In this essay, Jean-Marc Mandosio embarks on a bold critique of Michel Foucault's work and personal journey. Relying on a multitude of excerpts from the French philosopher's books and public interventions, Mandosio deconstructs his thought, highlighting not only the fundamental contradictions that characterize the various phases of his intellectual path but also the inconsistency between his respective theories and his political and professional journey.

At the same time, The Long Life of a Deception represents an exquisite and inspired polemic, full of humor and irony, against the "Foucault Cult" that today plagues both the production of social theory—inside and outside the university—and the field of so-called radical politics.

"Of all the philosophical hot air merchants who dominated France in the 1960s and 1970s before experiencing a second youth thanks to the enthusiasm of American academics for French Theory, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) is certainly the one whose work still enjoys a timeless prestige, far exceeding the narrow circle of philosophy students and professors.

As always, the philosopher follows the trend: a structuralist before May '68 (despite his later denials), a leftist in the years that followed, he provides a spectacular and unexpected support to the 'New Philosophers' in 1977. There is no doubt that Foucault's main talent was to give a philosophical-literary form to the commonplaces of every era."

Jean-Marc Mandosio