The Lonely Photo of Michel Foucault with a Full Head of Hair — openculture.com

When you think of Michel Foucault, it’s hard not to think of the bald head that’s so part of his persona. Do a Google image search for Foucault, and you’ll find a “profusion of pictures of Foucault’s gleaming bald head” (as Jeffrey Weinstock calls it in an article entitled “This is Not Foucault’s Head”). But, among those many images, you will find one lonely photo of Foucault with a full(ish) head of hair. It’s hard to put a date on the picture. Very likely, it was taken during the mid 1950s, right around when Foucault was 30 years old. The look he’s sporting there is very different than what we see in 1965, when he sits down to talk with Alain Badiou. Or 1971, when he debates Noam Chomsky on Dutch TV. By those later dates, Foucault had the look that became so enduring.

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