Paul-Michel Foucault, known as Michel Foucault, was a French philosopher, literary critic and historian of ideas, born in 1926, who analyzed the relationships between power, knowledge and liberty and how they are used as a form of social control through institutions. Sometimes called a structuralist or postmodernist, he rejected both labels and sought to critique authority without limiting himself to a single framework. His thought influenced scholarship in many fields, including anthropology, communication studies, criminology, cultural studies, feminism, literary theory, psychology and sociology, and his arguments against homophobia, racial prejudice and other ideological doctrines also shaped scholarship on critical theory and Marxism. He died in 1984. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Nationality / Culture Defining ContributionAnalyzed how power, knowledge and institutions jointly produce social control, tracing this through the history of the prison, the clinic, sexuality, and systems of thought. 1 Notable WorkDiscipline and Punish (1975) 1 Michel Foucault
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Associated With
Michel Foucault is among the theorists most closely identified with poststructuralism, alongside Derrida.
Source Wikipedia: Poststructuralism
Institutions Informed
Butler theory of gender performativity draws explicitly on Foucault genealogical account of how power produces the categories it appears only to regulate.
Rose governmentality studies directly extend Foucault late work on power, discipline and the government of the self.
Practices Studied
Source Encyclopedia.com: Michel Foucault
Theories Developed
Michel Foucault developed panopticism in Discipline and Punish, using Bentham panopticon as a figure for modern disciplinary power that operates through the internalized possibility of being watched.
Source Post-structuralism (Wikipedia)
Michel Foucault developed the power/knowledge concept across his later work to describe how power and the production of accepted knowledge are mutually constitutive rather than separable.
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Same As
Also in Political Atlas: the same subject.
Nationality
Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Source Michel Foucault (Wikipedia)Lead sentence 1tier 2Quote, Lead sentence 1
Paul-Michel Foucault, known as Michel Foucault, (UK: FOO-koh, US: foo-KOH; French: [pɔl miʃɛl fuko]; 15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, literary critic, and historian of ideas who analyzed the relationships between power, knowledge, and liberty, and how they are used as a form of social control through institutions.
Sources
1. Michel Foucault (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Paul-Michel Foucault, known as Michel Foucault, was a French philosopher, literary critic, and historian of ideas who analyzed the relationships between power, knowledge, and liberty, and how they are used as a form of social control through institutions.
lead paragraph, opening sentences (dates through structuralist/postmodernist rejection)
Paul-Michel Foucault, known as Michel Foucault, (UK: FOO-koh, US: foo-KOH; French: [pɔl miʃɛl fuko]; 15 October 1926-25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, literary critic, and historian of ideas who analyzed the relationships between power, knowledge, and liberty, and how they are used as a form of social control through institutions. Sometimes called a structuralist or postmodernist, he rejected these labels and sought to critique authority without limiting himself.
View the Source Wikidata: Michel Foucault
Wikidata Q44272, class allow-list match, case-insensitive label variant (w-bbfill-smallsix2-0926/resolve_ci.ps1)View the Source Encyclopedia.com: Michel Foucault
Encyclopedia.comPractices Studied: Prison System, BiographyQuote, Practices Studied: Prison System, Biography
With typical rhetorical flair, Foucault asked, "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?
Post-structuralism (Wikipedia)
Theories Developed: Poststructuralism, Article body sentence quotedQuote, Theories Developed: Poststructuralism, Article body sentence quoted
Writers whose works are often characterised as post-structuralist include Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Baudrillard, although many theorists who have been called "post-structuralist" have rejected the label.
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