The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and 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.