Michel Foucault speaks here in a completely unpathetic manner about the intimate relationship between writing and death, the kinship of literature and surgery, and the biographical driving forces behind his work. Shortly after the publication of "The Order of Things," he reflects on his own search for the essence of language and the value of words, which the discourse of medicine and the discourse of his childhood attribute no significance to. In contrast, he presents his own work on language, which seeks to unfold its diagnostic gaze on the truth through writing. In a kind of vivisection of his own body, Foucault exposes the junctions of philosophical and linguistic development and prepares the nerve pathways of a creation that is just beginning to take shape. The reader of this extraordinary testimony is inevitably led to wonder which novel Foucault is working on in his philosophies.