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Michel Foucault (Template:IPA-fr; born Paul-Michel Foucault) (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, social theorist, historian of ideas, and literary critic. His philosophical theories addressed what power is and how it works, the manner in which it controls knowledge and vice versa, and how it is used as a form of social control. Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, social anthropology of medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. His writings on power, knowledge, and discourse have been widely influential in academic circles.

Born in Poitiers, France, in 1926, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV and then the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors—philosophers Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, Madness and Civilization. After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced two more significant publications, The Birth of the Clinic and The Order of Things, which displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, a theoretical movement in social anthropology from which he later distanced himself. From 1966 to 1968, he lectured at the University of Tunis, Tunisia before returning to France, where he involved himself in several protest movements and left-wing groups. He went on to publish The Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality. Foucault died in Paris of neurological problems compounded by HIV/AIDS; he was the first public figure in France to have died from the virus, with his partner Daniel Defert founding the AIDES charity in his memory.

Foucault rejected the post-structuralist and postmodernist labels later attributed to him, preferring to classify his thought as a critical history of modernity. One of Foucault's later projects, which he called the "genealogy of knowledge", is heavily influenced by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (being a direct allusion to Nietzsche's "genealogy of morality").

Biography

Childhood: 1926–1946

Paul-Michel Foucault was born on 15 October 1926 in the small town of Poitiers, west-central France, as the second of three children to a prosperous and socially conservative upper-middle-class family. He had been named after his father, Dr. Paul Foucault, as was the family tradition, but his mother insisted on the addition of the double-barrelled "Michel"; while he would always be referred to as "Paul" at school, throughout his life he always expressed a preference for "Michel". His father (1893–1959) was a successful local surgeon, having been born in Fontainebleau before moving to Poitiers, where he set up his own practice and married local woman Anne Malapert. She was the daughter of prosperous surgeon Dr. Prosper Malapert, who owned a private practice in Poitiers and taught anatomy at the University of Poitiers' School of Medicine. Paul Foucault eventually took over his father-in-law's medical practice as well, while his wife took charge of their large mid-19th century house, Le Piroir, located at the village of Vendeuvre-du-Poitou 15 kilometres from the town. Together the couple had 3 children, a girl named Francine and two boys, Paul-Michel and Denys, all of whom shared the same fair hair and bright blue eyes. These children were raised to be nominal Roman Catholics, attending mass at the Church of Saint- Porchair, and while Michel briefly became an altar boy, none of the family were particularly devout.

"I wasn't always smart, I was actually very stupid in school... here was a boy who was very attractive who was even stupider than I was. And in order to ingratiate myself with this boy who was very beautiful, I began to do his homework for him – and that's how I became smart, I had to do all this work to just keep ahead of him a little bit, in order to help him. In a sense, all the rest of my life I've been trying to do intellectual things that would attract beautiful boys."

In later life, Foucault would reveal very little about his childhood. Describing himself as a "juvenile delinquent", he noted that his father was a "bully" who would sternly punish him for his misbehaviour. In 1930, Foucault began his schooling at the local Lycée Henry-IV despite the fact that he was two years younger than the usual entrance age of six. Here he would undertake two years of elementary education before entering the main lycée, where he stayed until 1936. He then undertook his first four years of secondary education at the same establishment, excelling in French, Greek, Latin and history but doing poorly at mathematics. In 1939, the Second World War broke out and France was occupied by the armies of Nazi Germany until 1945; his parents opposed the occupation and the Vichy regime who collaborated with them, but did not join the French Resistance. In 1940, Foucault's mother took him from his previous school and enrolled him in the Collège Saint-Stanislas, a strict Roman Catholic institution run by the Jesuits; here, he remained lonely, with few friends. Describing his years there as the "ordeal", he nevertheless excelled academically, particularly in the fields of philosophy, history and literature. In 1942, he entered his final year, the terminale, where he focused on the study of philosophy, earning his baccalauréat in 1943. That year, he then returned to the local Lycée Henry-IV, where he studied history and philosophy for a year. During this period, Foucault was aided in his studies by a personal tutor, the philosopher Louis Girard.

Rejecting his father's wishes that he become a surgeon, in 1945 Foucault traveled to the French capital of Paris, where he enrolled in one of the country's most prestigious secondary schools, which was also known as the Lycée Henri-IV. Here, he briefly studied under the philosopher Jean Hyppolite (1907–1968), an existentialist and expert on the work of 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Hyppolite devoted his energies to uniting the existentialist theories then in vogue among French philosophers with the dialectical theories of Hegel and Karl Marx (1818–1883); these ideas influenced the young Foucault, who would adopt Hyppolite's conviction that philosophy must be developed through a study of history. As a result, in ensuing years he would defend those who proposed a Marxist interpretation of history coupled with the existentialist view of the human individual.

École Normale Supérieure: 1946–1951

Attaining excellent results at the school, in the autumn of 1946 Foucault was admitted to the elite École Normale Supérieure (ENS); in order to get in, he had to undertake a series of exams and oral interrogation by Georges Canguilhem and Pierre-Maxime Schuhl. Of the hundred students entering the ENS, Foucault was ranked fourth based on his entry results, and encountered the highly competitive nature of the institution. Like most of his classmates, he was housed in the school's communal dormitories, located on the Parisian Rue d'Ulm. He remained largely unpopular among the other students, and spent much of his time alone, reading voraciously. His fellow students noted him for his love of violence and the macabre; he had decorated his bedroom with the images of torture and war drawn during the Napoleonic Wars by Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746–1828), and on one occasion chased one of his classmates while brandishing a dagger. Prone to self-harm, in 1948 Foucault allegedly undertook a failed suicide attempt, for which his father sent him to see the psychiatrist Jean Delay (1907–1987) at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne. Obsessed with the idea of self-mutilation and suicide, Foucault would attempt the latter several times in ensuing years, and praised the act of killing oneself in a number of his later writings. The École Normale Supérieure's doctor examined Foucault's state of mind, suggesting that his suicidal tendencies emerged from the distress surrounding his homosexuality, which was then legal but socially taboo in France. At the time, Foucault engaged in homosexual activity with men whom he encountered in the underground Parisian gay scene, also indulging in drug use; according to biographer James Miller, he particularly enjoyed the thrill and sense of danger that these activities offered him.

Although studying an array of subjects at the school, Foucault's particular interest was soon drawn to philosophy, reading not only the works of Hegel and Marx that he had been exposed to by Hyppolite but also studying the writings of the philosophers Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and most significantly, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). He also began to read the publications of philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962), taking a particular interest in his work exploring the history of science. In 1948, the philosopher Louis Althusser (1918–1980) became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure. A Marxist, he proved to be an influence both on Foucault and a number of other students, encouraging them to join the French Communist Party (Parti communiste français - PCF), which Foucault duly did in 1950. Despite this, he never became particularly active in any of its activities, and never adopted an orthodox Marxist viewpoint, refuting concepts such as class struggle which were central to Marxist thought. He would soon become dissatisfied with the bigotry that he experienced within the party's ranks; he personally faced homophobia and was also appalled by the anti-semitism exhibited in the Doctors' plot that occurred in the Soviet Union. He left the Communist Party in 1953, but would remain a friend and defender of Althusser for the rest of his life. Although failing at the first attempt in 1950, he passed his agrégation in philosophy on the second try, in 1951. Excused from national service on medical grounds, he decided that he wanted to go on and study for a doctorate at the Fondation Thiers, focusing in on the philosophy of psychology.

Early career: 1951–1955

Over the following few years, Foucault embarked on a variety of odd jobs in research and teaching. From 1951 to 1955, he worked as an instructor in psychology at the École Normale Supérieure at the invitation of Althusser. In Paris, he shared a flat with his brother, who was training to become a surgeon, but for three days in the week commuted to the northern town of Lille, where he took up a position at the Université Lille Nord de France, teaching psychology from 1953 to 1954. His lecturing style was looked upon positively by many of his students. Meanwhile, he continued with his work on his thesis, spending much of his time devoted to his own research in the history of psychology and psychiatry, visiting the Bibliothèque Nationale every day to read the work of psychologists like Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and Karl Jaspers (1883–1969). Undertaking research at the psychiatric institute of the Hôpital Sainte-Anne, he became an unofficial intern, studying the relationship between the doctors and the patients and aiding the experiments in the electroencephalographic laboratory. Foucault adopted many of the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), undertaking psychoanalytical interpretation of his dreams and making friends undergo Rorschach tests.

