October 15, 2026, will mark the 100th anniversary of Michel Foucault’s birth

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was first and foremost a philosophical figure, with his bald head and his gaze that scrutinized the vanishing lines of our current events: power, madness, prison, sexuality… This graphic novel is neither a biopic nor a summary of his work, one of the most important of the 20th century. Based on meticulous research and combining the voices of those who knew and loved him, it traces the trajectory of a philosopher in motion. From the Collège de France to Californian campuses, from Tunisia to Iran, from television studios to street demonstrations, the pencil explores the man, his books, and his secrets, bringing them together in an art of appearing and disappearing. If Foucault remains an enigma, it is in this elusive silhouette that slips into the struggles of our present.

Some philosophers have a system, a theory, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) first has a face: a skull polished by battles, a shell-shaped face that seems to contain them all, a gaze that scrutinizes our current events and questions their foundations: power, madness, prison, sexuality…

This graphic novel does not recount his life. It does not summarize or explain his thinking. It depicts a philosopher whose work is inseparable from a body in motion: a silhouette, a burst of laughter, a way of appearing and disappearing in unlikely places where he is only passing through. The book follows the curves of this strange philosophical body, from the Collège de France to American campuses, from Tunisia to Iran, from television studios to demonstrations in support of minorities and the excluded. A body shaped by willpower but also riddled with hesitations, fears, desires—and soon by illness. A body from which emerged one of the greatest philosophical works of the 20th century, which continues to inspire and spark debate around the world.

It was a challenge: to make this intellectual adventure immediately and radically visual. Not to illustrate the thought, but to throw it straight into a two-dimensional space, made up of words to read and things to see. An illustrator and a scriptwriter—the former knew nothing about philosophy, the latter nothing about drawing—took up this challenge, recreating their Foucault in complete freedom, on pages where philosophy and existence, life and death, his life and his death all play out. This freedom does not exclude meticulous work on the archive and rigorous respect for the facts, some of which are unpublished. Through the conciseness required by the pencil, through the interweaving of voices and gazes, this book brings to life a major work of our time. Is this not the finest tribute to a man who loved to recall the similarities between philosophy and theater, and who knew so well how to play with concealment and disguise? Caught in his own trap, Foucault is finally the subject of a graphic gaze—one that is tender and admiring.