A consistently clear, comprehensive and accessible introduction which carefully sifts Foucault's work for both its strengths and weaknesses. McHoul and Grace show an intimate familiarity with Foucault's writings and a lively, but critical engagement with the relevance of his work. A model primer.
—Tony Bennett,
author of Outside Literature

In such seminal works as Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality, the late philosopher Michel Foucault explored what our politics, our sexuality, our societal conventions, and our changing notions of truth told us about ourselves. In the process, Foucault garnered a reputation as one of the pre-eminent philosophers of the latter half of the twentieth century and has served as a primary influence on successive generations of philosophers and cultural critics.

With A Foucault Primer, Alec McHoul and Wendy Grace bring Foucault's work into focus for the uninitiated. Written in crisp and concise prose, A Foucault Primer explicates three central concepts of Foucauldian theory—discourse, power, and the subject—and suggests that Foucault's work has much yet to contribute to contemporary debate.

Alec McHoul is the author of Telling How Texts Talk and coauthor of Writing Pynchon: strategies on Fictional Analysis. He teaches at Murdoch University in Australia, where Wendy Grace is engaged in postgraduate work on Foucault.