Presentation
Michel Foucault, whose 100th birthday is celebrated in 2026, led a more cosmopolitan intellectual life than one might imagine. It was while serving in the French cultural services in Uppsala and later in Warsaw that he wrote his doctoral dissertation on madness, and as a professor of philosophy at the University of Tunis that he had his first political experience. After being elected to the chair History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France, he traveled to Japan, Brazil, Canada, and frequently to the United States to give lectures. Besides, he occasionally worked as a journalist to cover the Islamic Revolution in Iran and as a humanitarian aid worker to support Solidarność in Poland.
But his international impact extended far beyond his stays abroad. His work profoundly transformed research in the humanities and social sciences on numerous topics, but it also sparked debates, criticisms, and even controversies, particularly with US historians and German philosophers. The most remarkable fact, however, is that even when he neglected certain important fields and issues, notably regarding the colonial question and gender relations, he nonetheless exerted an influence on those who analyzed them.
It is therefore this global presence of Foucauldian thought that the conference aims to analyze and discuss beyond platitudes, conventional interpretations, hagiographic commentaries, and easy criticisms, in order to better understand how it has helped shift paradigms and how it offers today renewed relevance.
The symposium is in French and English, with simultaneous translation.