Last year Michel Foucault would have turned 60 -at least as far as a life can be measured in discrete units; for his mind seemed forever restless and youthful, perennially on the verge of new discoveries, o]"bold voyages to unknown lands. Three years ago, at the height of a meteoric intellectual career, his pen was abruptly and tragically silenced. Yet, the impact of his legacy has by no means come to an end; beneath changing moods and currents, intellectual life in the West continues to reverberate with the power of his questions, his challenges and provocations.
It is still much too early to present a retrospective 'overview' of Foucault's work and teachings: this would mean to integrate him into an already finished history or a succession of schools of thought -and neglect the persisting timeliness and explosiveness of his views. It would also mean to affix a definitive label to his perspective, a label which would coerce its polymorphous character into the straitjacket of a teachable doctrine. Clearly, any attempt to grapple with Foucault's legacy requires attention to its chromatic diversity, its atonal dissonance, even to its 'surface enigmas.' Although rooted in academia, his thought fits uneasily into the compartmentalized world of academic disciplines and discourses, While intimately familiar with traditional and modern philosophical trends, Foucault was disenchanted with the scholasticism of professional philosophy and the rarified abstractions of 'pure' thought shielded from the inroads of experience. While steeped in scientific vocabulary and methodology -sometimes to the point of courting positivism -his writings are suspicious of empiricist science, including scientific psychology, seen as an outgrowth of modern rationalism with its 'disciplinary' bent. Although seemingly chronicling past events -the history of