In May 1975, Michel Foucault watched Venus rise over Zabriskie Point while Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge (Song of the Youths) blared from the speakers of a nearby tape recorder. Just a few hours earlier he had ingested LSD for the first time and was in the process of undergoing what he saw as “one of the most important experiences” of his life. And he wasn't alone. Two newly acquired companions had brought Foucault to Death Valley for this carefully choreographed trip complete with a soundtrack, some marijuana to jumpstart the effects, and cold drinks to combat the dry mouth. It was all spurred on by the hope that Foucault's visit to “the Valley of Death”, as he called it, would elicit “gnomic utterances of such power that he would unleash a veritable revolution in consciousness”.
For decades, the details of this trip have remained sketchy. The most extensive account appeared in James Miller's 1993 biography, The Passion of Michel Foucault, but anyone following the footnotes would have realized that the specifics, the ones above included, were based almost entirely on the documentary evidence of a self-proclaimed disciple, Simeon Wade. At the time, Wade was an assistant professor in History at Claremont Graduate School who had come under the spell of Foucault's early works and was convinced that a new intellectual order was on the horizon. Even though Wade believed that the faculty there was “parochial”, the administration “reactionary” and many of the students “affluent and careerist”, he was still optimistic that real change was possible – even from the centre of a sleepy college town.
To help things along, Wade co-founded an interdisciplinary European Studies programme, with a curriculum largely organized around Foucault's work and major influences. He even compiled a fanzine, Chez Foucault, intended as a primer for the students and colleagues who were just getting started. This mimeographed 110-page document includes a glossary, a biographical sketch, some extracts from the major works, a reading list (with films), a “Dialogue on Power” between Foucault and Wade's students, and a course syllabus, all of it preceded by a list of quotations, including one that would sound about right coming from someone stargazing under the effects of LSD. (“The stars are raining down upon me. I know this is not true but it is the truth.”)
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