Michel Foucault
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{{Infobox Philosopher
<!-- Philosopher category -->
|region = Western Philosophy
|era = [[20th-century philosophy]]
|color = #B0C4DE
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|image_name = Foucault Bachelard.png
|caption = Michel Foucault in a televised [[interview]].
<!-- Information -->
|name = Michel Foucault
|birth = [[15 October]] [[1926]]<br/> [[Poitiers]], [[France]]
|death = [[25 June]] [[1984]]<br/> [[Paris]], [[France]]
|school_tradition = [[Continental philosophy]]<br/>[[Structuralism]]{{·}} [[Post-structuralism]]
|main_interests = [[History of ideas]]{{·}} [[Epistemology]]<br/>[[Ethics]]{{·}} [[Political philosophy]]
|notable_ideas = "Archaeology"<br/>"Genealogy"{{·}} "[[Episteme]]"<br/>"[[Biopower]]"{{·}} "[[Governmentality]]"<br/>"[[Disciplinary institution]]"
|influences = [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], [[Epicurus]], [[Gilles Deleuze]], [[Louis Althusser]], [[Immanuel Kant]], [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]], [[Georges Canguilhem]], [[Martin Heidegger]], [[Georges Bataille]], [[Claude Levi-Strauss]], [[Maurice Blanchot]], [[Philippe Sollers]], [[Gaston Bachelard]], [[Jean Hyppolite]], [[Georges Dumézil]], [[Karl Marx]], [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]], [[Georges Bataille]], [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]], [[Jorge Luis Borges]]
|influenced = [[Giorgio Agamben]], [[Edward Said]], [[Pierre Bourdieu]], [[Ian Hacking]], [[Judith Butler]], [[Friedrich Kittler]], [[Arnold Davidson]], [[Gilles Deleuze]], [[Hubert Dreyfus]], [[Paul Rabinow]], [[Jacques Rancière]], [[Hans Sluga]]
}}
'''Michel Foucault''' ({{pronounced|miʃɛl fu'ko}}) ([[15 October]] [[1926]]–[[25 June]] [[1984]]) was a [[French philosophy|French philosopher]], [[historian]], [[critic]] and [[sociologist]]. He held a chair at the [[Collège de France]], giving it the title "History of Systems of Thought," and taught at the [[University of California, Berkeley]].
Michel Foucault is best known for his [[Critical theory|critical studies]] of [[social institution]]s, most notably [[psychiatry]], [[medicine]], the human sciences, and the [[prison]] system, as well as for his work on the [[history of human sexuality]]. Foucault's work on [[Power (sociology)|power]], and the relationships among power, [[knowledge]], and [[discourse]], has been widely discussed and applied. In the 1960s Foucault was often associated with the [[Structuralism|structuralist]] movement. Foucault later distanced himself from structuralism. Sometimes described as [[postmodernism|postmodernist]], Foucault always rejected the post-structuralist and postmodernist labels.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Foucault was born on [[15 October]] [[1926]] in [[Poitiers]] as Paul-Michel Foucault to a notable provincial family. His father, Paul Foucault, was an eminent [[surgeon]] and hoped his son would join him in the profession. His early education was a mix of success and mediocrity until he attended the [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]] Collège Saint-Stanislas, where he excelled. During this period, Poitiers was part of [[Vichy France]] and later came under German occupation. After [[World War II]], Foucault gained entry to the prestigious [[École Normale Supérieure]] (rue d'Ulm), the traditional gateway to an [[academic]] [[career]] in the [[humanities]] in [[France]].
===The École Normale Supérieure===
Foucault's personal life during the École Normale was difficult—he suffered from [[Clinical depression|acute depression]]. He was taken to see a psychiatrist. During this time, Foucault became fascinated with [[psychology]]. He earned a [[License#Academia|license]] (degree) in psychology, a very new qualification in France at the time, in addition to a degree in philosophy, in 1952. He was involved in the clinical arm of psychology, which exposed him to thinkers such as [[Ludwig Binswanger]].
Foucault joined the [[French Communist Party]] from 1950 to 1953. He was inducted into the party by his mentor [[Louis Althusser]]. He left due to concerns about what was happening in the [[Soviet Union]] under [[Stalin]]. Various people, such as historian [[Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie]], have reported that Foucault never actively participated in his cell, unlike many of his fellow party members.
