Foucault in Brazil - (Illuminations) by Marcelo Hoffman (Hardcover)

About the Book

Captures the Complexity of Foucault's Political Engagements and Breaks with the Orthodox View That He Was Anti-Marxist

Book Synopsis

Philosopher Michel Foucault's cultural criticism crosses disciplines and is well known as an influence on modern conceptions of knowledge and power. Less well known are the five trips he took to Brazil between 1965 and 1976. Although a coup in 1964 had installed a military dictatorship, Foucault kept his opinion on the Brazilian government largely to himself until October 23, 1975. On that date, he delivered a manifesto at a student assembly in São Paulo expressing his solidarity with students and professors protesting a wave of arrests and torture. This manifesto caught the government's attention and became the focal point of the dictatorship's surveillance of Foucault. Foucault in Brazil explores the production of the public antagonism between the philosopher and the dictatorship through a meticulous consideration of each of his visits to Brazil. Marcelo Hoffman connects history, philosophy, and political theory to open new ways of thinking about Foucault as a person and thinker and about Brazil and authoritarianism.

Review Quotes

Hoffman has provided us with an invaluable guide, a major contribution to Foucault scholarship and more generally to the reception of French theory abroad.-- "Political Theory"

Hoffman reveals how Brazil was key to the development and elaboration of his own ideas on biopolitics and health. His succinct descriptions are a useful introduction to some of Foucault's key ideas, which he uses to illuminate how they contributed to and were expanded by Brazilians' own intellectual and political activism.-- "CHOICE"

Foucault in Brazil develops a meticulous and riveting historical account of the philosopher's trips through that country. Hoffman's scholarship employs rigorous historical investigation to excavate nothing short of a model of what it can mean to marshal one's social capital to contest power publicly. This work is outstanding and without peer.--Kevin Thompson, DePaul University

Brilliant and chock-full of insights and impeccably researched historical portraits, Foucault in Brazil is a luminous, indispensable book in a range of fields, and constitutes a landmark for scholars interested in the French philosopher in the continent and beyond.--Adam Joseph Shellhorse, Temple University

This beautifully crafted account of Foucault's political activities in Brazil in the 1970s is a tour de force. Foucault in Brazil not only illuminates rich archival details about the philosopher's support of Brazilians fighting a military dictatorship but also brings much needed nuance to our understanding of how his distinct philosophical approach to power was driven by concrete acts of political solidarity.--Lynne Huffer, author of Mad for Foucault

About the Author

Marcelo Hoffman is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science of the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences at Pace University in New York City. He is the author of two books, Militant Acts: The Role of Investigations in Radical Political Struggles and Foucault and Power: The Influence of Political Engagement on Theories of Power.