Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    This Is Not a Pipe
    This Is Not a Pipe
    This Is Not a Pipe
    Ebook99 pages58 minutes

    This Is Not a Pipe

    By Michel Foucault

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    What does it mean to write "This is not a pipe" across a bluntly literal painting of a pipe? René Magritte's famous canvas provides the starting point for a delightful homage by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Much better known for his incisive and mordant explorations of power and social exclusion, Foucault here assumes a more playful stance. By exploring the nuances and ambiguities of Magritte's visual critique of language, he finds the painter less removed than previously thought from the pioneers of modern abstraction.

    This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 2008.
    What does it mean to write "This is not a pipe" across a bluntly literal painting of a pipe? René Magritte's famous canvas provides the starting point for a delightful homage by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Much better known for his i
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of California Press
    Release dateNov 15, 2023
    ISBN9780520353411
    This Is Not a Pipe
    Author

    Michel Foucault

    Michel Foucault. Nacido en 1926 en Poitiers, Francia, es uno de los pensadores más influyentes del siglo XX. Alumno de la École Normale Supérieure de París, cursó estudios de Filosofía y Psicología. Durante la década de 1960, encabezó el Departamento de Filosofía de la Universidad de Vincennes. En 1970 fue elegido en el Collège de France, una de las instituciones académicas más prestigiosas de su país, como profesor de Historia de los Sistemas de Pensamiento, cátedra que dictó hasta su muerte, en junio de 1984. En los años setenta y ochenta, su valiosa obra, publicada en gran parte por Siglo XXI Editores, lo convirtió en un intelectual de referencia y lo llevó a dictar numerosas conferencias y cursos en todo el mundo. Comprometido activamente en las luchas políticas y sociales, Foucault llevó a cabo un análisis minucioso de los mecanismos de control y de gobierno de la sociedad. Su pensamiento continúa siendo fuente de inspiración para estudiosos de distintas áreas y para quienes buscan mejorar la situación de los excluidos (los presos, los locos, las minorías sexuales, los inmigrantes, los jóvenes).

    Read more from Michel Foucault

    Related to This Is Not a Pipe

    Titles in the series (10)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Art For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Unjust: Social Justice And The Unmaking Of America

      Nov 1, 2020

      By Noah Rothman Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 2019. Pp. xvi, 272. $28.99 hardcover. Social justice is all the rage nowadays. And all the rage is about social justice. Students are taking to university quads to demand action be taken on behalf of

      6 min read

    • Article

      How To Be Idle

      Jan 28, 2022

      idler.co.uk Defenders of modern capitalism say that we now enjoy more leisure time than our ancestors. Perhaps, but if it doesn’t always feel like that, that’s because we treat our leisure time all too often as just “another item on our to-do list”

      1 min read

    • Article

      Henrietta and Her Moths

      Sep 1, 2022

      ANDREA BARRETT is the author of Archangel (a finalist for the Story Prize), Servants of the Map (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Ship Fever (winner of the National Book Award), and other books. This story will appear in her forthcoming collection

      19 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Can Be Murder

      Dec 1, 2022

      Christmas Can Be Murder
      3 min read

    • Article

      How To Keep Going

      Dec 15, 2021

      I CANNOT think of the past year without linking it to 2020, when all our lives changed. As the coronavirus became a global pandemic, I had so many conversations with friends about the value of art in this time. Was it worth it to play around with the

      5 min read

    • Article

      Taking Poetry Personally

      Nov 1, 2021

      To consider how absorption into a poem’s world works, immerse yourself in two opening stanzas. The first comes from John Crowe Ransom’s most anthologized poem, the elegy “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,” first published in 1924: There was such s

      12 min read

    • Article

      Mind’s eye

      Mar 3, 2021

      Mind’s eye
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Very Big House

      Sep 9, 2020

      A Very Big House
      2 min read

    • Article

      Sarah Manguso Takes a Novel Approach

      Jan 10, 2022

      "Despite the fact that I’ve spent my entire career saying I would never write a novel, I realized this was the form I needed," Manguso says. The post Sarah Manguso Takes a Novel Approach appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Artificial Splendor: A Trio by Jacques Demy

      Jun 1, 2021

      THE FILMMAKER Jacques Demy came of age artistically in the early Sixties, shortly after his compatriots François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard initiated the French New Wave with The 400 Blows, Breathless, and Shoot the Piano Player in 1959 and 1960. Y

      11 min read

    • Article

      Endgame

      Jun 24, 2022

      Endgame
      3 min read

    • Article

      Capitalism Is a Very Successful Cancer: The Millions Interviews Eugene Lim

      Jun 26, 2017

      I’d like to describe the chaotic matrix in which we’re living through some other narrative device, some new way that supersedes our dependence on character as empathy avatar. The post Capitalism Is a Very Successful Cancer: The Millions Interviews Eu

      6 min read

    • Article

      Debating Difference

      Jun 18, 2023

      Debating Difference
      3 min read

    • Article

      What Is Wealth For?

