Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

Quotes
“In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.”

“As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.”

“Where there is power, there is resistance.”

Biography and History
Born in Poitiers, France, October 15, 1926, Paul-Michel Foucault, commonly known as Michel Foucault, was a French philosopher who was often cited as a post-structuralist and post-modernist, although he would reject these labels, defining his work as part of a greater critique of modernity. He died in Paris in 1984 form an AIDS/HIV-related illness and his partner of the time, Daniel Defert, decided to found the AIDES charity in his memory.

Foucault was raised into an upper-middle-class family; his father was a surgeon and hoped for a similar career for his son. Foucault graduated from Saint-Stanislas school with a degree in philosophy. In 1946, he attended the École Normale Supérieure d’Ulm, where he came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser. In the 50s, he worked in a psychiatric hospital and also as a French teacher at the University of Uppsala. He returned to France in the 60s where he first published The History of Madness, inspired by his time spent at the psychiatric institute. While working at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced two influential works: The Birth of the Clinic, and The Order of Things.

Returning to France in 1968, Foucault was part of social activist groups and worked at the creation of the philosophy department at the new experimental university at Vincennes, in Paris. This university was created in response to the student riots of 1968. In 1970, he was nominated to a chair at the Collège de France, a position which he held for the rest of his life. In the late 70s, Foucault decided to withdraw from cultural activism and started to used journalism as a medium of expression; He covered the Iranian Revolution and began to spend more time teaching in the United States.

Work
Foucault’s work addresses the relationship between power and knowledge (discourses) and how it can be used for disciplinary purposes. According to Foucault, power, as form of societal control, becomes effective through different institutions such as hospital, schools, and the government.

During his academic career, he produced many significant publications. The birth of the Clinique (1963); The Order of Things (1966); The History of Sexuality (1976); and Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) are among the most famous/significant ones. Foucault’s work can generally be characterized as historically investigating the production of truth. Within his most famous works, he attempted to historically understand the creation of ideas and knowledge, and how they formed our current understanding of the world. Not only he tried to trace the historical function that these ideas played, but he also did so in order to challenge the existing discourses in our society about sex, gender, power, and most importantly, about normativity.

Influences
While attending l’École Normale Supérieure d’Ulm, Foucault came under the Marxist influence of Louis Althusser and his work on ideological state apparatus. He was also inspired by the German philosopher Frederich Nietchze, who questioned morality, contemporary culture, and the objectivity of truth, which was a point of departure for Foucault’s philosophy. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of modern utilitarianism and designer of the Panopticon building was also significant for Foucault while writing The Birth of the Prison in the 70s.

In turn, Foucault influenced many philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, who also studied at l’École Supérieure, and who became one of his greatest academic antagonists. Judith Butler’s work on sexuality and gender was in part influenced by Foucault’s understanding of sexualities as socially constructed concepts. Finally, like Foucault, post-colonialist theorist Edward Said was interested in the relationship between power and knowledge. His essay called Orientalism (1978) addressed eurocentrism and inaccurate cultural representations, similar to what Foucault had covered in The Order of Things (1966). He is also concerned about how different forms of power came to be organized and perpetuated through politics, society and literature.

Analysis
Throughout his academic career, Foucault dealt with what he referred to as regimes of truth. Considering himself as a postmodernist, he dug through history in order to understand the function and the origin of particular social/cultural patterns omnipresent at his epoch. He came to the conclusion that power was everywhere and that it was not only reinforced by the different institutions present today but that it was also reinforced and maintained through what he called discourses. According to Foucault, discourses are in fact social construct, often unquestioned assumptions about what things are and how they are supposed to be. By understanding history, Foucault questioned normalized discourses/ideologies that have been perpetuated through the years. Foucault believed that discourses around normativity and acceptability have been generated during the Modern era; especially through the development of scientific knowledge. Science then created accepted forms of knowledge (the scientific discourse) which was maintained and adopted as the ultimate truth by institutions such as schools, prisons, and hospitals. For instance, the medical knowledge and consequently, the scientific knowledge at that time had produced discourses around what a healthy and an unhealthy body might look like therefore categorizing people according to pre-established criteria. Foucault argued in The Birth of the Clinique that this body of knowledge (medical knowledge) had disciplinary powers, predisposing people to behave in certain ways so as to be considered as normal in order to “fit” within the society. This is why he also argued that power wasn’t only repressive but also productive, encouraging self-discipline.

Critique
Foucault’s approach has been widely used to critique existing paradigms and coercive forms of power. His work was also positioned against structuralism, criticizing its ahistorical approach and the fact that human culture is so rich and complex that it goes beyond structure and objectivity; culture is an ongoing process, it always changes.

On the other hand, Foucault’s work was criticized for its inconsistency and ambiguous position, using a structuralist approach at the beginning of his academic career and fluctuating between post-structuralism and functionalism at times, being concerned with the function of history. He was sometimes suspected of causing confusion at the epistemological level because of the concepts he used and the ideas he generated, which some argued were unclear and inappropriate. Another prominent critique of his work concerns the lack of solutions to all the issues he engaged with through the years, leaving us empty-handed. Jacques Derrida, the founder of deconstruction, was also one of Foucault’s greatest antagonists, accusing him of advocating metaphysics; both also had a totally opposite way of understanding and interpreting Descartes’ cogito.

After his death, Foucault’s work was scrutinized by experts and different academics who thought that Foucault had tendencies to neoliberalism and that he was in favor of neoliberal politics, which created a small controversy but did not last for long. Still, Foucault’s legacy is essential to disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies because of how he challenged our ideas about knowledge and ideologies through history. Foucault was listed amongst the most cited French scholars in cultural studies.