From «I» to the others, and back. A literary turn in Foucault’s last though

Abstract

In 1976 and 1977, literature seems to have a new function for Michel Foucault. If, in the previous years, he considers it, in his analysis about Blanchot, as a «Thought from Outside», that can be a way to escape from the discourse, Foucault, although he settles that he is not interested anymore in literature, keeps on working with it in an implicit way. On the one hand, as for Roland Barthes, literature becomes «writing» and has to do with ethics. On the other hand, it is conceived as a «form of life» and especially with Claude Mauriac self-writing that can be perceived as a process of subjectivation. Thus, this article aims to study this couple of years when Foucault changes his conception of what is literature and how to deal with it, literary turn that occurs at the same time as his «Greco-latin trip».