Madness and Civilization (1961)
Abridged English version of Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique; charts the "great confinement" of the mad
Philosophy
Michel Foucault
1926–1984 · French
Post-structuralism (a label he resisted); continental philosophy
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and historian of ideas who studied how madness, medicine, punishment and sexuality have been defined and managed in Western societies. He argued that power and knowledge are intertwined and that power operates productively through institutions, norms and discourses rather than only by repression. He held a chair at the Collège de France from 1970 and remains among the most cited thinkers in the humanities.
How to spot them
- ▸Power/knowledge (pouvoir/savoir); discourse; episteme; archaeology and genealogy
- ▸The Panopticon; docile bodies; disciplinary society; "Surveiller et punir"
- ▸Biopower; the repressive hypothesis; "the death of man"; the author function
- ▸Collège de France; debate with Noam Chomsky (1971)
Key works
The Birth of the Clinic (1963)
Naissance de la clinique: the emergence of modern medicine and the "medical gaze"
The Order of Things (1966)
Les Mots et les choses: the epistemes of Western knowledge; ends by predicting man will be erased "like a face drawn in sand"
The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969)
L'Archéologie du savoir: methodological account of discourse and discursive formations
Discipline and Punish (1975)
Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison; from the public torture of Damiens (1757) to the disciplinary prison and the Panopticon
The History of Sexuality (1976–1984)
Volume 1 (La Volonté de savoir) attacks the repressive hypothesis; volumes 2–3 appeared in 1984, volume 4 posthumously in 2018
Key ideas
- Power/knowledge: power and knowledge produce and depend on each other; the human sciences are bound up with institutions that classify and control
- Power is not only repressive and top-down but productive and capillary, circulating through everyday practices, norms and discourses
- Disciplinary power, modelled on Bentham's Panopticon, produces "docile bodies" through surveillance, normalisation and examination in prisons, schools, barracks and hospitals
- The repressive hypothesis is mistaken: since the 17th century modern societies have multiplied discourses about sex rather than simply silencing it
- Biopower: modern states manage the life of populations through health, birth rates and hygiene
- Episteme: each historical period has an underlying framework determining what counts as knowledge; "man" as an object of knowledge is a recent invention
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Poitiers, the son of a surgeon; studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris
- •Worked abroad in Uppsala, Warsaw, Hamburg and later Tunis before returning to French universities
- •Elected to the Collège de France in 1970 to a chair he named "History of Systems of Thought"
- •Co-founded the Groupe d'information sur les prisons (GIP) in 1971 to give prisoners a voice
- •Debated human nature and justice with Noam Chomsky on Dutch television in 1971
- •His 1969 lecture "What Is an Author?" introduced the concept of the author function
- •Died in Paris in June 1984 of an AIDS-related illness
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Michel Foucault
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Michel Foucault