Seven remarks on the seventh angel

Abstract

Michel Foucault’s essay, “7 Propos sur le 7e ange” [“Seven Remarks on the Seventh Angel”], first appeared as the preface to a bizarre work of folk etymology by Jean-Pierre Brisset (1837-1919), a stationmaster and autodidact from Angers in the west of France. Brisset’s La Grammaire logique - self-published in 1878 and reissued, substantially revised, five years later - had remained obscure for the best part of a century until Éditions Tchou, a press specialising in Surrealist and esoteric writing, took it up again in 1970.