Embracing the Parisian avant-garde, Foucault entered into a romantic relationship with the composer Jean Barraqué (1928–1973), a prominent advocate of serialism. Together, they wished to push the boundaries of the human mind, believing that in doing so they could produce their greatest work; making heavy use of drugs, they also engaged in sado-masochistic sexual activity. In August 1953, Foucault and Barraqué went on a holiday to Italy, where the philosopher immersed himself in Untimely Meditations (1873–1876), a collection of four essays authored by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Later describing Nietzsche's work as "a revelation", he felt that reading the book deeply affected him, and he subsequently "broke with my life" as he had formerly experienced it. Foucault would subsequently experience a groundbreaking self-revelation when watching a Parisian performance of Samuel Beckett's new play, Waiting for Godot, in 1953.

Taking an interest in literature, Foucault was an avid reader of the book reviews authored by the philosopher Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003), which were published in the Nouvelle Revue Française. Becoming enamoured with Blanchot's literary style and critical theories, in several later works he adopted Blanchot's technique of "interviewing" himself. Foucault also came across Hermann Broch's 1945 novel The Death of Virgil at this time, a work that came to obsess both him and Barraqué. While the latter attempted to convert the work into an epic opera, Foucault admired Broch's text for its portrayal of death as an affirmation of life. The couple also took a mutual interest in the work of such authors as the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881), Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and Jean Genet (1910–1986), all of whose works explored the themes of sex and violence.

"I belong to that generation who, as students, had before their eyes, and were limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomenology and existentialism. For me the break was first Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a breathtaking performance."

Interested in the work of Swiss psychologist Ludwig Binswanger (1881–1966), Foucault aided a young woman and family friend named Jacqueline Verdeaux in translating his works into French. Foucault was particularly interested in the work that Binswager had undertaken in studying a woman named Ellen West who, like himself, had a deep obsession with the idea of suicide, eventually killing herself. In 1954, Foucault authored an introduction to one of Binswager's papers, "Dream and Existence", in which the Frenchman put forward the idea that dreams constituted "the birth of the world" or "the heart laid bare", expressing the mind's deepest desires. That same year Foucault also published his first book, Mental Illness and Personality (Maladie mentale et personnalité), in which he exhibited his influence from both Marxist and Heideggerian thought, covering a wide range of subject matter from the reflex psychology of Pavlov to the classic psychoanalysis of Freud. Referencing the work of sociologists and anthropologists such as Émile Durkheim and Margaret Mead, he also used the book as a vehicle to present his theory that illness was culturally relative. Biographer James Miller would later note that while the book exhibited "erudition and evident intelligence", it lacked the "kind of fire and flair" which Foucault exhibited in his subsequent works. It would be largely critically ignored, receiving only one review at the time. He himself would grow to despise it, unsuccessfully attempting to prevent its republication and translation into English.

Sweden, Poland, and West Germany: 1955–1960

Foucault would spend the next five years working abroad, first in the Swedish city of Uppsala, where he took up the position of cultural diplomat at the University of Uppsala. This was a job that he had obtained through his acquaintance with the historian of religion Georges Dumézil (1898–1986), a prominent figure in French academia. At Uppsala, he was appointed a Reader in French, meaning that he was responsible for teaching both French language and literature, giving courses on such topics as "The Conception of Love in French Literature from the Marquis de Sade to Jean Genet." He was simultaneously appointed director of the Maison de France, opening the possibility of a future cultural-diplomatic career. Although finding it difficult to adjust to the "Nordic gloom" of Uppsala and its long winters, he developed close friendships with two other Frenchmen working in the city, biochemist Jean-François Miquel and physicist Jacques Papet-Lépine. In the city, he became known for his heavy alcohol consumption and reckless driving in his new Jaguar car; he also entered into romantic and sexual relationships with various men. In spring 1956, Barraqué would break from his relationship with Foucault, announcing that he wanted to leave the "vertigo of madness". In Uppsala, Foucault spent much of his spare time in the university's Carolina Rediviva library, where he made use of their Bibliotheca Walleriana collection of texts on the history of medicine for his ongoing research. Eventually finishing his doctoral thesis, Foucault initially hoped that it would be accepted by Uppsala University, but Sten Lindroth, a historian of science at the university, was unimpressed by his work, asserting that it was full of speculative generalisations and was a poor work of history. As such, he refused to allow Foucault to be awarded a doctorate at Uppsala. In part because of this rejection of his thesis, Foucault decided to leave Sweden and look for a post elsewhere.

In October 1958, Foucault arrived in the Polish city of Warsaw, where he was put in charge of the University of Warsaw's Centre Français. Once again, he had been recommended for the position by Dumézil. Foucault found life in Poland difficult due to the lack of material goods and services following the destruction of the Second World War. He would comment that he had moved from a "social-democratic country which functioned "well"," to a "people's democracy that functioned "badly."" Witnessing the aftermath of the Polish October, in which students had protested against the governing Communist Party of Poland, he felt that the Polish people widely disliked their far left government, viewing them as a puppet regime of the foreign Soviet Union. Nevertheless, he felt that the university was a liberal enclave within a repressive state, although traveled to various other parts of the country giving lectures. Proving popular in Poland, he decided to adopt the position of de facto cultural attaché to the country. Like France and Sweden, homosexual activity was legal but socially frowned upon in Poland, and he undertook relationships with a number of men in Warsaw. One of these turned out to be a Polish government agent who hoped to trap Foucault in an embarrassing situation, which would therefore reflect badly on the French embassy. Wracked in diplomatic scandal, he was soon ordered to leave Poland for a new destination. Various positions were available in West Germany, and so Foucault decided to relocate to the city of Hamburg, where he continued to teach the same courses that he had given in Uppsala and Warsaw. Spending much of his time in the Reeperbahn red light district, he entered into a relationship with a transvestite.

Madness and Civilization and Kant's Anthropology: 1960

"Histoire de la folie is not an easy text to read, and it defies attempts to summarise its contents. Foucault refers to a bewildering variety of sources, ranging from well-known authors such as Erasmus and Molière to archival documents and forgotten figures in the history of medicine and psychiatry. His erudition derives from years pondering, to cite Poe, 'over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore', and his learning is not always worn lightly...
Yet the text affords even its most casual reader a great deal of pleasure. Its overall arguments and structures are seductively persuasive, and do win over the reader, just as they were to win over and convince the members of the jury which examined Foucault for his doctorate."

While working in West Germany, Foucault had finally completed his doctoral thesis, Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (Madness and Insanity: History of Madness in the Classical Age), a philosophical work based upon his studies into the history of medicine. In the book, Foucault dealt with the manner in which Western European society had dealt with madness, arguing that it was a social construct distinct from mental illness. Foucault traces the evolution of the concept of madness through three phases: the Renaissance, the "Classical Age" (the later seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries) and the modern experience. He argues that in the Renaissance the mad were portrayed in art as possessing a kind of wisdom, a knowledge of the limits of our world, and portrayed in literature as revealing the distinction between what men are and what they pretend to be. With the rise of the age of reason in the 17th century, madness began to be conceived of as unreason and the mad, previously consigned to society's margins, were now separated from society and confined, along with prostitutes, vagrants, blasphemers, orphans and the like, in newly created institutions all over Europe. The subsequent modern experience, Foucault argued, began at the end of the 18th century with the creation of places devoted solely to the care of the mad under the supervision of medical doctors. This was born out of a blending of two motives: the new goal of curing the mad away from the family who could not afford the necessary care at home, and the old purpose of confining undesirables for the protection of society. The work contains a number of allusions and references to the work of French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud (1896–1948), who exerted a strong influence over Foucault's thought at the time. Histoire de la folie was an expansive work, consisting of 943 pages of text, followed by appendixes and a bibliography. He decided to submit this work in France at the University of Paris, although the university's regulations for awarding a doctorate required the submission of both his main thesis and a shorter complementary thesis.

Obtaining a doctorate in France at the period was a multi-step process. The first step in the process was to obtain a rapporteur, or sponsor for the work, and Foucault found this in Georges Canguilhem. The second was to find a publisher, and as a result Folie et déraison would be published in French in May 1961 by the company Plon. Foucault had initially received an offer of publication from the Presses Universitaires de France, but he wanted his work to be published by a popular rather than an academic press, so that it would reach a wider audience. Hoping that his work would be picked up by Gallimard, the publishers of Jean-Paul Sartre's influential bestseller, Being and Nothingness (1943), he was perturbed when they rejected him, instead selecting Plon. In 1964, a heavily abridged version was published as a mass market paperback, which was then translated into English for publication the following year as Madness and Civilization.

