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Newly published lectures by Foucault on critique, Enlightenment, and the care of the self—now in paperback.
 
On May 27, 1978, Michel Foucault gave a lecture to the French Society of Philosophy where he redefined his entire philosophical project in light of Immanuel Kant’s 1784 text “What Is Enlightenment?” Foucault strikingly characterizes critique as the political and moral attitude consisting in the “art of not being governed like this,” one that performs the function of destabilizing power relations and creating the space for a new formation of the self within the “politics of truth.”

This volume presents the first critical edition of this crucial lecture alongside a previously unpublished lecture about the culture of the self and three public debates with Foucault at the University of California, Berkeley, in April 1983. There, for the first time, Foucault establishes a direct connection between his reflections on the Enlightenment and his analyses of Greco-Roman antiquity. However, far from suggesting a return to the ancient culture of the self, Foucault invites his audience to build a “new ethics” that bypasses the traditional references to religion, law, and science.

In this time of social crisis and revolutionary change, words have become one of the key sites of social struggle. Using a framework informed by trans studies, critical race theory, and digital media studies, #Triggered looks at the peak period of progressive social media activism in the U.S. and argues that it is primarily a struggle over whether it is safe for each of us to be ourselves, openly, publicly, proudly, and without permission from the dominant culture.

The term “triggered” and the concept of the trigger warning are just two of many emergent sites of struggle. This book provides a contextual, theoretical history to consider them alongside movements like #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and #TimesUp and concepts like cultural appropriation, “cancel culture,” and safe spaces. These on- and offline struggles have transformed the way we talk, the words we use, and the dominant cultural conversation of race, gender, sexuality, police violence, trauma, and equity. And yet the status quo is still one where marginalized individuals are made to fear for their lives if they do not exhibit the appropriate care and deference. #Triggered invites readers to consider the legitimate complaints about oppressive systems underlying this social crisis, the hierarchy of traumas and subjectivity these movements are opposing, and the opportunity to develop a more open and less repressive society and culture.