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
Not a lonely photo! Here is a full-haired and very young Foucault riding a donkey, named Cyrano:
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The photo is from the late 1950s when Foucault was living in Uppsala, Sweden. It was taken at the Maison Française by his friend Jean-François Miquel. See the cover of Mad for Foucault.