===Early career===
Foucault failed at the [[agrégation]] in 1950 but took it again and succeeded the following year. After a brief period lecturing at the École Normale, he took up a position at the [[University of Lille]], where from 1953 to 1954 he taught psychology. In 1954 Foucault published his first book, ''Maladie mentale et personnalité,'' a work which he would later disavow. It soon became apparent that Foucault was not interested in a teaching career, and he undertook a lengthy exile from France. In 1954 Foucault served France as a cultural delegate to the [[University of Uppsala]] in [[Sweden]] (a position arranged for him by [[Georges Dumézil]], who was to become a friend and mentor). In 1958 Foucault left Uppsala for briefly held positions at [[Warsaw University]] and at the [[University of Hamburg]].
Foucault returned to [[France]] in 1960 to complete his doctorate and take up a post in [[philosophy]] at the University of [[Clermont-Ferrand]]. There he met [[Daniel Defert]], with whom he lived in a non-monogamous partnership for the rest of his life. In 1961 he earned his doctorate by submitting two theses (as is customary in France): a "major" thesis entitled ''Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique'' (Madness and Insanity: History of Madness in the Classical Age) and a 'secondary' thesis which involved a translation of, and commentary on [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]]'s ''Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View''. ''Folie et déraison'' (''Madness and Insanity'' — published in an abridged edition in English as ''[[Madness and Civilization]]'' and finally published unabridged as "History of Madness" by Routledge in 2006) was extremely well-received. Foucault continued a vigorous publishing schedule. In 1963 he published ''Naissance de la Clinique'' (''[[Birth of the Clinic]]''), ''[[Raymond Roussel]]'', and a reissue of his 1954 volume (now entitled ''Maladie mentale et psychologie'' or, in English, "Mental Illness and Psychology") which he would again disavow.
After Defert was posted to [[Tunisia]] for his [[military service]], Foucault moved to a position at the [[University of Tunis]] in 1965. In 1966 he published ''Les Mots et les choses'' (''[[The Order of Things]]''), which was enormously popular despite its length and difficulty. This was during the height of interest in [[structuralism]] 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]]. Foucault made a number of skeptical comments about Marxism, which outraged a number of Left wing critics, but he quickly tired of being labeled a 'structuralist'. 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 fall of 1968 he returned to France, where he published ''L'archéologie du savoir'' (''[[The Archaeology of Knowledge]]'') — a methodological response to his critics — in 1969.
===Post-1968: Foucault the activist===
In the aftermath of 1968, the French government created a new experimental university, [[Paris VIII]], at [[Vincennes]]. Foucault became the first head of its philosophy department in December of that year and appointed mostly young leftist academics (such as [[Judith Miller (philosopher)|Judith Miller]]) whose radicalism provoked the Ministry of Education to withdraw the department's accreditation. Foucault notoriously also joined students in occupying administration buildings and fighting with police.
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]] (in French: Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons or GIP) to provide a way for [[prison]]ers to voice their concerns. This fed into a marked politicization of Foucault's work, with a book, ''Surveiller et Punir'' (''[[Discipline and Punish]]''), which "narrates" the micro-power structures that developed in Western societies since the [[18th century|eighteenth century]], with a special focus on [[prison]]s and [[school]]s.
===The late Foucault===
In the late 1970s, political activism in France tailed off with the disillusionment of many left wing militants. A number of young Maoists abandoned their beliefs to become the so-called [[New Philosophers]], often citing Foucault as their major influence, a status about which Foucault had mixed feelings. Foucault in this period embarked on a six-volume project ''[[The History of Sexuality]]'', which he was never to complete. Its first volume, ''The Will to Knowledge'', was published in 1976. 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 subject, a concept he had previously neglected.
Foucault began to spend more time in the [[United States]], at the [[University at Buffalo, The State University of New York|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.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Lives of Michel Foucault: A Biography|author=David Macey|year=1995|publisher=Vintage|id=ISBN 0679757929}}</ref> In 1979 Foucault made two tours of [[Iran]], undertaking extensive interviews with political protagonists in support of the new [[The Interim Government of Iran|interim government]] established soon after the [[Iranian Revolution]]. 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.
