What is the author's style in The History of Sexuality: An Introduction by Michel Foucault?

Michel Foucault, b. 1926 d, 1984, was a renowned lecturer and theorist throughout the world. Foucault was the director at the Institut Franzais in Hamburg and the Institut de Philosophie at the Faculty des Lettres at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, and held a chair at the prestigious Collige de France. Foucault published numerous articles and books on a wide variety of topics. Foucault's complete The History of Sexuality was published in several individual volumes beginning with volume 1, the subject of this summary.

The text's intended audience is broad and not limited by subject; however, the linguistic presentation of concepts is incredibly difficult, and the language is dense and difficult to penetrate. This is partially due to the subtle and complex topics which are constantly self-referential, partly due to an English translation of rigorously difficult French, and partly due to the author's inherent bias toward a collegiate style of topic presentation. Instead of using words whose meanings are vague, the author redefines words to suit his purposes in an attempt to eradicate, so far as this is possible, slippage in meaning. This is coupled with the expectation that readers will exert the effort to comprehend the subject and an expectation that readers are either already conversant with numerous related external topics or, at the least, are willing to pursue extensive extra-textual reading. For example, Foucault frequently presents lists of additional, frequently obscure, authors with brief notes of their collective contributions. In particular, Foucault assumes the reader to be routinely familiar with Freud's theory of psychoanalysis.