      Mar 31, 2024

      What Is Wealth For?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Lost In Cyberspace

      Aug 8, 2021

      Lost In Cyberspace
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for This Is Not a Pipe

    3.5/5

    68 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      This Is Not a Pipe - Michel Foucault

      THIS IS NOT A PIPE

      ABOUT

      QUANTUM

      BOOKS

      QUANTUM, THE UNIT OF

      EMITTED ENERGY. A QUANTUM

      BOOK IS A SHORT STUDY

      DISTINCTIVE FOR THE AUTHOR’S

      ABILITY TO OFFER A RICHNESS OF

      DETAIL AND INSIGHT WITHIN

      ABOUT ONE HUNDRED PAGES

      OF PRINT. SHORT ENOUGH TO BE

      READ IN AN EVENING AND

      SIGNIFICANT ENOUGH

      TO BE A BOOK

      Michel Foucault

      This Is Not

      a Pipe

      With Illustrations and Letters

      by René Magritte

      Translated and Edited

      by James Harkness

      University of California Press

      Berkeley Los Angeles London

      All paintings copyright 1982 by A.D.A.G.P., Paris

      University of California Press

      Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd.

      London, England

      © 1983 by The Regents of the

      University of California

      Second paperback edition 2008

      Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

      Foucault, Michel.

      This is not a pipe.

      Translation of Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

      Includes index.

      1. Magritte, René, 1898-1967. 2. Art— Philosophy. I. Title.

      ND673.M35F6813 759.9493 80-26627

      ISBN 978-0-520-23694-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)

      Printed in the United States of America

      18 17

      8

      The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39 48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper)

      Contents

      Contents

      List of Plates

      Acknowledgments

      Translator’s Introduction

      This Is Not a Pipe

      1 Two Pipes

      2 The Unraveled Calligram

      3 Klee, Kandinsky, Magritte

      4 Burrowing Words

      5 Seven Seals of Affirmation

      6 Nonaffirmative Painting

      Two Letters by René Magritte

      Two Letters by René Magritte

      Index

      Plates

      List of Plates

      1. L'Explication (1952)

      2. La Condition humaine (1935)

      3. Ceci n’est pas une pipe (1926)

      4. Les Deux mystères (1966)

      5. Tombeau des lutteurs (1960)

      6. La Bataille de l’Argonne (1959)

      7. Fumées, by Guillaume Apollinaire

      8. L’Oeillet, by Guillaume Apollinaire

      9. Paul Klee, Villa R (1919)

      10. Paul Klee, The Wild Man (1922)

      11. Wassily Kandinsky, White Balancing (1944)

      12. Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation: Green Center (1935)

      13. L'Incendie (1943)

      14. Le Séducteur (1950)

      15. La Philosophie dans le boudoir (1947)

      16. L'Art de la conversation (1950)

      17. Le Soir qui tombe (1934)

      18. Personnage marchant vers l’horizon (1928-29)

      19. L'Alphabet des révélations (1935)

      20. Perspective: Mme. Récamier (1958)

      21. L'Usage de la parole (1932)

      22. Représentation (1962)

      23. Décalcomanie (1966)

      24. Les Grâces naturelles (1962)

      25. La Dame, painted bottle (1943)

      26. Folie des grandeurs (1961)

      27. La Condition humaine (1933)

      28. La Cascade (1961)

      29. La Lunette d’approche (1963)

      30. Les Liaisons dangereuses (1936)

      Acknowledgments

      In translating and editing This Is Not a Pipe, I had the assistance of a number of persons I should like to thank here.

      First and most important was Dr. Sarah Lawall, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts, who guided my early study of Michel Foucault. She read each draft of the translation and gave inestimable help oh the way to a completed manuscript. Dr. Lawall’s wide knowledge and impeccable scholarship prevented several allusions from escaping unnoticed and greatly improved the overall quality of the translation. Her colleague, Dr. Roger Green of the French Department at the State University of New York at Albany, helped unravel a couple of the more complicated puns.

      I am grateful to M. Bruno Roy, at Editions fata morgana, for aiding in securing translation rights to the text of Michel Foucault’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe (Montpellier: Editions fata morgana, 1973). Mr. Harry Torczyner, representative of René Magritte’s estate and attorney for A.D.A.G.P., helped me acquire permission to reproduce the paintings that illus- trate the present volume, none of which were included in the French version. Mr. Torczyner also provided photographs of two Magritte canvases in his private collection.

      I particularly appreciate the efforts of the following individuals for photographs of paintings: Mr. and Mrs. Nesuhi Ertegun; Mr. Eric Himmel, of Abrams Publishing Company; Ms. Hildagard Kron; Mme. René Magritte; Dr. Karin Frank v. Maur, of Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; Mme. Annette Minet, of Draeger, Maître Imprimeur; Mr. Richard Oldenburg and the research library staff of the Museum of Modern Art; M. Louis Scutenaire; and Mr. David Sylvester, of the Menil Foundation’s René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné project.

      Finally: to Dr. and Mrs. Clifton R. Wharton, Jr., my thanks for access to library and catalog resources, and for red-tape cutting par excellence. To Mr. William McClung of the University of California Press and my editor Ms. Marilyn Schwartz, my gratitude for able guidance and—above all—patience.

      THIS IS NOT A PIPE

      Translator’s Introduction

      Arguably the most durable of the Surrealist painters, René Magritte (1898-1967) was born in Lessines, Belgium. He was the oldest of three brothers in a petit bourgeois family that moved frequently: from Lessines to Gilly, Gilly to Châtelet, and (after the suicide of his mother) on to Charleroi, where he attended primary school and enrolled at the Athénée to study classics. In 1916 Magritte traveled to Brussels to enter the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He met classes irregularly, but he began to form friendships that would influence his career: Pierre Bourgeois, Pierre Flou- quet, and E. L. T. Mesens.

      Magritte had begun to paint as a boy of twelve. Much of the paraphernalia of the child’s world would, in abstracted and

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1