Foucault died of an [[AIDS]]-related illness in Paris on [[25 June]] [[1984]]. He was the first high profile French personality who was reported to have AIDS. Little was known about the disease at the time<ref> "[http://www.aegis.com/topics/timeline/ So Little Time: A year-by-year history of the AIDS epidemic]". AIDS Education Global Information System. Retrieved on [[4 February]] [[2008]].</ref> and the event was mired in controversy.<ref>O'Farrell, Claire. "[http://www.michel-foucault.com/ecrits/tls.pdf Letter to The Times Literary Supplement (unpublished)]". Letter written in 2002 in the context of a controversy over Foucault's death from AIDS. Retrieved on [[04 February]], [[2008]].</ref> In the front-page article of ''[[Le Monde]]'' announcing his death, there was no mention of AIDS, although it was implied that he died from a massive infection. Prior to his death, Foucault had destroyed most of his manuscripts and in his will prohibited the publication of what he might have overlooked.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Passion of Michel Foucault|author=James Miller|year=1993|publisher=HarperCollins|id=ISBN 0-00-255267-1}}</ref>
==Works==
===''Madness and Civilization (1961)''===
{{main|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 translation titled ''The History of Madness'' has been published by [[Routledge]] : ISBN 0-415-27701-9) This was Foucault's first major book, written while he was the Director of the Maison de France in Sweden. It examines ideas, practices, institutions, art and literature relating to [[insanity|madness]] in Western history.
Foucault begins his history in the [[Middle Ages]], noting the social and physical exclusion of [[leprosy|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 which Foucault famously describes as the Great Confinement, "unreasonable" members of the population were locked away and institutionalised. In the eighteenth century, madness came to be seen as the reverse of Reason, and, finally, in the nineteenth 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]]. He claims that these new treatments were in fact no less controlling than previous methods. Tuke's country retreat for the mad consisted of punishing the madmen until they learned to act "reasonably". Similarly, 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 [[Internalization|internalized]] by the patient.
===''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'' (a concept which has garnered a lot of attention{{Fact|date=May 2008}} from English-language readers, due to Alan Sheridan's unusual translation, "[[medical gaze]]").
===''The Order of Things''===
{{main|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 and published by [[Pantheon Books]] 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 the title as there was already another book of this title. The book opens with an extended discussion of [[Diego Velázquez]]'s painting ''[[Las Meninas]]''<ref name="Gresle">Gresle, Yvette. "[http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Foucault's+Las+Meninas+and+art-historical+methods.-a0165730968 Foucault's 'Las Meninas' and art-historical methods]". ''Journal of Literary Studies'', retrieved [[01 December]], [[2008]].</ref> and its complex arrangement of sight-lines, hiddenness and appearance. Then it develops its central claim: that all periods of history have possessed certain underlying conditions of truth that constituted what was acceptable as, for example, [[scientific]] discourse. 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 critique of Renaissance values in ''Les mots et les choses'' has been very influential to cultural history. The various consciousness shifts that he points out in the first chapters of the book have led several scholars to scrutinize the bases for knowledge in our present day as well as critiquing the projection of modern categories of knowledge onto subjects that remain intrinsically unintelligible, in spite of historical knowledge.
''The Order of Things'' brought Foucault to prominence as an intellectual figure in France.
===''The Archaeology of Knowledge''===
{{main|The Archaeology of Knowledge}}
Published in 1969, this volume was Foucault's main excursion into [[methodology]]. He wrote it in order to deal with the reception of ''Les Mots et les choses''. It makes references to Anglo-American [[analytical philosophy]], particularly [[speech act]] theory.
