Rewriting the History of Madness

Michel Foucault has had an extraordinary impact on writers in the human sciences since his first book Madness and Civilization appeared in English. This title assesses the reactions to Madness and Civilization.
Michel Foucault has had an extraordinary impact on writers in the human sciences since his first book "Madness and Civilization" appeared in English. When it appeared in Britain in 1967 it was read as part of the anti-psychiatry movement of the time. Only retrospectively has it been seen as the start of a profoundly original and influential theory on the nature of knowledge and power. "Rewriting the History of Madness" is a collection of essays centred around a provocative paper by Colin Gordon, which claims that major critics have failed to take note of the depth of Foucault's researches because of their excessive dependence on the English translation of the abridged 1965 edition. The collection takes Gordon's essay as a starting point, but ranges widely in drawing out the significance of Foucault's writings for modern thought in a variety of disciplines.