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In February 1999 I made the original Foucault's Paris page, based on material that I was able to cobble together by roaming the web and through virtual contacts such as Clare O'Farrell. At that point I hadn't actually
been to Paris since a school trip in 1985. This page was obviously in Welcome, then, to the post-visit remix of Foucault's Paris. Clare had already warned me that Paris does not go out of its way to lay on tourist treats for the Foucault-oriented visitor. I knew that I would not be returning with blocks of novelty fromage Foucault. I was aware that the chances of finding a Cafe Michel, serving boiled eggs with the philosopher's face drawn onto the side, was slim. Nor would we be visiting his old apartment to admire its renovation into a top-notch Visitor Centre and gift shop. "I think the best
Paris has to offer," Clare had warned me, "is the archives and the Bibliothèque
du Saulchoir where one can see the very books that Foucault consulted himself!".
Hmm. Clare also alerted me to the Parisian nonchalance about all things Foucault.
"The French themselves seem We stayed at the Hotel Port-Royal, which is worth mentioning because it was very nice and amazingly cheap (£15 [about US $23] per person per night), and is also a stone's throw from key Foucault sites. (It's at 8 bd Port-Royal; phone 01.43.31.70.06). So let's start the tour. I recommend beginning with the southernmost point first, then making your way back towards the centre of Paris. This means heading for the Bibliothèque du Saulchoir (at 43 bis, rue de la Glacière 75013) where, during the last five years of his life, Foucault worked on volumes II and III of the History of Sexuality.
Visitors can wander quite
happily into this fine library. However a man will berate you in complex French.
Then you will explain what you are doing. Then he will point to a sign telling
you that all of the Foucault archives are now housed at the Institut Mémoires
de l'Édition Contemporaine (IMEC) centre. Then you will explain that you
knew that already but If you are like me, you will give up here, assuming that there's not much to see in a library anyway. (We will ignore, for now, the paradoxical way in which this thought undermines the entire trip). But look at the photo above to see what is on offer in the guarded sanctum: A noticeboard with bits of paper on! A wooden card index file! And more! Just be grateful that I risked incurring the wrath of the man once again by taking this photograph. So, having been kicked out
of the library, head north back up rue de la Glacière, and you soon get to
the École Normale Supérieure. Foucault studied here, and between 1951
and 1955, at the invitation of Louis Althusser,
Now keep going north, past the Panthéon, and you soon come to Rue Des Ecoles, where you can find the Collège de France. In 1969 Foucault was elected to a new Chair in the "History of Systems of Thought" here. When I first compiled this guide it was impossible to find pictures of this college anywhere on the internet, so I am happy to remedy this situation.
After my experience at the
Bibliothèque du Saulchoir, I didn't bother going to the IMEC centre, where
the Foucault archive is housed, because I hadn't written to them in advance and
so feared that they wouldn't be very welcoming -- which may not be justified --
and at the time I thought that there wasn't much point in just gazing at the stuff
anyway. My previous trawl of the internet had turned up
In the year 2001, the IMEC archives moved to a new centre on the site of the Abbey of Ardenne, also near Caen, which is (a) good news for Foucault tourists in Normandy, who can go to the Château and the archive on the same day; and (b) disastrous news for the newly booming Paris Foucault tourist industry. [English-language Normandy tourist info here]. Here's a few more web resources:
If your French isn't much
good, AltaVista's Babelfish will
produce a dodgy translation of any web page. Below is the Babelfish translation
of 'The library of Saulchoir is a library belonging to the command of the Dominican ones, and whose access is allowed to the students and to the researchers. Its collection is mainly devoted to philosophy and religious sciences. One finds there, in "usual", works of the Fathers of the Church and the reference works out of religious matter. 'Foucault worked there as from the year 1979, until his death. There Foucault found the sources principal of his last works (volumes II and III of the History of Sexuality), as well as his reflexions on the parrhesia, and the Christian experiment of the "flesh".
'Library of Saulchoir, 43bis street of the Refrigerator, 75013 Paris, subway Refrigerator. The funds Michel Foucault was lodged during ten years by the library of Saulchoir. Thousands of researchers of all the countries could appreciate the daily devotion of the personnel of this library. Association for the Center Michel Foucault owes a great part of its development with the collaboration of this library'. www.theory.org.uk is unable to accept responsibility for any injury, stress, or loss of cheese sustained as a result of the use or abuse of this Foucault's Paris tourist guide. © David Gauntlett 1999 |
need
of original photographs and some hands-on research, so your intrepid reporter
went in search of the Foucault legacy in April 1999...
to
have lost interest in Foucault and seem rather bemused by the fanatical and enormous
interest in his work elsewhere," she noted. 
Heading
down rue de la Glacière, on your way to the library from the city centre,
you pass places which you can be almost certain that Michel Foucault must have
popped in to at some point.
For
example: this cafe was entirely pleasant. Foucault walked past it every day. Likelihood
of Foucault having been here: 93 per cent.
Unless
Foucault had a private helicopter which all of his biographers have overlooked,
you can be 100 per cent certain that Foucault walked along this street. Oh, how
this humble road could tell so many stories. If only it wasn't an inanimate object.
Obviously. 
This
ice cream parlour is directly opposite the Bibliothèque du Saulchoir. The
proprietor told us that Michel Foucault often stopped here for an ice cream after
a long summer's day spent studying in the humid library. Foucault's favourite
flavour was pecan and banana, he said. Likelihood that this was the truth: six
per cent. Nevertheless, this shrewd Parisian was the only one we met who recognised
the commercial potential of the cynical exploitation of Foucault students. He
deserves your trade.
So
finally we arrive at the Bibliothèque du Saulchoir. It has a pleasant grassy
bit outside, but no marble Foucault statue, nor even a neon "Foucault Experience"
sign.
that you just wanted to peer into the library where Foucault worked for the last
five years of his life. And the man will point to his sign again, but in a more,
er, pointed fashion. 
Foucault
returned to teach psychology. It's at 45 rue d'Ulm.
(I recommend looking at a map, really).
The pretty picture here is one I got from the internet.
In
practice what you can see of the École Normale Supérieure is this fancy
old door [left]...
...which
is clearly designed to distract your attention away from the horrible concrete
part directly across the street [right]. No-one was available to regale us with
heart-stopping tales of how Foucault used to run around in a suicidal rage throwing
psychology textbooks at his students, or anything else, unfortunately.
The
Collège is set just a little bit back from Rue Des Ecoles, on the south side
of the street. There are some interesting bookshops over the road. Likelihood
that Foucault went in the interesting bookshops, in his time: 98 per cent.
You
can wander around the very attractive main courtyard. Likelihood that Foucault
did this: 99 per cent.
this
photo showing a bit of the Foucault archives. The collection includes 2000 documents
and 400 cassette recordings of Foucault's lectures, conference talks, discussions
and interviews. The archive lives at
the Institut Mémoires de l'Édition Contemporaine (IMEC), which is at:
9, rue Bleue, 75009 Paris.
When
the Foucault tourist boom really kicks in, the French are going to have to take
all of this much more seriously. One of the more obvious problems for the English-speaking
tourist that most of these archive cassette recordings are in French. We therefore
propose that the well-known bald actor Patrick Stewart should record translated
highlights from the audio archive, for an English-language CD to be sold in the
shop. (You wouldn't believe how much time I spent making this fake picture of
a Patrick-Stewart-reads-Foucault CD, incidentally. Quite tragic, really).
So
my tour, which started at the Bibliothèque du Saulchoir and took you past
the École Normale Supérieure before ending up at the Collège de
France, ends around here. I recommend wandering into the middle of Paris, which
is predictably very nice, and Foucault definitely wandered round it too. Visit
the 
Finally,
however, we should look at this grave, in Paris, where Foucault was buried. Unfortunately
this particular Foucault is Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1819-1868), the physicist
who invented the "Foucault's Pendulum", which is a device that demonstrates the
rotation of the earth, and is frankly rather a pain for anyone looking up 'Foucault'
on the internet, in web bookshops (that Umberto Eco novel) and anywhere else.
As
for Michel Foucault's grave... it's in 
Clare's
info on the 
information
about La Bibliothèque du Saulchoir on the Centre
Michel Foucault site. It's not bad, though tourists may want to avoid
requesting "the street of the Refrigerator":
