The Lonely Photo of Michel Foucault with a Full Head of Hair

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Foucault’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy Explored in a Reveal­ing 1993 Doc­u­men­tary

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy