Herculine Barbin - AKA Alexina B. - Presented by Michel Foucault

Herculine Barbin - AKA Alexina B. - Book Description Introduced by Michel Foucault Herculine Adélaïde Barbin, Alexina B. or Abel Barbin… This hermaphrodite was just one of the victims of the much-discussed “phishing” in the nineteenth century. My Memoirs, written by Alexina B. after she achieved her male identity, is a historical document, in the words of Michel Foucault, who discovered the text in the archives of the Ministry of Health a hundred years later, in the nineteenth century reality where the search for sexual identity became an issue. This book brings together the studies of Doctor Chesnet, who officially approved Alexina B.'s gender change, and Goujon, who prepared Barbin's autopsy report, and Oscar Panizza's Scandal in the Convent, inspired by My Memoirs; It offers a broad perspective on hermaphroditism and an order in which medicine, law and society question, judge and adjudicate “real” sexual identities. However, there is another person who discovered the text about a hundred years before Foucault: Doctor İbrahim Şevki, who studied medicine in Paris in those years. My memoirs were translated by him and published first in serial form and then as a book in 1885 under the title of Ahmed Midhat Efendi's Mukaddime and Hüviyet. We are proud to be able to present the story of Alexina B., who made her voice heard across borders and languages, spanning two centuries, with this unique edition. (From the Promotional Bulletin)