Les Anormaux

The abnormal courses at the Collège de France (1974-1975) The course on "Les Anomallaux" (Les Anomallaux) was given at the Collège de France from January to March 1975, and since 1970 has continued the analysis that Michel Foucault has devoted to the question of knowledge and power. It is from multiple sources, theological, legal and medical, that Foucault addresses the problem of these "hazardous" individuals, who are called "abnormal" in the nineteenth century. He defines the three main figures: monsters, who refer to the laws of nature and the norms of society, the incorrigibles, taken over by the new training devices of the body, and the onanists, who have been fuelling a campaign to discipline the modern family since the eighteenth century. Foucault's analyses take as their starting point the forensic expertises of the nineteenth century, he then sketched an archaeology of the instinct and desire, using techniques of the confession and the confession.