Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control - and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole.

Addresses speech as a conduct which has become subject to political debate and regulation. The text invesigates hate speech regulation, anti-pornography arguments and controversies about gay self-declaration in the military.

Here, one of France's greatest intellectuals explores the evolving social, economic and political forces that have shaped our attitudes to sex. Foucault describes how we are in the process of making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure.

A work of anthropology and sociology, of biology and psychoanalysis, which stands - almost five decades after its first appearance - as the first landmark in the modern feminist upsurge that has transformed perceptions of the social relationship of man and womankind in our time.

Combines straightforward prose with concrete examples and feminist politics to guide the reader through the ideas that have altered our understanding of bodies, sex and desire.