Upon publication, Folie et déraison received a mixed reception in France and in foreign journals focusing on French affairs. It was critically acclaimed by the likes of Maurice Blochot, Michel Serres, Roland Barthes, Gaston Bachelard, and Fernand Braudel, but much to Foucault's upset, largely ignored in the leftist press. The work most notably came under attack from a young philosopher who had been a student on Foucault's psychology course at the École Normale Supérieure, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Derrida's critique came in the form of a lecture he gave on "The Cogito and the History of Madness" at the University of Paris on 4 March 1963, accusing Foucault of advocating metaphysics. Responding to the criticism with a vicious retort, Foucault ignored some of Derrida's points, focusing in on a criticism of how the younger philosopher had interpreted the work of René Descartes. The two would remain bitter rivals until reconciling in 1981. In the English-speaking world, the work would become a significant influence over the anti-psychiatry movement during the 1960s; Foucault himself took a mixed approach to this movement, associating with a number of figures involved in it but arguing that most of the anti-psychiatrists fundamentally misunderstood his work.

Foucault's secondary thesis involved a translation of, and commentary on, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant's 1798 work Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht). Much of this thesis consisted of Foucault's discussion of textual dating – an "archaeology of the Kantian text" – although he rounded off the work with an evocation of Nietzche, who had become his biggest philosophical influence. This work's rapporteur sponsor was his old tutor, Jean Hyppolite, who was himself well acquainted with German philosophy and who was then director of the ENS. After having both of his theses championed and reviewed, he had to undergo his public defense, the soutenance de thèse, on 20 May 1961. The academics responsible for reviewing his work were concerned about the unconventional nature of his major thesis; Henri Gouhier, one of the reviewers, noted that it was not a conventional work of history, making sweeping generalisations without sufficient particular argument, and that Foucault clearly "thinks in allegories". They all agreed however that the overall project was of merit, and so awarded Foucault his doctorate "despite reservations".

University of Clermont-Ferrand, The Birth of the Clinic, and The Order of Things: 1960–1966

In 1960, while his doctorate was being assessed, Foucault purchased his first flat, a part of a high-rise block on the rue du Dr Finlay, off the quai de Grenelle. In October, he was offered a tenured post in philosophy at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, and over the next six years he would commute to the city every week from Paris, where he continued to live. At the time, psychology was usually subsumed within the philosophy departments in French universities, and it was this subject that Foucault was primarily responsible for teaching. Considered a "fascinating" but "rather traditional" teacher at Clermont, he was popular with his pupils. The university's philosophy department was then under the control of Jules Vuillemin (1920–2001), who had chosen him for the position after becoming impressed by Foucault's then unpublished doctoral dissertation. After taking up his post, Foucault soon developed a friendship with Vuillemin despite their political differences; Vuillemin being a rightist and Foucault a leftist. When Vuillemin was elected to the Collège de France in 1962, he left Clermont, with Foucault taking over as the departmental head. One of the academics appointed to Clermont-Ferrand by the government was Roger Garaudy (1913–2012), a Marxist and senior figure in the French Communist Party. Foucault despised Garaudy, believing him to be stupid and disliking his dogmatic adherence to the Soviet party line. Foucault intentionally made life at the university difficult for Garaudy, highlighting his various mistakes and refusing to talk to him, leading the latter to eventually accept a transfer to Poitiers. It was in this stage of his life that Foucault met the young philosopher Daniel Defert (1937–), and they would enter into a non-monogamous relationship that would last for the rest of Foucault's life. Controversially, Foucault secured Defert a job at the university, even though other candidates for the post were better qualified.

Aside from his teaching, Foucault also maintained a keen interest in literature, having reviews published in such literary journals as Tel Quel and Nouvelle Revue Française, and sitting on the editorial board of Critique. In May 1963 he published a work entitled Raymond Rousell, which was devoted to the eponymous poet, novelist and playwright, who was one of Foucault's favourite authors. Brought out by Gallimard, it had been written in under two months, and would be described by Foucault biographer David Macey as "a very personal book" that resulted from a "love affair" with Roussel's work. It would eventually be published in English in 1983 as Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel. It would receive few reviews, being largely ignored. That same year he also published a sequel to Folie et déraison, entitled Naissance de la Clinique: une archéologie du regard médical, subsequently translated into English as Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. A shorter work than its predecessor, it focused on the changes that underwent the entire medical establishment in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Like his preceding work, Naissance de la Clinique was largely critically ignored, only gaining a cult following in subsequent years. Foucault was also selected to be among the "Eighteen Man Commission" that assembled between November 1963 and March 1964 to discuss university reforms that were to be implemented by Christian Fouchet, the Gaullist Minister of National Education. Upon their implementation in 1967, the reforms brought staff strikes and student protests.

In April 1966, Gallimard brought out another significant work by Foucault, Les Mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines ("The words and the things"), which was later translated into English as The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. The work explores how man came to be an object of knowledge, arguing that all periods of history have possessed certain underlying conditions of truth that constituted what was acceptable as scientific discourse. Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, from one period's episteme to another. Although designed for a specialist audience, the work gained press and television attention and became a surprise bestseller in France. It was during the height of interest in structuralism in 1966, and Foucault was quickly grouped with scholars such as Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes as the newest, latest wave of thinkers set to topple the existentialism popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre. Although he initially accepted this description of being a "structuralist", it would not be long before Foucault changed his mind, and vehemently rejected such a description. Foucault's relationship with Sartre was strained, with the two regularly criticising one another in the press; both Sartre and his partner Simone de Beauvoir attacked Foucault and his ideas as "bourgeoisie", while Foucault retaliated against their Marxist beliefs by proclaiming that "Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else." Meanwhile, Foucault had been wanting to leave the university at Clermont for some time, considering both Japan and Brazil as possible destinations, and he was finally able to do so the end of the 1965–66 educational year.

University of Tunisia and The Archaeology of Knowledge: 1966–1970

"I lived for two and a half years. It made a real impression. I was present for large, violent student riots that preceded by several weeks what happened in May in France. This was March 1968. The unrest lasted a whole year: strikes, courses suspended, arrests. And in March, a general strike by the students. The police came into the university, beat up the students, wounded several of them seriously, and started making arrests... I have to say that I was tremendously impressed by those young men and women who took terrible risks by writing or distributing tracts or calling for strikes, the ones who really risked losing their freedom! It was a political experience for me."

Foucault then took up a position teaching psychology at the University of Tunis in the North African nation of Tunisia, which had gained independence from France in 1956. His decision to do so was in part based upon the fact that his lover, Defert, had been posted to the country as a part of his national service following the completion of his agrégation. Arriving in the country in September 1966, Foucault moved into the village of Sidi Bou Saïd, which was just a few kilometres away from Tunis and where Gérard Deledalle, who also worked at the university, lived with his wife. Soon after he arrived in the country, he would announce that Tunisia was "blessed by history", a nation which "deserves to live forever because it was where Hannibal and St. Augustine lived."

His lectures at the university proved very popular, and were well attended. Although many of the young students were enthusiastic about his teaching, they were critical of what they believed to be his right-wing political views, viewing him as a "representative of Gaullist technocracy", even though he considered himself a leftist. Foucault was in Tunis over the course of the anti-government and pro-Palestinian riots that rocked the city in June 1967, and which would continue for the next year. Although highly critical of the violent, ultra-nationalistic and anti-semitic nature of many of the protesters, he used his status to try and prevent some of his militant leftist students from being arrested and tortured for their role in the agitation. Hiding their printing press in his own garden, he tried to testify on their behalf at their trials, but was prevented when the trials became closed-door events.

While in Tunis, Foucault had continued to write. Inspired by a correspondence with the surrealist artist René Magritte, Foucault set about writing a book upon the impressionist artist Eduard Manet, but it was never completed.

He was still in Tunis during the May 1968 student riots, where he was profoundly affected by a local student revolt earlier in the same year. In the Autumn of 1968 he returned to France, where he published L'archéologie du savoir (The Archaeology of Knowledge) – a methodological treatise that included a response to his critics – in 1969.

In the aftermath of 1968, the French government created a new experimental university, Paris VIII, at Vincennes and appointed Foucault the first head of its philosophy department in December of that year. Foucault appointed mostly young leftist academics (such as Judith Miller) whose radicalism provoked the Ministry of Education, who objected to the fact that many of the course titles contained the phrase "Marxist-Leninist," and who decreed that students from Vincennes would not be eligible to become secondary school teachers. Foucault notoriously also joined students in occupying administration buildings and fighting with police.

Collège de France: 1970–1975

Foucault's tenure at Vincennes was short-lived, as in 1970 he was elected to France's most prestigious academic body, the Collège de France, as Professor of the History of Systems of Thought. His political involvement increased, and his partner Defert joined the ultra-Maoist Gauche Proletarienne (GP). Foucault helped found the Prison Information Group (Template:Lang-fr or GIP) to provide a way for prisoners to voice their concerns. This coincided with Foucault's turn to the study of disciplinary institutions, with a book, Surveiller et Punir (Discipline and Punish), which "narrates" the micro-power structures that developed in Western societies since the 18th century, with a special focus on prisons and schools.

Later life: 1975–1983

In the late 1970s, political activism in France trailed off with the disillusionment of many left wing intellectuals. A number of young Maoists abandoned their beliefs to become the so-called New Philosophers, often citing Foucault as their major influence, a status Foucault had mixed feelings about. Foucault in this period embarked on a six-volume project The History of Sexuality, which he never completed. Its first volume was published in French as La Volonté de Savoir (1976), then in English as The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (1978). The second and third volumes did not appear for another eight years, and they surprised readers by their subject matter (classical Greek and Latin texts), approach and style, particularly Foucault's focus on the human subject, a concept that some mistakenly believed he had previously neglected.

Foucault began to spend more time in the United States, at the University at Buffalo (where he had lectured on his first ever visit to the United States in 1970) and especially at UC Berkeley. In 1975, he took LSD at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park, later calling it the best experience of his life.

Iranian Revolution

In 1979, Foucault made two tours of Iran, undertaking extensive interviews with political protagonists in support of the new interim government established soon after the Iranian Revolution. In the tradition of Nietzsche and Georges Bataille, Foucault had embraced the artist who pushed the limits of rationality, and he wrote with great passion in defense of irrationalities that broke boundaries. In 1978, Foucault found such transgressive powers in the revolutionary figures Ayatollah Khomeini, Ali Shariati and the millions who risked death as they followed them in the course of the revolution. Both Foucault and the revolutionaries were highly critical of modernity and sought a new form of politics, they both also looked up to those who risked their lives for ideals; and both looked to the past for inspiration. Later on when Foucault went to Iran “to be there at the birth of a new form of ideas,” he wrote that the new “Muslim” style of politics could signal the beginning of a new form of “political spirituality,” not just for the Middle East, but also for Europe, which had adopted the practice of secular politics ever since the French Revolution. Foucault recognized the enormous power of the new discourse of militant Islam, not just for Iran, but for the world. He wrote:

As an Islamic movement, it can set the entire region afire, overturn the most unstable regimes, and disturb the most solid. Islam which is not simply a religion, but an entire way of life, an adherence to a history and a civilization, has a good chance to become a gigantic powder keg, at the level of hundreds of millions of men. . . Indeed, it is also important to recognize that the demand for the 'legitimate rights of the Palestinian people' hardly stirred the Arab peoples. What it be if this cause encompassed the dynamism of an Islamic movement, something much stronger than those with a Marxist, Leninist, or Maoist character? (“A Powder Keg Called Islam”)

During his two trips to Iran, Foucault was commissioned as a special correspondent of a leading Italian newspaper and his articles appeared on the front page of that paper. His many essays on Iran, published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, only appeared in French in 1994 and then in English in 2005. These essays caused some controversy, with some commentators arguing that Foucault was insufficiently critical of the new regime. The more common attempts to bracket out Foucault's writings on Iran as "miscalculations," reminds some authors of what Foucault himself had criticized in his well known 1969 essay, "What is an Author?" Foucault believed that when we include certain works in an author's career and exclude others that were written in a "different style," or were "inferior" (Foucault 1969, 111), we create a stylistic unity and a theoretical coherence. This is done by privileging certain writings as authentic and excluding others that do not fit our view of what the author ought to be: "The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning" (Foucault 1969, 110). This controversy is frequently discussed in the Foucault literature.

Illness and death: 1983–1984

In the philosopher's later years, interpreters of Foucault's work attempted to engage with the problems presented by the fact that the late Foucault seemed in tension with the philosopher's earlier work. When this issue was raised in a 1982 interview, Foucault remarked "When people say, 'Well, you thought this a few years ago and now you say something else,' my answer is… 'Well, do you think I have worked hard all those years to say the same thing and not to be changed?'" He refused to identify himself as a philosopher, historian, structuralist, or Marxist, maintaining that "The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning." In a similar vein, he preferred not to state that he was presenting a coherent and timeless block of knowledge; he rather desired his books "to be a kind of tool-box others can rummage through to find a tool they can use however they wish in their own area… I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers."

During these trips to California, Foucault spent many evenings in the gay scene of the San Francisco Bay Area. He frequented a number of sado-masochistic bathhouses, engaging in sexual intercourse with other patrons. He would praise sado-masochistic activity in interviews with the gay press, describing it as "the real creation of new possibilities of pleasure, which people had no idea about previously." The American academic James Miller would later claim that Foucault's experiences in the gay sadomasochism community during the time he taught at Berkeley directly influenced his political and philosophical works. Miller's ideas have been rebuked by certain Foucault scholars as being either simply misdirected, a sordid reading of his life and works, or as a politically motivated, intentional misreading.

At one point, Foucault contracted the HIV virus, which would eventually develop into AIDS. Little was known of the disease at the time; the first cases had only been identified in 1980, and it had only been named in 1982. In the summer of 1983, he noticed that he had a persistent dry cough; friends in Paris became concerned that he may have contracted the HIV/AIDS virus then sweeping the San Francisco gay population, but Foucault insisted that he had nothing more than a pulmonary infection that would clear up when he spent the autumn of 1983 in California. It was only when hospitalized that Foucault was diagnosed with AIDS; placed on antibiotics, he was able to deliver a final set of lectures at the Collège de France. Foucault entered Paris' Hôpital de la Salpêtrière – the same institution that he had studied in Madness and Civilisation – on 9 June 1984, with neurological symptoms complicated by septicemia. He died in the hospital at 1:15pm on 25 June.

On 26 June, the newspaper Libération – associated with Foucault for much of his life – announced his death, also highlighting the rumour that it had been brought on by AIDS. The following day, Le Monde publicly issued a medical bulletin that had been cleared by his family; it made no reference to the HIV/AIDS virus. On 29 June, Foucault's la levée du corps ceremony was held, in which the coffin was carried from the morgue. Taking place in the rear courtyard of the Hôpital de la Salpêtriêre, it was attended by hundreds of admirers who had seen the event advertised in Le Monde, including left wing activists like Yves Montand and Simone Signoret and academics such as Jacques Derrida, Paul Veyne, Pierre Bourdieu and Georges Dumézil. Foucault's friend Gilles Deleuze gave a speech, with the words coming from the preface to the final two volumes of The History of Sexuality. Soon after his death, Foucault's partner Daniel Defert founded the first national AIDS organisation in France, which he called AIDES; a pun on the French language word for "help" (aide) and the English language acronym for the disease. On the second anniversary of Foucault's death, Defert agreed to publicly announce that Foucault's death was AIDS-related, doing so in the California-based gay magazine, The Advocate.

Personal life

Foucault's first biographer, Didier Eribon, described the philosopher as "a complex, many-sided character", and that "under one mask there is always another". He also noted that he exhibited an "enormous capacity for work". At the ENS, Foucault's classmates unanimously summed him up as a figure who was both "disconcerting and strange" and "a passionate worker". His personality would change as he aged however; Eribon noted that while he was a "tortured adolescent", post-1960, he had become "a radiant man, relaxed and cheerful", even being described by those who worked with him as a dandy.

Foucault was a fan of classical music, particularly enjoying the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Politically, Foucault remained a leftist throughout his life, but his particular stance within the left often changed. In the early 1950s he had been a member of the French Communist Party, although never adopted an orthodox Marxist viewpoint and left the party after three years, disgusted by the prejudice towards Jews and homosexuals within its ranks. After spending some time working in Poland, then governed as a socialist state by the Communist Party of Poland, he became further disillusioned with communism, and by the early 1960s was considered to be "violently anticommunist".

Thought

"The theme that underlies all Foucault's work is the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as 'scientific knowledge' are really just means of social control. Foucault shows how, for instance, in the eighteenth century 'madness' was used to categorize and stigmatise not just the mentally ill but the poor, the sick, the homeless and, indeed, anyone whose expressions of individuality were unwelcome."

Philosopher Philip Stokes of the University of Reading noted that overall, Foucault's work was "dark and pessimistic", but that it did leave some room for optimism, in that it illustrates how the discipline of philosophy can be used to highlight areas of domination. In doing so, Stokes claimed, we are able to understand how we are being dominated and strive to build social structures that minimize this risk of domination.

Major Works

Madness and Civilization

The English edition of Madness and Civilization is an abridged version of Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, originally published in 1961. A full English translation titled The History of Madness has since been published by Routledge in 2006. "Folie et deraison" originated as Foucault's doctoral dissertation; this was Foucault's first major book, mostly written while he was the Director of the Maison de France in Sweden. It examines ideas, practices, institutions, art, and literature relating to madness in Western history.

Foucault begins his history in the Middle Ages, noting the social and physical exclusion of lepers. He argues that with the gradual disappearance of leprosy, madness came to occupy this excluded position. The ship of fools in the 15th century is a literary version of one such exclusionary practice, namely that of sending mad people away in ships. In 17th century Europe, in a movement Foucault famously calls the "Great Confinement," "unreasonable" members of the population were institutionalized. In the 18th century, madness came to be seen as the reverse of Reason, and, finally, in the 19th century as mental illness.

Foucault also argues that madness was silenced by Reason, losing its power to signify the limits of social order and to point to the truth. He examines the rise of scientific and "humanitarian" treatments of the insane, notably at the hands of Philippe Pinel and Samuel Tuke who he suggests started the conceptualization of madness as 'mental illness'. He claims that these new treatments were in fact no less controlling than previous methods. Pinel's treatment of the mad amounted to an extended aversion therapy, including such treatments as freezing showers and use of a straitjacket. In Foucault's view, this treatment amounted to repeated brutality until the pattern of judgment and punishment was internalized by the victim.

The Birth of the Clinic

Foucault's second major book, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical) was published in 1963 in France, and translated to English in 1973. Picking up from Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic traces the development of the medical profession, and specifically the institution of the clinique (translated as "clinic", but here largely referring to teaching hospitals). Its motif is the concept of the medical regard (translated by Alan Sheridan as "medical gaze"), traditionally limited to small, specialized institutions such as hospitals and prisons, but which Foucault examines as subjecting wider social spaces, governing the population en masse.

Death and The Labyrinth

Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel was published in 1963, and translated into English in 1986. It is Foucault's only book-length work on literature. Foucault described it as "by far the book I wrote most easily, with the greatest pleasure, and most rapidly." Foucault explores theory, criticism, and psychology with reference to the texts of Raymond Roussel, one of the first notable of experimental writers.

The Order of Things

Foucault's Les Mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines was published in 1966. It was translated into English in 1970 under the title The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Foucault had preferred L'Ordre des choses for the original French title, but changed it as there was already another book by that name. The work broadly aims to provide an anti-humanist excavation of the human sciences, such as sociology and psychology. It opens with an extended discussion of Diego Velázquez's painting Las Meninas and the painting's complex arrangement of sight-lines, hiddenness, and appearance. It then develops its central thesis: all periods of history have possessed specific underlying conditions of truth that constituted what could be expressed as discourse (for example art, science, culture, etc.). Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, in major and relatively sudden shifts, from one period's episteme to another. Foucault's Nietzschean critique of Enlightenment values in Les mots et les choses has been very influential in cultural studies and social work scholarship. It is in this book that Foucault claims that "man is only a recent invention" and that the "end of man" is at hand. In an interview shortly thereafter he stated: "I am a Nietzschean."

The book was a best-seller and made Foucault a prominent intellectual figure in France.

The Archaeology of Knowledge

Published in 1969, this volume was Foucault's main excursion into methodology, written as an outcome of discussions with the French Circle of Epistemology. The book explains the methodology of his previous theoretical works. In his work Foucault (1986), Deleuze describes The Archaeology of Knowledge as "the most decisive step yet taken in the theory-practice of multiplicities."

In Archaeology, Foucault directs his analysis toward the "statement" (énoncé), which is the rules that render an expression (that is, a phrase, a proposition, or a speech act) discursively meaningful. This concept of meaning differs from the concept of signification: Though an expression is signifying, for instance "The gold mountain is in California", it may nevertheless be discursively meaningless and therefore have no existence within a certain discourse. For this reason, the "statement" is an existence function for discursive meaning. Being rules, the "statement" has a special meaning in the Archaeology: it is not the expression itself, but the rules which make an expression discursively meaningful. These rules are not the syntax and semantics that makes an expression signifying. It is additional rules. In contrast to structuralists, Foucault demonstrates that the semantic and syntactic structures do not suffice to determine the discursive meaning of an expression. Depending on whether or not it complies with these rules of discursive meaning, a grammatically correct phrase may lack discursive meaning or, inversely, a grammatically incorrect sentence may be discursively meaningful - even meaningless letters (e.g. "QWERT") may have discursive meaning. Thus, the meaning of expressions depends on the conditions in which they emerge and exist within a field of discourse; the discursive meaning of an expression is reliant on the succession of statements that precede and follow it. In short, the "statements" Foucault analyzed are not propositions, phrases, or speech acts. Rather, "statements" constitute a network of rules establishing which expressions are discursively meaningful, and these rules are the preconditions for signifying propositions, utterances, or speech acts to have discursive meaning. However, "statements" are also 'events', because, like other rules, they appear (or disappear) at some time.

Foucault aims his analysis towards a huge organized dispersion of statements, called discursive formations. Foucault reiterates that the analysis he is outlining is only one possible procedure, and that he is not seeking to displace other ways of analysing discourse or render them as invalid.

According to Dreyfus and Rabinow, Foucault not only brackets out issues of truth (cf. Husserl), he also brackets out issues of meaning. However, Foucault does not bracket out discursive meaning. But, focusing on discursive meaning, Foucault did not look for a deeper meaning underneath discourse or for the source of meaning in some transcendental subject. Instead, Foucault analyzes the discursive and practical conditions for the existence of truth and discursive meaning. To show the principles of production of truth and discursive meaning in various discursive formations, he details how truth claims emerge during various epochs on the basis of what was actually said and written during these periods. He particularly describes the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, and the 20th century. He strives to avoid all interpretation and to depart from the goals of hermeneutics. This does not mean that Foucault denounces truth and discursive meaning, but just that truth and discursive meaning depend on the historical discursive and practical means of truth and meaning production. For instance, although they were radically different during Enlightenment as opposed to Modernity, there were indeed discursive meaning, truth, and correct treatment of madness during both epochs (Madness and Civilization). This posture allows Foucault to denounce a priori concepts of the nature of the human subject and focus on the role of discursive practices in constituting subjectivity.

Foucault's relation to structuralism is ambiguous. However, in the preface to the English translation of Les Mots et les Choses (1970), he clearly disavowed structuralism:

In France certain half-witted 'commentators' persist in labelling me a 'structuralist'. I have been unable to get it into their tiny minds that I have used none of the methods, concepts, or key terms that characterize structural analysis.

Whereas structuralists search for homogeneity in a discursive entity, Foucault focuses on differences. Instead of asking what constitutes the specificity of European thought he asks what constitutes the differences developed within it and over time. Therefore, as a historical method, he refuses to examine statements outside of their historical context: the discursive formation. The meaning of a statement depends on the general rules that characterize the discursive formation to which it belongs. A discursive formation continually generates new statements, and some of these usher in changes in the discursive formation that may or may not be adopted. Therefore, to describe a discursive formation, Foucault also focuses on expelled and forgotten discourses that never happened to change the discursive formation (the genealogical analysis). Their differences from the dominant discourse also describe it. In this way one can describe specific systems that determine which types of statements emerge.

The book was not as successful as The Order of Things.

Discipline and Punish

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison was translated into English in 1977, from the French Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison, published in 1975. It details the emergence of prisons as in Europe and explores Foucault's views on power. The book is among Foucault's most successful and influential works.

