El archivo Foucault: un corpus documental diverso

This paper demonstrates that Foucault’s work can be categorized into four document types: the books published during his lifetime, the documents in Dits et écrits, the courses at the Collège de France, and the posthumous texts. Each category exhibits a distinct documentary record: the books published during Foucault’s lifetime constitute a more reliable documentary corpus for researchers, as they represent a revised, approved, and finalized body of work by Foucault. The documents in Dits et écrits are diverse and are more closely linked to orality, spontaneous thought and the urgency of response. The Collège de France courses have a much more complex record due to the modifications editors had to make to transform oral language into written form and because they represent ongoing research. Finally, the posthumous texts are more complex and, in some ways, less reliable, but they allow for reflection, for example, on the apparent research pauses between the publication of books.