écrits

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Social Studies

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.