Herculine Barbin by Michel Foucault

Author:Michel Foucault [Foucault, Michel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-83309-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

* At this point the continuous reproduction of the manuscript is interrupted. The pages that follow are only extracts from the texts that Auguste Tardieu had in his possession. (M. F.)

I have been content to bring together some of the principal documents that concern Adélaïde Herculine Barbin. The question of strange destinies like her own, which have raised so many problems for medicine and law, especially since the sixteenth century, will be dealt with in the volume of The History of Sexuality* that will be devoted to hermaphrodites. An exhaustive documentation, like the one that was made for Pierre Rivière,† will not be found here.

1. First and foremost, a part of Alexina’s recollections are missing. Auguste Tardieu seems to have received the complete manuscript from the hands of Dr. Régnier, who had reported the death and performed the autopsy. He kept it, publishing only the part that seemed important to him. He neglected the recollections of Alexina’s final years—everything that in his opinion consisted only of laments, recriminations, and incoherencies. In spite of research, it has not been possible to rediscover the manuscript that Tardieu had in his possession. Hence, the present text reproduces what he published in the second part of his work, La Question de l’identité.**

2. In the archives of the department of Charente-Maritime there exist a number of documents (several emanating from the office of the superintendent of schools) in which the name of Adélaïde Barbin is mentioned. It seemed to me that it was enough to publish the most significant ones.

3. Medical literature of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century refers to Alexina rather often. I have left out what were simply quotations borrowed from the text that was published by Tardieu. I have reproduced only the original reports.

4. As it is known, there was an abundance of “medico-libertine” literature in the final years of the century. Clinical observations sometimes served as inspiration. The story of Alexina can easily be made out in a whole section of the strange novel entitled L’Hermaphrodite, which was published in 1899 under the signature of Dubarry.

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