Who was Michel Foucault?
Michel Foucault came from Poitiers, where he was born in 1926. He signed up with the French Communist Party in 1950 and left in 1953. Anti-gay prejudice among members and the antisemitism of the Soviet 'doctors' plot' had put him off. His books History of Madness, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality asked how institutions shape the way people live and think. A chair at the College de France followed in 1969. In the 1970s he was an active campaigner, and in 1971 he co-founded a group to expose prison conditions. AIDS killed him in Paris in 1984, and he was one of its first famous victims.
Political views
- Argued that knowledge and power are tied together, most of all in the human sciences.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- Showed in Discipline and Punish how the watching and ranking used in prisons also spread into schools, factories and hospitals.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- Used the word 'biopower' for modern forms of rule that manage and improve the lives of whole populations.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- Doubted that psychiatry was only a kind act of progress, and argued it also policed those who broke middle-class norms.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- Helped start the Prison Information Group in 1971 to reveal conditions in prisons, and backed immigrants against police violence.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- In 1982 he criticised Mitterrand's Socialist government for not condemning the crackdown on Solidarity in Poland.Source: en.wikipedia.org
Legacy
Among writers in the humanities and social sciences, few are cited more than Foucault. His work on discipline, surveillance, biopower and sexuality shaped criminology, queer theory, postcolonial studies and critical theory. Admirers say he exposed control hidden in institutions that look neutral or kind. Critics say his view of power gives no clear test of what is just, and some historians fault his methods. His articles from 1978 that praised the Islamist current in Iran's revolution were widely attacked in the French press, and people still argue about them. Activists for prison reform and gay rights still use his ideas.
In their own words
“After all, we are all ruled, and as such, we are in solidarity.”