Foucault directs his analysis toward the "statement", the basic unit of [[discourse]]. "Statement" is the English translation from French ''énoncé'' (enouncement or that which is enounced or expressed). "Statement" has a very special meaning in the Archaelogy. It means that which makes [[proposition]]s, [[utterance]]s, or [[speech acts]] meaningful. In this understanding, statements themselves are not [[proposition]]s, [[utterance]]s, or [[speech acts]]. Rather, statements constitute a network of rules establishing what is meaningful, and these rules are the preconditions for [[proposition]]s, [[utterance]]s, or [[speech acts]] to have meaning. But, statements are also 'events', because, like other rules, they appear at some time. Depending on whether or not they comply with these rules of meaning, a grammatically correct sentence may still lack meaning and, inversely, a grammatically incorrect sentence may still be meaningful. Statements depend on the conditions in which they emerge and exist within a field of discourse. Foucault aims his analysis towards a huge organised dispersion of statements, called ''discursive formations''. It is important to note that 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 & Rabinow, Foucault not only brackets out issues of [[truth]]<ref>Caputo, John. "Foucault and the Critique of Institutions". Pennsylvania State University Press, March, 2006. pp. 249-253. ISBN 0-2710-2966-8</ref> (cf. [[Husserl]]) he also brackets out issues of meaning. Rather than looking for a deeper meaning underneath discourse or looking for the source of meaning in some transcendental subject, Foucault analyzes the discursive and practical conditions of the existence for truth and meaning. In order to show the principles of meaning and truth production 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 of time. 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 meaning, but just that [[truth]] and 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 meaning, truth and correct treatment of madness during both epochs ([[Madness and Civilization]]). This posture allows Foucault to move away from an [[anthropological]] standpoint, denouncing ''a priori'' concepts of the nature of the human subject, and focus on the role of discursive practices in constituting subjectivity.
Dispensing with finding a deeper meaning behind discourse appears to lead Foucault toward [[structuralism]]. However, 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 characterises 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 happen to change the discursive formation. Their difference to the dominant discourse also describe it. In this way one can describe specific systems that determine which types of statements emerge.
===''Discipline and Punish''===
{{main|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.
The book opens with a graphic description of the brutal public execution in 1757 of [[Robert-François Damiens]], who attempted to kill [[Louis XV of France|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 [[execution (legal)|execution]]s 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 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. The dark dungeon of pre-modernity has been replaced with the bright modern prison, 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 which 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''===
{{main|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, particularly since the nineteenth century, "repressed" our natural sexual drives. He shows that what we think of as "repression" of sexuality actually constituted sexuality as a core feature of our identities, and produced a proliferation of discourse on the subject.
The second two volumes, ''[[The Use of Pleasure]]'' (''Histoire de la sexualite, 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 [[Ancient Greece|Greek]] and [[Roman Empire|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.<ref>{{cite book|title=[[Religion and culture: Michel Foucault]]|author=Michel Foucault, edited by Jeremy R. Carrette|year=1999|id=ISBN 0-415-92362-X}}</ref>
===Lectures===
From 1970 until his death in 1984, from January to March of each year except 1977, Foucault gave a course of public lectures and seminars weekly at the [[Collège de France]] as the condition of his tenure as professor there. All these lectures were tape-recorded, and Foucault's transcripts also survive. In 1997 these lectures began to be published in French with six volumes having appeared so far. So far, five sets of lectures have appeared in English: ''Psychiatric Power 1973–1974'', ''Abnormal 1974–1975'', ''Society Must Be Defended 1975–1976'', ''Security, Territory, Population 1977–1978'' and ''The Hermeneutics of the Subject 1981–1982''. Notes of Foucault's lectures from UC Berkeley has also appeared as ''Fearless Speech''.
*''Society Must Be Defended'' (1975–1976)
In this course, Foucault analyzes the historical and political discourse of "race struggle".
*''Security, Territory, Population'' (1977-1978)
In this course, 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. His overriding goal in this lecture series is to argue that the state does not have as much salience as an analytical category as we all seem to think it does.
===Terminology===
Terms coined or largely redefined by Foucault, as translated into English:
*[[biopower]]/[[biopolitics]]
*[[Disciplinary institutions]]
*[[episteme]] (''épistémé'')
*[[genealogy (Foucault)|genealogy]]
*[[governmentality]]
*[[heterotopia (space)|heterotopia]]
*[[parrhesia]]
*[[state racism]]
*[[medical gaze]]
*[[discourse]]
*[[dispositif]]
*[[technologies of the self]]
==Criticisms of Foucault==
{{criticism-section}}
Many thinkers have criticized Foucault, including [[Noam Chomsky]],<ref>See Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, ''The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature'' (New York: The New Press, 2006).</ref> [[Ivan Illich]], [[Jürgen Habermas]], [[Jacques Derrida]], [[Jean Baudrillard]], [[Pierre Bourdieu]], [[Camille Paglia]], [[Peter Dews]], and [[Alasdair MacIntyre]] (1990) among others. While each of these thinkers takes issue with different aspects of Foucault's work, most share the view that Foucault rejects the values and philosophy associated with the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] while simultaneously secretly relying on them.<ref>Foucault: A Critical Reader, Edited by David Hoy, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986</ref> This criticism is developed, for example, in [[Derrida]] (1978). It is claimed that this failure either makes Foucault dangerously [[Nihilism|nihilistic]], or that he cannot be taken seriously in his disavowal of normative values because in fact his work ultimately presupposes them.
