ABSTRACT
I have had an on-off relationship with the works of Michel Foucault since I first read his works in Cambridge in the 1970s in those glossy, black, and so authoritative-looking Tavistock editions. I have always connected Foucault with a certain austerity ever since: the man in black. That impression – of a certain rather gloomy outlook – has stayed with me, even as I have read and taught his subsequent work and, even though, as a result, it has become clear that this impression is, in a large part at least, mistaken.
