This is not a pipe

Michel Foucault's classic text, "This Is Not a Pipe," masterfully reflects on how we associate image, language, and reality. This edition features a bold new graphic design, as well as two letters between the author and the surrealist painter Magritte.

A painting shows a drawing of "a pipe." Below this image, a caption announces: "This is not a pipe." The teacher presenting the painting to the students must immediately contradict it with reality: "This is not a pipe," it is not a pipe. The class writhes with laughter, and no one notices that, as they laugh, a precise pipe of smoke forms above them all. However, what would be the point of denying the representation of an object?

This Is Not a Pipe is based on René Magritte's famous painting The Treachery of Images . First published in 1968, this book is the result of conversations between Michel Foucault and the surrealist painter, two of whose letters from Magritte are included in this edition.

Reflections on language, representation, similarity, and similitude are themes that the philosopher had already been addressing since The Word and Things (1966). Here, they achieve a kind of suspension of the commonplace between image and language and unfold into interesting realizations.