The book opens with a graphic description of the brutal public execution in 1757 of Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to kill Louis XV. Against this it juxtaposes a colourless prison timetable from just over 80 years later. Foucault then inquires how such a change in French society's punishment of convicts could have developed in such a short time. These are snapshots of two contrasting types of Foucault's "Technologies of Punishment." The first type, "Monarchical Punishment," involves the repression of the populace through brutal public displays of executions and torture. The second, "Disciplinary Punishment," is what Foucault says is practiced in the modern era. Disciplinary punishment gives "professionals" (psychologists, programme facilitators, parole officers, etc.) power over the prisoner, most notably in that the prisoner's length of stay depends on the professionals' judgment. Foucault goes on to argue that Disciplinary punishment leads to self-policing by the populace as opposed to brutal displays of authority from the Monarchical period.

Foucault argues between the 17th and 18th centuries a new, more subtle form of power was being exercised transnationally. He calls this form of power discipline. Soldiers could be made and formed rather than just being chosen because of their natural characteristics. Knowledge and power are central to Foucault's analysis. He questions common concepts like justice or equality and asks where these concepts originated and who they benefit. In all of this development there had to be close attention to detail; it is the detail which eventually individualises people.

Foucault also compares modern society with Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon" design for prisons (which was unrealized in its original form, but nonetheless influential): in the Panopticon, a single guard can watch over many prisoners while the guard remains unseen. Ancient prisons have been replaced by clear and visible ones, but Foucault cautions that "visibility is a trap." It is through this visibility, Foucault writes, that modern society exercises its controlling systems of power and knowledge (terms Foucault believed to be so fundamentally connected that he often combined them in a single hyphenated concept, "power-knowledge"). Increasing visibility leads to power located on an increasingly individualized level, shown by the possibility for institutions to track individuals throughout their lives. Foucault suggests that a "carceral continuum" runs through modern society, from the maximum security prison, through secure accommodation, probation, social workers, police, and teachers, to our everyday working and domestic lives. All are connected by the (witting or unwitting) supervision (surveillance, application of norms of acceptable behaviour) of some humans by others.

The History of Sexuality

Three volumes of The History of Sexuality were published before Foucault's death in 1984. The first and most referenced volume, The Will to Knowledge (previously known as An Introduction in English – Histoire de la sexualité, 1: la volonté de savoir in French) was published in France in 1976, and translated in 1977, focusing primarily on the last two centuries, and the functioning of sexuality as an analytics of power related to the emergence of a science of sexuality (scientia sexualis) and the emergence of biopower in the West. In this volume he attacks the "repressive hypothesis", the widespread belief that we have "repressed" our natural sexual drives, particularly since the 19th century. He proposes that what is thought of as "repression" of sexuality actually constituted sexuality as a core feature of human identities, and produced a proliferation of discourse on the subject.

The second two volumes, The Use of Pleasure (Histoire de la sexualité, II: l'usage des plaisirs) and The Care of the Self (Histoire de la sexualité, III: le souci de soi) dealt with the role of sex in Greek and Roman antiquity. Both were published in 1984, the year of Foucault's death, with the second volume being translated in 1985, and the third in 1986. In his lecture series from 1979 to 1980 Foucault extended his analysis of government to its 'wider sense of techniques and procedures designed to direct the behaviour of men', which involved a new consideration of the 'examination of conscience' and confession in early Christian literature. These themes of early Christian literature seemed to dominate Foucault's work, alongside his study of Greek and Roman literature, until the end of his life. However, Foucault's death left the work incomplete, and the planned fourth volume of his History of Sexuality on Christianity was never published. The fourth volume was to be entitled Confessions of the Flesh (Les aveux de la chair). The volume was almost complete before Foucault's death and a copy of it is privately held in the Foucault archive. It cannot be published under the restrictions of Foucault's estate.

Lectures

In 1970, Foucault began a schedule of weekly public lectures and seminars during the first three months of each year at the Collège de France as the condition of his tenure as professor there. These continued each year except 1977 until his death in 1984. The lectures were tape-recorded and Foucault's notes also survive. In 1997 the lectures began to be published in French. Of the first nine volumes to be published, eight have been translated into English: Psychiatric Power 1973–1974, Abnormal 1974–1975, Society Must Be Defended 1975–1976, Security, Territory, Population 1977–1978, The Birth of Biopolitics 1978-1979, The Hermeneutics of the Subject 1981–1982, The Government of Self and Others 1982–1983, and The Courage of Truth 1983-1984.

Society Must Be Defended and Security, Territory, Population pursued an analysis of the broader relationship between security and biopolitics, explicitly politicizing the question of the birth of humankind raised in The Order of Things. In Security, Territory, Population, Foucault outlines his theory of governmentality, and demonstrates the distinction between sovereignty, discipline, and governmentality as distinct modalities of state power. He argues that governmental state power can be genealogically linked to the 17th century state philosophy of raison d'etat and, ultimately, to the medieval Christian 'pastoral' concept of power.

Influence

Foucault's discussions on power and discourse have inspired many critical theorists, who believe that Foucault's analysis of power structures could aid the struggle against inequality. They claim that through discourse analysis, hierarchies may be uncovered and questioned by way of analyzing the corresponding fields of knowledge through which they are legitimated. This is one of the ways that Foucault's work is linked to critical theory.

In 2007, Foucault was listed as the most cited scholar in the humanities by the ISI Web of Science.

Criticisms

Philosopher Jürgen Habermas has described Foucault as a "crypto-normativist", covertly reliant on the very Enlightenment principles he attempts to deconstruct (see also debate). Central to this problem, Habermas argues, is the way Foucault seemingly attempts to remain both Kantian and Nietzschean in his approach.

Philosopher Richard Rorty has argued that Foucault's 'archaeology of knowledge' is fundamentally negative, and thus fails to adequately establish any 'new' theory of knowledge per se. Rather, Foucault simply provides a few valuable maxims regarding the reading of history. Says Rorty:

As far as I can see, all he has to offer are brilliant redescriptions of the past, supplemented by helpful hints on how to avoid being trapped by old historiographical assumptions. These hints consist largely of saying: "do not look for progress or meaning in history; do not see the history of a given activity, of any segment of culture, as the development of rationality or of freedom; do not use any philosophical vocabulary to characterize the essence of such activity or the goal it serves; do not assume that the way this activity is presently conducted gives any clue to the goals it served in the past."

— Rorty Foucault and Epistemology, 1986,

Philosopher Roger Scruton argued that Foucault was a "fraud" because he exploited known difficulties of philosophy in order to "disguise unexamined premises as hard-won conclusions".