Foucault's use of historical information has also been criticized, with claims that he frequently misrepresented things, got his facts wrong, extrapolated from insufficient data, or simply made them up entirely. For example, some historians argue that what Foucault called the "Great Confinement" in ''[[Madness and Civilization]]'' did not in fact occur during the 17th century, but rather in the 19th century.<ref>{{cite book|title=[[Les Médecines de la Folie]]|author=Pierre Morel and Claude Quétel|year=1985|id=ISBN 2-01-011281-4}}</ref>
Sociologist [[Andrew Scull]] argued that thousands of previously untranslated footnotes in ''[[Madness and Civilization]]'' reveal a very lax standard of scholarship in Foucault's work, "It is as though nearly a century of scholarly work had produced nothing of interest or value for Foucault’s project. What interested him, or shielded him, was selectively mined nineteenth-century sources of dubious provenance. Inevitably, this means that elaborate intellectual constructions are built on the shakiest of empirical foundations, and, not surprisingly, many turn out to be wrong."<ref>Andrew Scull, [http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25347-2626687,00.html "The Fictions of Foucault"], ''Times Literary Supplement'', March 21, 2007</ref>
''Madness and Civilization'' was also criticized by [[Jacques Derrida]] who took issue with Foucault's reading of [[René Descartes]]' ''[[Meditations on First Philosophy]]''. Derrida's criticism led to a break in their friendship and marked the beginning of a fifteen-year–long feud between the two. In a 1983 interview with [[Paul Rabinow]], Foucault seemed to criticize Derrida's reading of [[Plato]]'s ''[[Phaedrus (Plato)|Phaedrus]]'' in ''Dissemination'', considering the writing/speech distinction unimportant. Foucault and Derrida reconciled in the early 1980s.{{Fact|date=April 2008}}
There are also notable exchanges with [[Lawrence Stone]] and [[George Steiner]] on the subject of Foucault's historical accuracy, as well as a discussion with historian [[Jacques Leonard]] concerning ''Discipline and Punish''. Sociologist Richard Hamilton also argues against ''[[Discipline and Punish]]'', suggesting that large portions of the book are incoherent or invalid. For example, Foucault places great emphasis on [[Jeremy Bentham]]'s [[panopticon]], suggesting it is a model for the modern prison, but Hamilton notes that the panopticon was never built and only one extant prison uses that model. In the book, however, Foucault did not suggest that Bentham's panopticon had been constructed, and did not suggest that prisons ''explicitly'' modeled themselves after it. He also expounds the relevant dangers associated with the abstract concept of the panopticon in his discussion of what he calls the "disciplinary society."{{Fact|date=April 2008}}
Bevis, Cohen & Kendall have demonstrated that Foucault has ignored evidence contradicting his assumed high homogeneity of classical as well as modern discourse on sexuality. In particular, Foucault makes assumptions concerning the austerity, which does not hold. Nevertheless, they appraise Foucault for having "mapped out a new terrain for investigation and developed toolkits for this work". <ref>Bevis, Phil; Cohen, M. & Kendall. G. Archaeologizing genealogy: Michel Foucault and the economy of austerity Economy and Society, Routledge, 1989, 18, 323-345</ref> Some critics of Foucault have identified Émile Durkheim as a possible influence on his work. <ref>{{cite book |first=Camille. |last=Paglia |year=1993 |title=Sex, Art, and American Culture |publisher=Penguin Books |location=New York |id= ISBN 0 14 01.7209 2 |pages= pp. 224-225}}</ref>
==Foucault's changing viewpoint==
The study of Foucault's thought is complicated because his ideas developed and changed over time. Just how they changed and at what levels is a matter of some dispute amongst scholars of his work. Some scholars argue that underneath the changes of subject matter there are certain themes that run through all of his work. But as [[David Gauntlett]] (2002) suggests:
