Abstract

This chapter broadly follows the chronological order of Foucault's texts, selecting only those which supply crucial views about nature or the environment. It is therefore task‐specified rather than offering a total survey of all of Foucault's mentions of nature or environment. This chapter begins with some comments on Foucault's histories in general, in order to sketch how his methodologies opened up questions about our suppositions and received histories, and how they are relevant to the skeptical interrogation of the usage of “nature.”. Foucault's histories are wide‐ranging, and includes examinations of government and institutional powers, the human sciences, sexuality, medicine, prisons and punishment, morality, and the treatment of madness. Foucault was not an environmentalist, but at a time of environmental crisis environmentalism might become Foucauldian.