Foucault in English
The politics of exoticization
It is something of a cliché to affirm that translations into English are almost always domestications, privileging
fluency and naturalness over fidelity to the source text. However, back in the 1970s, many of Michel Foucault’s major texts, which were
introduced to the English-speaking public for the first time through Alan Sheridan Smith’s translations for Tavistock Publications, were not
domesticated at all. Despite the fact that the originals are grounded in a non-empiricist theory of knowledge and use terms drawn from a
universe of discourse that would have been completely alien in the English-speaking world, these translations closely follow the patterns of
the French, with few or no concessions to the target reader’s knowledge and expectations. This paper analyses passages from Sheridan Smith’s
English translations of Les Mots et les choses and L’Archéologie du savoir in order to discuss the
long-term effects of this translation strategy. It then goes on to compare and assess two very different translations of Foucault’s lecture
L’ Ordre du discours (1970), an early one by Rupert Swyer (1971), which brings the text to the English reader, and a later one by Ian McLeod (1981), which obliges the reader to go to the text. The paper concludes by reiterating the need for
Anglophone academic culture to open up to foreign perspectives, and suggests, following Goethe (Book of West and East, 1819) that new epistemes are best introduced gradually in order to avoid alienating or confusing a public that might
not be ready for them.
Article outline
- 1.Michel Foucault – A ‘difficult’ writer?
- 2.The perils of foreignization
- 3.Phased translation
- 4.Conclusion
- Addendum
- Notes
-
References
References (58)
Works by Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1961 Folie et déraison. Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. Paris: Plon.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Translated by
Richard Howard as
Madness and Civilization. New York: Pantheon
1965 / London: Tavistock 1967.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Michel Foucault
1966 Les Mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Translated by
Alan Sheridan Smith as
The Order of Things. New York: Pantheon
1970 / London: Tavistock 1970.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Michel Foucault
1969 L’Archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard.
Translated by
Alan M. Sheridan Smith as
The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon
1972 / London: Tavistock 1972 Reprinted London: Routledge 2002.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Michel Foucault
1970 “Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?” Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 63 (3): 73–104.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Translated by
Donald F. Bouchard and
Sherry Simon as “
What Is an Author?” In
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Selected Essays and Interviews ed. by Donald F. Bouchard, 113–138. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
1977.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Michel Foucault
1970 L’Ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Translated by
Rupert Swyer as “
Orders of Discourse.”
Social Science Information 10 (2) [
1971]: 7–30. Reprinted as “Discourse on Language” as appendix to
The Archaeology of Knowledge
.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Translated by
Ian McLeod as “
The Order of Discourse.” In
Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader ed. by Robert Young, 51–78. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul
1981.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Michel Foucault
1975 Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Translated by
Alan Sheridan as
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Peregrine Books
1979.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Translated by
Iver B. Neumann as
Forelesninger om regjering og styringskunst. Oslo: Cappelen akademisk
2002.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Secondary texts
Alcoff, Linda M
2013 “
Foucault’s Normative Epistemology.” In
A Companion to Foucault, ed. by
Christopher Falzon,
Timothy O’Leary, and
Jana Sawicki, 207–225. Chichester: Blackwell.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Appiah, Kwame Anthony
(1993) 2000 “
Thick Translation.” In
The Translation Studies Reader, ed. by
Lawrence Venuti, 417–429. London: Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bartky, Sandra Lee
1988 “
Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” In
Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, ed. by
Irene Diamond, and
Lee Quinby, 61–86. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bourdieu, Pierre
1990 In Other Words: Essays towards a Reflexive Sociology. Translated by
Matthew Adamson. Cambridge: Polity Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Chambon, Adrienne
1999 “
Foucault’s Approach: Making the Familiar Visible.” In
Reading Foucault for Social Work, ed. by
Adrienne Chambon,
Allan Irving, and
Laura Epstein, 51–81. New York: Columbia University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Conley, Thomas M
1990 Rhetoric in the European Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cusset, François
2008 French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. Translated by
Jeff Fort. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Easthope, Anthony
1999 Englishness and National Culture. London: Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Elden, S
2014
Beyond “Discipline and Punish”: Is it Time for a New Translation of Foucault’s “Surveiller et punir”? Accessed September 2, 2016.
[URL].
Ellis, John M
1997 Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities. New York: Yale University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Goethe, Johann W
(1819) 2002.