{{Quotation|Of course, there's nothing wrong with Foucault changing his approach; in a 1982 interview, he remarked that 'When people say, "Well, you thought this a few years ago and now you say something else," my answer is… [laughs] "Well, do you think I have worked [hard] all those years to say the same thing and not to be changed?"' (2000: 131). This attitude to his own work fits well with his theoretical approach — that knowledge should transform the self. When asked in another 1982 interview if he was a philosopher, historian, structuralist, or Marxist, Foucault replied 'I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning' (Martin, 1988: 9).|David Gauntlett|Media, Gender and Identity, London: Routledge, 2002)}}
In a similar vein, Foucault preferred not to claim that he was presenting a coherent and timeless block of knowledge; rather, as he says:
{{Quotation|I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area… I would like the little volume that I want to write on disciplinary systems to be useful to an educator, a warden, a magistrate, a conscientious objector. I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers.|Michel Foucault (1974)|'Prisons et asiles dans le mécanisme du pouvoir' in Dits et Ecrits, t. II. Paris: Gallimard, 1994, pp. 523–4).}}
==Intellectual contexts==
===Influences on Foucault's work===
Thinkers whose work has apparently or admittedly had a strong impact on Foucault's thought include:
*[[Annales School]] — A French school of historical writing which influenced Foucault early in his intellectual life.
*[[Louis Althusser]] — French structuralist Marxist philosopher and Foucault's sometime teacher and mentor.
*[[Roland Barthes]] — French (post) structuralist literary critic who was at one time very close to Foucault.
*[[Georges Bataille]] — French philosopher, novelist and critic whose views on transgression, communication, and sexuality were very influential in Foucault's work.
*[[Maurice Blanchot]] — Literary critic and novelist whose views on non polemical critique had a strong impact on Foucault
*[[Jorge Luis Borges]] — Argentine author of short stories frequently referred to in Foucault's Works
*[[Georges Canguilhem]] — Author of ''The Normal and the Pathological'' and a major influence on Foucault's work on deviance and the medical sciences (cf. [[The Birth of the Clinic]])
*[[Gilles Deleuze]] — French philosopher. A great friend and ally of Foucault's in the early 1970s.
*[[Georges Dumézil]] — French structuralist mythologist, known for his reconstruction of [[Indo-Aryans|Indo-Aryan]] mythology.
*[[Martin Heidegger]] — German philosopher whose influence was enormous in post-war France. Foucault rarely referred to him, but once stated 'For me Heidegger has always been the essential philosopher... My entire philosophical development was determined by my reading of Heidegger'.
*[[Jean Hyppolite]] — French [[Hegel]] scholar and Foucault's sometime [[khâgne]] teacher.
*[[Karl Marx]] — Marx's influence in French intellectual life was dominant from 1945 through to the late 1970s. Foucault often opposed aspects of Marxist ideology.
*[[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]] — French philosopher and sometime teacher of Foucault. [[Phenomenologist]] instrumental in popularising [[Ferdinand de Saussure|Saussure]]'s [[structuralism]] for a philosophical audience.
*[[Friedrich Nietzsche]] — German philosopher whose work greatly influenced Foucault's conception of society and power. Towards the end of his life, Foucault stated: "I am a Nietzschean". {{Fact|date=June 2008}}. When criticising the use of the concept of "justice" in a debate with Noam Chomsky, Foucault said "I will be a little bit Nietzschean about this"<ref>In "Human Nature: Justice versus Power", in ''Reflexive Water: The Basic Concerns of Mankind'', ed. Fons Elders (London: Souvenir Press, 1974), p. 187.</ref>.