Bibliography

See also

References

Footnotes

1. Jacques Derrida points out Foucault's debt to Artaud in his essay "La parole soufflée," in Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, 1978), p. 326n.26.
2. ^ Macey 1993. p. 3.
3. ^ Miller 1993. p. 39jk.
4. Eribon 1991. pp. 4–5.
5. ^ Eribon 1991. p. 5.
6. Macey 1993. pp. 1–2.
7. Macey 1993. p. 1.
8. Macey 1993. p. 2.
9. ^ Macey 1993. p. 4.
10. Miller 1993. p. 56.
11. Macey 1993. pp. 8–9.
12. Macey 1993. p. 7.
13. Eribon 1991. pp. 6–7.
14. ^ Macey 1993. p. 10.
15. Miller 1993. pp. 39–40.
16. Smart 2002. p. 19/
17. Macey 1993. p. 13.
18. Eribon 1991. p. 9.
19. Macey 1993. p. 11.
20. Eribon 1991. pp. 11, 14–21.
21. Macey 1993. pp. 15–17.
22. Miller 1993. pp. 40–41.
23. Eribon 1991 pp. 24–25.
24. Macey 1993 pp. 17–22.
25. ^ Miller 1993. p. 45.
26. ^ Eribon 1991 p. 26.
27. Macey 1993 pp. 27–28.
28. Miller 1993. pp. 54–55.
29. Miller 1993. p. 55.
30. Macey 1993 p. 30.
31. Miller 1993. pp. 55–56.
32. Macey 1993 p. 34.
33. Miller 1993. p. 46.
34. Macey 1993 p. 35.
35. Miller 1993. pp. 60–61.
36. Eribon 1991 pp. 32–36, 51–55.
37. Macey 1993 pp. 23–26, 37–40.
38. Miller 1993. p. 57.
39. Eribon 1991 pp. 56–57.
40. Macey 1993 pp. 39–40.
41. Miller 1993. pp. 57–58.
42. Eribon 1991 pp. 36–38.
43. Macey 1993 pp. 43–45.
44. ^ Miller 1993. p. 61.
45. Eribon 1991 pp. 39–40.
46. Macey 1993 pp. 45–46, 49.
47. Eribon 1991 p. 50.
48. ^ Macey 1993 p. 49.
49. ^ Miller 1993. p. 62.
50. Eribon 1991 pp. 61–62.
51. Macey 1993 p. 47.
52. Macey 1993 p. 56.
53. Miller 1993. pp. 61–62.
54. Eribon 1991 pp. 41–49.
55. Macey 1993 pp. 56–58.
56. Eribon 1991 pp. 30, 43.
57. Miller 1993. pp. 62–63.
58. Eribon 1991 pp. 65–68.
59. Macey 1993 pp. 50–53.
60. Miller 1993. pp. 66, 79–82, 89–91.
61. Eribon 1991 p. 52.
62. Macey 1993 p. 50.
63. Miller 1993. pp. 66–67.
64. Macey 1993 p. 41.
65. Miller 1993. pp. 64–65.
66. Eribon 1991 p. 58.
67. Macey 1993 p. 55.
68. Miller 1993. pp. 82–84.
69. Eribon 1991 p. 66.
70. Macey 1993 p. 53.
71. Miller 1993. pp. 84–85.
72. Eribon 1991 p. 31.
73. Macey 1993 pp. 51–52.
74. Miller 1993. p. 65.
75. Eribon 1991 pp. 44–45.
76. Macey 1993 pp. 59–61.
77. Miller 1993. pp. 73–75.
78. Eribon 1991 pp. 45–46.
79. Macey 1993 pp. 67–69.
80. Miller 1993. pp. 76–77.
81. Eribon 1991 pp. 68–70.
82. Macey 1993 pp. 63–66.
83. ^ Miller 1993. p. 63.
84. Macey 1993 p. 67.
85. Eribon 1991 p. 70.
86. Eribon 1991. pp. 73–74.
87. Macey 1993. pp. 70–71.
88. Eribon 1991. pp. 76–78.
89. Macey 1993. pp. 73, 76.
90. Eribon 1991. pp. 74–77.
91. Macey 1993. pp. 74–75.
92. Eribon 1991 p. 68.
93. Macey 1993 p. 81.
94. ^ Miller 1993. p. 91.
95. Macey 1993. p. 78.
96. Eribon 1991. pp. 83–86.
97. Macey 1993. pp. 79–80.
98. Eribon 1991. p. 87.
99. Macey 1993. p. 84.
100. ^ Eribon 1991 p. 194.
101. Macey 1993. pp. 84–85.
102. Eribon 1991. p. 88.
103. Macey 1993. pp. 85–86.
104. Eribon 1991. pp. 89.
105. Macey 1993. pp. 86–87.
106. Eribon 1991. pp. 89–90.
107. Macey 1993. pp. 87–88.
108. Macey 1993. p. 88.
109. Macey 1993. p. 96.
110. Macey 1993. p. 102.
111. Miller 1993. p. 96.
112. ^ Eribon 1991. p. 101.
113. Eribon 1991. pp. 90–92.
114. Macey 1993. pp. 88–89.
115. Eribon 1991. pp. 101–102.
116. Macey 1993. pp. 103–106.
117. Eribon 1991. pp. 105–107.
118. Macey 1993. pp. 106–108.
119. Miller 1993. pp. 117–118.
120. Eribon 1991. p. 122.
121. ^ Miller 1993. p. 118.
122. Eribon 1991. p. 116.
123. Macey 1993. pp. 113–119.
124. Eribon 1991. pp. 119–121.
125. Macey 1993. pp. 142–145.
126. Miller 1993. pp. 118–119.
127. Eribon 1991. pp. 122–126.
128. Eribon 1991. p. 110.
129. Macey 1993. p. 89.
130. Eribon 1991. pp. 111–113.
131. Miller 1993. pp. 104–105.
132. Eribon 1991. p. 115.
133. Macey 1993. p. 92.
134. Eribon 1991. p. 129.
135. ^ Macey 1993. p. 109.
136. Eribon 1991. pp. 140–141.
137. Eribon 1991. p. 131.
138. Eribon 1991. p. 137.
139. Eribon 1991. pp. 136–138.
140. Macey 1993. pp. 109–110.
141. Eribon 1991. pp. 141–142.
142. Macey 1993. pp. 92–93, 110.
143. Halperin 1997. p. 214.
144. Eribon 1991. pp. 141, 151.
145. Macey 1993. pp. 120–121.
146. Eribon 1991. pp. 145–148.
147. Macey 1993. pp. 124–129.
148. ^ Macey 1993. pp. 140–142.
149. Eribon 1991. pp. 152–154.
150. Macey 1993. pp. 130–137.
151. Eribon 1991. pp. 133–136.
152. Eribon 1991. pp. 155–156.
153. Macey 1993. p. 159.
154. Eribon 1991. pp. 158–159.
155. Eribon 1991. pp. 155, 159.
156. Macey 1993. p. 160.
157. Eribon 1991. pp. 1605–162, 167.
158. Macey 1993. pp. 173–177.
159. Eribon 1991 pp. 142–143.
160. Macey 1993. pp. 146–148.
161. Eribon 1991 pp. 187–188.
162. Macey 1993. pp. 145–146.
163. Eribon 1991 pp. 188–189.
164. Eribon 1991 pp. 192–193.
165. Eribon 1991 p. 190.
166. Macey 1993. p. 173.
167. Hitchcock, Louise (2008). Theory for Classics. New York: Routledge. p. 124. ISBN 0-415-45497-2.
168. Mills, Sara (2003). Michel Foucault. New York: Routledge. p. 18. ISBN 0-415-24569-9.
169. Hazareesingh, Sudhir (1991). Intellectuals and the French Communist Party. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 166. ISBN 0-19-827870-5.
170. Peter Dews, "The Nouvelle Philosophie and Foucault," Economy and Society 8(2) (May 1979), pp. 127–71.
171. David Macey (1995). The Lives of Michel Foucault: A Biography. Vintage. ISBN 0-679-75792-9.
172. Janet, Afary & Kevin, Anderson ((2005). Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism. Chicago University Press, pp. 13. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: year (link)
173. Eribon, Dider (1991). Michel Foucault. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. p. 282. ISBN ]. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
174. Janet, Afary & Kevin, Anderson ((2005). Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism. Chicago University Press, pp. 209. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: year (link)
175. Janet, Afary & Kevin, Anderson ((2005). Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism. Chicago University Press, pp. 241. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: year (link)
176. See e.g. Janet, Afary & Kevin, Anderson ((2005). Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism. Chicago University Press. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: year (link) Eribon, Didier ((1989)1991). Michel Foucault. Harvard University Press. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link) Paul Veyne (2008). Foucault. Sa pensée, sa personne. Albin Michel.
177. ^ David Gauntlett. Media, Gender and Identity',' London: Routledge, 2002.
178. Michel Foucault (1974). 'Prisons et asiles dans le mécanisme du pouvoir' in Dits et Écrits, t. II. Paris: Gallimard, 1994, pp. 523–4).
179. Miller 1993. pp. 26–27.
180. Miller 1993.
181. Scialabba, George. Review: "The Passion of Michel Foucault by James Miller." Boston Globe, 30 January 1993.
182. Rubenstein, Diane 1995 Modern Fiction Studies 41.3–4 681–698
183. Williams, James S. The French Review March 1997, Vol. 70, No. 4 pp. 604–605
184. Carrette, Jeremy R. Religion and culture By Michel Foucault. Books.google.com. 15 August 1999. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
185. Halperin, David M. Saint Foucault: towards a gay hagiography. Books.google.com. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
186. Miller 1993. pp. 21–22.
187. Miller 1993. p. 26.
188. Miller 1993. p. 23.
189. Miller 1993. pp. 21, 24.
190. Miller 1993. p. 21.
191. Miller 1993. pp. 34–36.
192. Miller 1993. pp. 23–24.
193. Miller 1993. pp. 24–25.
194. Eribon 1991 p. xi.
195. Eribon 1991 p. 64.
196. Eribon 1991 p. 30.
197. Eribon 1991 p. 138.
198. Eribon 1991 p. 83.
199. Eribon 1991 p. 136.
200. ^ Stokes 2004. p. 187.
201. Foucault, M., Khalfa, J., & Murphy, J. (2006). The History of Madness. New York: Routledge.
202. "Report from Mr. Canguilhem on the Manuscript Filed by Mr. Michel Foucault, Director of the Institut Francais of Hamburg, in Order to Obtain Permission to Print His Principal Thesis for the Doctor of Letters." In Arnold I. Davidson, ed., Foucault and his Interlocutors. Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press, 1997, 23–7.
203. ^ Torrey, E. (2001). The Invisible Plague. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 303. ISBN 0-8135-3003-2.
204. Still, Arthur (1992). Rewriting the History of Madness. New York: Routledge. p. 119. ISBN 0-415-06654-9.
205. Hardy, Anne (2006). The Western Medical Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 81. ISBN 0-521-47524-4.
206. Foucault, Michel (2004). "An Interview with Michel Foucault by Charles Ruas". Death and the labyrinth : the world of Raymond Roussel. London New York: Continuum. p. 186. ISBN 978-0-8264-9362-0.
207. Gresle, Yvette. "Foucault's 'Las Meninas' and art-historical methods". Journal of Literary Studies, retrieved 1 December 2008.
208. Holub, Robert (1992). Crossing Borders. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 57. ISBN 0-299-13274-9.
209. Chambon, Adrienne (1999). Reading Foucault for Social Work. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 36–37. ISBN 0-231-10717-X.
210. Hutcheon, Linda (1995). Irony's Edge. New York: Routledge. p. 123. ISBN 0-415-05453-2.
211. Nik Farrell Fox, The New Sartre: Explorations in Postmodernism, Continuum, via Google Books, pg 169.
212. Booker, Keith (1996). A Practical Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism. New York: Longman. p. 122. ISBN 0-8013-1765-7.
213. Deleuze, Gilles (1986). Foucault. London: Althone. p. 14. ISBN 0-8264-5780-0.
214. French version p. 117
215. French version 12
216. French version 115
217. the construction rules, Dits et Écrits I, p. 728
218. French version: p. 108, 113-14, 118-19, 134
219. French version p. 114
220. Gutting, Gary (1994). The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 231. ISBN 0-521-40887-3.
221. Sérgio Campos Gonçalves, “O método arqueológico de análise discursiva: o percurso metodológico de Michel Foucault”, História e-História, - NEE-UNICAMP (Campinas), v. 1, p. 1-21, Feb 2009, ISSN 1807-1783.
222. Caputo, John. "Foucault and the Critique of Institutions". Pennsylvania State University Press, March, 2006. pp. 249–253. ISBN 0-271-02966-8
223. Jones, Colin (1994). Reassessing Foucault. New York: Routledge. p. 155. ISBN 0-415-07542-4.
224. J.D. Marshall (30 June 1996). Michel Foucault: Personal Autonomy and Education. Springer. p. 126. ISBN 978-0-7923-4016-4. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
225. Butler, Judith (1999). Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. p. 120. ISBN 0-415-92499-5.
226. Edmond, Rod (1988). Affairs of the Hearth. New York: Routledge. p. 11. ISBN 0-415-00656-2.
227. Michel Foucault, edited by Jeremy R. Carrette (1999). Religion and culture: Michel Foucault. ISBN 0-415-92362-X. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
228. Larner, Wendy (2004). Global Governmentality. New York: Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 0-415-31138-1.
229. Crampton, Jeremy (2007). Space, Knowledge and Power. Ashgate Pub Co. p. 75. ISBN 0-7546-4655-6.
230. Hansen, Thomas (2001). States of Imagination. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 43. ISBN 0-8223-2798-8.
231. Van Loon, Borin (2001). Introducing Critical Theory. Thriplow: Icon Books Ltd.
232. "The most cited authors of books in the humanities". timeshighereducation.co.uk. 26 March 2009. Retrieved 16 November 2009.
233. Richard Rorty. Foucault and Epistemology in Hoy, D (eds) 'Foucault: A critical reader' Basil Blackwell. Oxford, 1986.
234. Scruton, Roger (2005). Philosophy: Principles And Problems. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. p. 8. ISBN 0826476236.