“Translations.” From West-Östlicher Divan
. Translated by
Douglas Robinson. In
Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche. 2nd ed., ed. by
Douglas Robinson, 222–224. Manchester: St. Jerome.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gordon, Colin
1990 “
Histoire de la Folie: An Unknown Book by Michel Foucault.”
History of the Human Sciences 3 (1): 3–26.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gordon, Colin
1996 “
Foucault in Britain.” In
Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government, ed. by
Andrew Barry,
Thomas Osborne, and
Nikolas Rose, 253–270. London: Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gutting, Gary
1989 Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Scientific Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Holsinger, Bruce
2005 The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hoy, David C
1998 “
Foucault and Critical Theory.” In
The Later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy, ed. by
Jeremy Moss, 8–32. London: Thousand Oaks.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Jose, Jim
1998 Biopolitics of the Subject: An Introduction to the Ideas of Michel Foucault. Darwin: Northern Territory University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lefevere, André
1985 “
Why Waste our Time on Rewrites? The Trouble with Interpretation and the Role of Rewriting in an Alternative Paradigm.” In
The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation, ed. by
Theo Hermans, 215–244. London: Croom Helm.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lewis, Philip E
1985 “
The Measure of Translation Effects.” In
Difference in Translation, ed. by
Joseph F. Graham, 31–62. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Macdonell, Diane
1986 Theories of Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Megill, Alan
1987 “
The Reception of Foucault by Historians.”
Journal of the History of Ideas 48 (1): 117–141.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Megill, Alan
1990 “
Foucault, Ambiguity, and the Rhetoric of Historiography.”
History of the Human Sciences 3 (1): 343–361.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Merquior, José G
1991 Foucault. Second edition. London: Fontana Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mills, Sarah
1997 Discourse. London: Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Morris, Meaghan, and Paul Patton
eds. 1979 Michel Foucault: Power, Truth, Strategy. Sydney: Feral Publications.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
O’Farrell, Clare
2005 Michel Foucault. London: Sage.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Paglia, Camille
1992 “
Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf.” In
Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays, 170–248. New York: Vintage.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rorty, Richard
1991 Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rose, Gillian
1984 Dialectic of Nihilism: Poststructuralism and Law. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ryan, Alan
1993 “
Foucault’s Life and Hard Times.”
The New York Review of Books.
April 8.
[URL].
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Sheridan, Alan
1980 Foucault: The Will to Truth. Abingdon: Routledge.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Sokal, Alan
2008 Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont
1998 Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. New York: Picador.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty
1993 “
The Politics of Translation.” In
Outside in the Teaching Machine, 200–225. London: Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Still, Arthur, and Irving Velody
eds. 1992 Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s ‘Histoire da la folie.
’ London: Routledge.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Thompson, Edward Palmer
(1978) 1995 The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays. London: Merlin.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Times Higher Education
2009,
March 26.
“Most Cited Authors of Books in the Humanities, 2007.” [URL].
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Timmermans, Benoît
(1999) 2002 “Renascimento e modernidade da retórica.” Translated from the French by
Maria Manuel Berjano. In
História da Retórica, ed. by
Michel Meyer,
Manuel Maria Carrilho, and
Benoît Timmermans, 83–226. Lisbon: Temas e Debates.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Vandaele, Jeroen
2016 “
What is an Author, Indeed: Michel Foucault in Translation.”
Perspectives 24 (1): 76–92.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Venuti, Lawrence
1995 The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Venuti, Lawrence
2010 “Translation, Empiricism, Ethics.” Profession [MLA], 72–81.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Weightman, John
1989 “
On Not Understanding Michel Foucault.”
The American Scholar 581: 383–406.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Williams, Glyn
1999 French Discourse Analysis: The Method of Post-Structuralism. London: Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Wilson, Colin
2007 “
Foucault and History.”
Socialist Worker nr. 20821 (17 December 2007). Accessed January 14, 2016.
[URL].
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (3)
Cited by 3 other publications
Bennett, Karen
2023.
Translating knowledge in the multilingual paradigm: Beyond epistemicide.
Social Science Information 62:4
► pp. 514 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Chmutina, Ksenia, Neil Sadler, Jason von Meding & Amer Hamad Issa Abukhalaf
2020.
Lost (and found?) in translation: key terminology in disaster studies.
Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal 30:2
► pp. 149 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Scull, Andrew
2020.
Foucault’sFolie et déraison: its influence and its contemporary relevance.
History of Psychiatry 31:3
► pp. 351 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.