===Influence of Foucault's work===
Foucault's work is frequently referred to in disciplines as diverse as [[art]], [[philosophy]], [[history]], [[anthropology]], [[geography]], [[archaeology]], [[communication studies]], [[public relations]], [[rhetoric]], [[cultural studies]], [[linguistics]], [[sociology]], [[education]], [[psychology]], [[literary theory]], [[feminism]], [[queer theory]], [[management|management studies]], [[philosophy of science|the philosophy of science]], [[political science]], [[urban design]], [[museum studies]], and many others. Quantitative evidence of the impact of his work can be found in the sheer volume of citations in standard academic journal indexes such as the Social Sciences Citation Index [http://www.isinet.com/products/citation/ssci/] (more than 9000 citations). A keyword search of the [[Library of Congress]] catalogue [http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&CNT=25+records+per+page&CMD=nkey+Foucault] reveals over 750 volumes in a variety of languages relating to his writings, and a search on [[Google Scholar]] [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=michel+foucault] reveals thousands of citations.
==Bibliography==
===Monographs===
{| class="wikitable"
! Year
! Original French
! English Translation
|-
| 1954
| ''Maladie mentale et personnalité'' (Paris: PUF, 1954) re-edited as ''Maladie mentale et psychologie'' (1995)
| ''Mental Illness and Psychology'' trans. by A. M. Sheridan-Smith, (New York: Harper and Row, 1976)
|-
| 1961
| ''Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique - Folie et déraison'' (Paris: Plon, 1961)
| ''Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason'' trans. by R. Howard, (London: Tavistock, 1965) - abridged; ''History of Madness'' ed. Jean Khalfa, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa, (London: Routledge, 2006) - unabridged
|-
| 1963
| ''Naissance de la clinique - une archéologie du regard médical'' (Paris: PUF, 1963)
| ''The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception''
|-
| 1963
| ''Raymond Roussel'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1963)
| ''Death and the Labyrinth: the World of Raymond Roussel''
|-
| 1966
| ''Les mots et les choses - une archéologie des sciences humaines'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1966)
| ''The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences''
|-
| 1969
| ''L'archéologie du savoir'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1969)
| ''Archaeology of Knowledge'' (first three chapters available [http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/foucault.htm here]) trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 2002)
|-
| 1971
| ''L'ordre du discours'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1971)
| "The Discourse on Language" translation appears as an appendix to the ''Archaeology of Knowledge'' trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), pp. 215-37
|-
| 1975
| ''Surveiller et punir'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1975)
| ''Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison''
|-
| 1976–84
| ''Histoire de la sexualité''
*''Vol I: La Volonté de savoir'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1976)
*''Vol II: L'Usage des plaisirs'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1984)
*''Vol III: Le Souci de soi'' (Paris: Gallimard, 1984)
| ''The History of Sexuality''
*''Vol I: The Will to Knowledge''
*''Vol II: The Use of Pleasure''
*''Vol III: The Care of the Self''
|-
|}
===The Collège Courses===
{| class="wikitable"
! Year
! Original French
! English Translation
|-
| 1997
| 1976–1977 ''Il faut défendre la société''
| ''Society Must Be Defended''
|-
| 1999
| 1974–1975 ''Les anormaux''
| ''Abnormal''
|-
| 2001
| 1981–1982 ''L'Herméneutique du sujet''
| ''The Hermeneutics of the Subject''
|-
| 2003
| 1973–1974 ''Le pouvoir psychiatrique''
| ''Psychiatric Power''
|-
| 2004
| 1977–1978 ''Sécurité, territoire, population''
| ''Security, Territory, Population''
|-
| 2004
| 1978–1979 ''Naissance de la biopolitique''
| ''The Birth of Biopolitics''
|-
| Forthcoming
| 1970–1971 ''La Volonté de Savoir''
| ''The Will to Knowledge''
|-
| Forthcoming
| 1971–1972 ''Theories et Institutions Penales''
| ''Theories of Punishment''
|-
| Forthcoming
| 1972–1973 ''La Société Punitive''
| ''The Punitive Society''
|-
| Forthcoming
| 1979–1980 ''Du gouvernement des vivants''
| ''The Government of Man''
|-
| Forthcoming
| 1980–1981 ''Subjectivite et Vérité''
| ''Subjectivity and Truth''
|-
| 2008
| 1982–1983 ''Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres''
| ''The Government of Self and Others''
|-
| Forthcoming
| 1983–1984 ''Le Courage de la Vérité''
| ''The Courage of Truth''
|-
|}
===Collaborative works===
{| class="wikitable"
! Year
! Original French
! English Translation
|-
| 1973
| ''Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère'' (Gallimard)
| ''I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered my Mother, my Sister and my Brother'' (Penguin, 1975)
|-
| 1978
| ''Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B.'' (Gallimard, 1978)
| ''Herculine Barbin'' (New York: Pantheon, 1980).''
