Last Man Takes LSD Foucault & the End of Revolution

How Michel Foucault found, in Californian counterculture, a seductive alternative to socialism and the welfare state

In May 1975, Michel Foucault took LSD in the southern Californian desert. He described it as the most important event of his life, which would lead him to completely rework his History of Sexuality. His focus now would be less on changing power relations in society but rather on the experiments of subjectivity and the stylization of existence. Through this lens, he would reinterpret the social movements of May '68 and embrace anti-totalitarianism as an alternative to socialism and revolution. He would also come to appreciate the possibilities of autonomy offered by a new force on the French political scene that was neither of the left nor the right: neoliberalism. Part intellectual history, part critical theory, this book challenges the way we think about both Foucault and progressive politics today.

Foucault's personal and political experimentation, its ambiguous legacy, and the rise of neoliberal politics

Part intellectual history, part critical theory, The Last Man Takes LSD challenges the way we think about both Michel Foucault and modern progressive politics. One fateful day in May 1975, Foucault dropped acid in the southern California desert. In letters reproduced here, he described it as among the most important events of his life, one which would lead him to completely rework his History of Sexuality. That trip helped redirect Foucault's thought and contributed to a tectonic shift in the intellectual life of the era. He came to reinterpret the social movements of May '68 and reposition himself politically in France, embracing anti-totalitarian currents and becoming a critic of the welfare state.

Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora examine the full historical context of the turn in Foucault's thought, which included studies of the Iranian revolution and French socialist politics, through which he would come to appreciate the possibilities of autonomy offered by a new force on the French political scene that was neither of the left nor the right: neoliberalism.