Course:MDIA300/Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher known primarily for his works on the subject of power. With a background in psychology and a heavy focus on medical and social sciences as well as politics and history, Foucault’s work was characterized by an investment in the plight and exploitation of marginalized people.

Biography

Born in Poitiers, France to a wealthy physician, Foucault often turned a critical lens on what he considered to be his own bourgeois upbringing. He was an intelligent albeit erratic student, and in 1946 went on to study philosophy and psychology at the École Normale Supèrieur in Paris. Throughout the 1960s he would hold various positions at multiple universities across Europe before settling in the role of Professor of History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France until his death. His career was characterized by both academic and political work, lecturing around the world and frequently leading political projects and protests in support of marginalized groups such as the prison population. He would die on June 25, 1984 in Paris as an early victim of septicemia as a result of the AIDS epidemic.

Philosophical Background

As a student at the École Normale Supèrieur, Foucault was educated in a philosophical landscape shaped by the burgeoning field of Phenomenology, attending lectures from thinkers like Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Foucault shared interests with his contemporaries in language, semiotics, existentialism and marxism, though much of his positions would develop throughout his career. Existing theory in the History and Philosophy of Science would provide a foundation for much of Foucault’s early inquiry. Being preoccupied with power, Foucault would engage throughout his career with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Foucault’s approach was centered around critical analysis, examining how big philosophical questions affect the lives and societal dynamics of people instead of outright answering them. He levied much critique and skepticism toward the hegemonic assumptions of pure reason, liberation and progress that defined much of his contemporary societal and philosophical thought. He rejected the notion that the sciences and historical reason were the only means of reaching legitimate knowledge.These critiques would extend beyond philosophy, history and the sciences, into the realms of clinical medicine, sociology and psychology.

Foucault’s theory would become defined by an attempt understand human beings and how they are made subject not only to objective, determinant, indiscriminant forces of nature, but to the arbitrary ethical and political beliefs of a given culture or society. He used history as a source of knowledge throughout most of his career, and rejected the idea of historical necessity; that whatever happened in the past could not have happened differently. He argued that the people and systems in power are only ‘tolerable’ to the masses because they conceal themselves and the ways they regulate, oppress and marginalize. His goal was then to expose the underlying structures and systems that uphold and disseminate that power.

Major Works

Madness and Civilization (1961) - A documentation of the history and shifting conception of Madness and its relation to societal structures.

The Order of Things (1966) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) - Books examining the epistemologies, discursive structures and systems of knowledge that shift with each historical period.

Discipline and Punish (1975) - A book critically examining prisons as opposed to the public ways of punishment that predated them, exploring how they operate within systems of disciplinary power.

The History of Sexuality (1976-1984) - a four volume series of studies on the history of sexuality in western society, the fourth volume left unfinished prior to his death in 1984.

Key Terms

Subject - Foucault uses the word subject to refer to any way in which humans are made subjects, either politically, conceptually or ideologically, as opposed to objects, which do not act on or perceive the world.

Discipline - The force exerted by systems of power to regulate, manage and surveil populations into conformity with hegemonic social structures and norms.

Apparatus or Dispositif - The network of mechanisms, knowledge structures and power relations that create and sustain a society’s hegemonic ideas of universal truth to uphold the forces in power.

The body - Foucault understands the body as mediated by forces of power to operate in accordance within economic strategies and social structures.

Heterotopia - A heterotopia is a space that exists outside of or is ‘other’ to the norms and expectations of its society/culture, such as brothels, prisons and cemeteries.

The panopticon - Based on the circular prison design oriented around an omniscient watchtower, the panopticon, to Foucault, becomes a metaphor for the many modes of surveillance and dominance exerted by the powers in society.

Techniques of the self/Arts of existence - “those reflective and voluntary practices by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make of their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria.”

Foucault (1992) [1984]. The Use of Pleasure. The History of Sexuality: Volume Two. Tr. R. Hurley. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, pp. 10-11.

Biopower - The ways that disciplinary power in a society can mediate not only actions and thoughts, but biological factors such as illnesses, births, deaths and population as a whole.

Episteme - The unconscious systems behind the production of scientific knowledge within the specific time/place of a given culture, which informs what sorts of knowledge can/will be produced, understood and conceived of by that culture.

Sources

Faubion, James. "Michel Foucault". Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 Oct. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michel-Foucault. Accessed 22 November 2025.

Gutting, Gary and Johanna Oksala, "Michel Foucault", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), forthcoming URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2025/entries/foucault/>.

Foucault, Michel. "The Subject and Power." The University of Chicago, 1982.

Clare O'Farrel. "Foucault: Key Concepts." Foucault News, 2021.

Wasson, Donald. "Michel Foucault." World History, 2024.https://www.worldhistory.org/Michel_Foucault/.