Worth, H: A Question of Pleasure

In 1963 the two French philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault fell out as a result of Derrida‘s critique of Foucault‘s book Madness and Civilisation and Foucault‘s belated response A Question of Pleasure appraises Derrida‘s analysis of Madness and Civilisation. A number of writers have argued that over the years Foucault and Derrida‘s work moved closer to one another. This book, claims that this is not so. Put simply, A Question of Pleasure asserts that the same basic arguments (about the nature of language, space/time and otherness) that Derrida used in his review of Madness and Civilisation can also be made about Foucault‘s later book, The History of Sexuality, Volume One. The underlying problems which Derrida contends are present in Madness and Civilisation are not just central to that one book but are ones which haunt all of Foucault‘s work. Moreover these difficulties are fundamental to metaphysics in general.