Bibliography

• Eribon, Didier (1991) . Michel Foucault. Betsy Wing (translator). Cambridge, MAS.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0571144748. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Halperin, David M. (1995). Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195111279.
• Macey, David (1993). The Lives of Michel Foucault. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-0091753443.
• Miller, James (1993). The Passion of Michel Foucault. New York City: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671695509. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Mills, Sara (2003). Michel Foucault. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415245692.
• Smart, Barry (2002). Michel Foucault. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415285339.
• Stokes, Philip (2004). Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers. Kettering: Index Books. ISBN 978-0572029357.

Further reading

• Artières, Philippe; Bert, Jean-François; Gros, Frédéric and Revel, Judith (ed.). Cahier Foucault. (L'Herne, 2011).
• Braver, Lee. A Thing of This World: a History of Continental Anti-Realism. Northwestern University Press: 2007. This study covers Foucault and his contribution to the history of Continental Anti-Realism.
• Carrette, Jeremy R. (ed.). Religion and culture: Michel Foucault. (Routledge, 1999).
• Cusset, Francois. (Translated by Jeff Fort) French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008)
• Derrida, Jacques. Cogito and the History of Madness. In Alan Bass (tr.), Writing and Difference, pp. 31–63. (Chicago University Press, 1978).
• Dillon, M. Foucault on Politics, Security and War, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
• Dreyfus, Herbert L. and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd edition. (University of Chicago Press, 1983).
• Elden, Stuart. ""Power, Nietzsche and the Greeks: Foucault’s Leçons sur la volonté de savoir", Berfrois, July 2011.
• Eribon, Didier. Insult and the Making of the Gay Self (Duke University Press, 2004). The third part—about 150 pages of this book—is devoted to Foucault and a reinterpretation of his life and work.
• Eribon, Didier. Michel Foucault (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). Considered in France, according to Le Monde, as the best biography of Foucault.
• Flyvbjerg, Bent. ""Habermas and Foucault: Thinkers for Civil Society?", British Journal of Sociology, vol. 49, no. 2, June 1998, pp. 210–233.
• Foucault, Michel. Sexual Morality and the Law (originally published as La loi de la pudeur), is the Chapter 16 of Politics, Philosophy, Culture (see “Notes”), pp. 271–285.
• Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
• Deleuze, Gilles. Foucault. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).
• Halperin, David M. Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford University Press, 1995).
• Hoy, D. (Ed.). Foucault. (Oxford, Blackwell, 1986).
• Hicks, Stephen R. C. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy Publishing, 2004).
• Isenberg, Bo. ”Habermas on Foucault. Critical remarks” (Acta Sociologica, Vol. 34 (1991), No. 4:299–308). (SAGE Acta Sociologica)
• Macey, David. The Lives of Michel Foucault (London: Hutchison, 1993)—This is the most detailed biography of Foucault.
• MacIntyre, Alasdair (1990). Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Merquior, J. G. Foucault, University of California Press, 1987 (A critical view of Foucault's work)
• Milchman, Alan (Ed.). "Foucault and Heidegger." Contradictions Vol. 16 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).
• Miller, James, The Passion of Michel Foucault (London: HarperCollins, 1993)—A number of scholars have expressed reservations in relation to some of the sensational claims made in this biography.
• O'Farrell, Clare. Michel Foucault. (London: Sage, 2005). Includes a chronology of Foucault's life and times and an extensive list of key terms in Foucault's work, which includes references to where these terms appear in his work.
• Olssen, M. Toward a Global Thin Community: Nietzsche, Foucault and the cosmopolitan commitment, Paradigm Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, October 2009
• Élisabeth Roudinesco, Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida, Columbia University Press, New York, 2008.
• Smart, B. Foucault. (Chichester, Ellis Horwood, 1985).
• Sim, Stuart, & Van Loon, Borin. Introducing Critical Theory. Thriplow: Icon Books Ltd., 2001
• Veyne, Paul. Foucault. Sa pensée, sa personne. (Paris: Albin Michel, 2008).
• Wilson, Timothy H. "Foucault, Genealogy, History." Philosophy Today, 39.2 (1995): 157–70.
• Wolin, Richard. Telos 67, Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Spring 1987. (Telos Press).

External links

General sites (updated regularly)

• Foucault.info — repository of texts, news.
• Michel Foucault Archives by IMEC
• Clare O’Farrell. michel-foucault.com
• Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky on YouTube
• Clare O’Farrell. Foucault news blog— Updates on Foucault related research activity

Biographies

• "Michel Foucault". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• "Michel Foucault" entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Retrospective article—written by Michel Foucault

Bibliographies

• French and English bibliographies
• Lynch's bibliography

Journals

• Foucault Studies—an electronic, refereed, international journal
• Materiali Foucaultiani—an electronic, refereed, international journal in English, French and Italian.

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