This Is Not a Pipe
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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
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).
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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