Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984 Book

You get so much more from foucault's letters and whatever he writes in the first person because he is so much more sassy and compelling.

my favorite chunk of this book is "Lives of Infamous Men," which if you are a freak like me and love Wisconsin Death Trip and @sheboyganscan ( will get a lot out of. He takes small bullets of information from documents concerning random, lost-to-history criminals in the 1700s and brings them back to life, illustrating how people who make small rackets in their lives draw the attention of Power, which kills them but also in this weird way makes them eternal.

here are two excerpts from "lives of infamous men":

"we may amuse ourselves, if we wish, by seeing a revenge in this: the chance that enabled these absolutely undistinguished people to emerge from their place amid the dead multitudes, to gesticulate again, to manifest their rage, their affliction, or the invincible determination to err- perhaps it makes up for the bad luck the brought power's lightning bolt down upon them, in spite of their modesty and anonymity."

skeletons rising to gesticulate! "out of the graves and into the streets."

"Malthurin Milan, place in the hospital of Charenton, 31 August 1707: "His madness was always to hide from his family, to lead an obscure life in he country, to have actions at law, to lend usuriously and without security, to lead his feeble mind down unknown paths, and believe himself capable of the greatest employments."

^that's me, right??