The Politics of Truth

In 1784, the German newspaper Berlinische Monatsschrift asked its audience to replyto the question "What is Enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant took the opportunity to investigate thepurported truths and assumptions of his age. Two hundred years later, Michel Foucault wrote aresponse to Kant's initial essay, positioning Kant as the initiator of the discourse and critique ofmodernity. The Politics of Truth takes this initial encounter between Foucault and Kant, as aframework for its selection of unpublished essays and transcripts of lectures Foucault gave inAmerica and France between 1978 and 1984, the year of his death. Ranging from reflections on theEnlightenment and revolution to a consideration of the Frankfurt School, this collection offersinsight into the topics preoccupying Foucault as he worked on what would be his last body ofpublished work, the three-volume History of Sexuality. It also offers what is in a sense the most"American" moment of Foucault's thinking, for it was in America that he realized the necessity oftying his own thought to that of the Frankfurt School.

Sylvere Lotringer, general editor of Semiotext(e), lives in New York and Baja, California. He is the author of Overexposed: Perverting Perversions (Semiotext(e), 2007).