Foucault and Literary Theory

Abstract

Michel Foucault began his career in an intellectual world for which literature and literary theory mattered a great deal. So it is understandable that, early in his career, literature, or, at any rate, a particular conception of literature, was a touchstone for him. More that that: it was a centre around which his work as a whole turned. That remained the case up until about 1968, when the student/worker ‘revolution’ transformed the political and cultural order in France. Although Foucault was not himself directly involved in these events, in their wake for a short period, he moved towards a kind of Maoism. In 1969, he published ‘What Is an Author?', an essay which subjected the literary fie..