|-
| 1982
| ''Le Désordre des familles. Lettres de cachet'' with Arlette Farge (Gallimard)
| Not yet available in English
|-
|}
===Other books===
{| class="wikitable"
! Year
! Original French
! English Translation
|-
| 1973
| "Ceci n'est pas une pipe"
| ''[[This is not a pipe]]'' (1991)
|-
| 1980
| Interview with Michel Foucault originally published in Italian, then in French in 1994
| ''Remarks on Marx'' (1991)
|-
| 2001
| Berkeley lecture series, never published in French
| ''[http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/ Fearless Speech]''
|-
|}
===Anthologies===
In French, almost all of Foucault's shorter writings, published interviews and miscellany have been published in a collection called ''Dits et écrits'', originally published in four volumes in 1994, latterly in only two volumes.
In English, there are a number of overlapping anthologies, which often use conflicting translations of the overlapping pieces, frequently with different titles. Richard Lynch's [http://www.foucault.qut.edu.au/lynch.html bibliography] of Foucault's shorter work is invaluable for keeping track of these multiple versions. The major collections in English are:
*''Language, counter-memory, practice'', ed. Donald F. Bouchard (1977)
*''Power/Knowledge'', ed. Colin Gordon (1980)
*''The Foucault Reader'', ed. [[Paul Rabinow]] (1984)
*''The History of Sexuality'' 3 vols., (Vintage, 1988)
*''Politics, Philosophy, Culture'', ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (1988)
*''Foucault Live'' (2nd Ed.), ed. [[Sylvère Lotringer]] (1996)
*''The Politics of Truth'', ed. Sylvère Lotringer (1997)
*''Ethics : subjectivity and truth'' (Essential Works Vol. 1), ed. Paul Rabinow (1997)
*''Aesthetics, Method, Epistemology'' (Essential Works Vol.2), ed. James D. Faubion (1998)
*''Power'' (Essential Works Vol. 3), ed. James D. Faubion (2000)
*''The Essential Foucault'', eds. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (2003)
===Lectures===
In a 1967 lecture, called in English either "Different spaces" or ''Of Other Spaces'' [http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html] (reprinted in ''Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology'', and in ''The Visual Culture Reader'', ed. [[Nicholas Mirzoeff]]), Foucault coined a novel concept of the [[heterotopia]].
==See also==
*[[Foucault-Habermas debate]]
*[[Governmentality]]
*[[Ecogovernmentality]]
*[[Sapere Aude]]
==Notes==
{{reflist}}
==References==
* Carrette, Jeremy R. (ed.). ''Religion and culture: Michel Foucault''. (Routledge, 1999).
* 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).
* Eribon, Didier. ''Michel Foucault'' (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). Considered in France, according to ''Le Monde'', as the best biography of Foucault.
* 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.
* 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.
* Hoy, D. (Ed.). ''Foucault''. (Oxford, Blackwell, 1986).
* Hicks, Stephen R. C. ''Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault'' (Scholargy Publishing, 2004).
* 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.
* 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 can be found in his work.
* Smart, B. ''Foucault''. (Chichester, Ellis Horwood, 1985).
==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
{{wikibooks|Student's Guide to Michel Foucault}}
{{commonscat|Michel Foucault}}
General sites (updated regularly):
*[http://foucault.info/ Foucault.info]
*[http://www.michel-foucault-archives.org/ Michel Foucault Archives by IMEC]
*[http://www.michel-foucault.com/ michel-foucault.com]
Biographies:
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/ Michel Foucault]—entry at the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
*[http://foucault.info/foucault/biography.html Retrospective article]—written by Michel Foucault
*[http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1992/03.02.07.html Good place to start]—Review of a Foucault biography, written by noted scholar and Foucauldian David Halperin
Bibliographies:
*[http://www.foucault.qut.edu.au/lynch.html Lynch's bibliography]
*[http://foucault.info/foucault/bibliography.html French and English bibliographies]
Journals:
*[http://www.foucault-studies.com Foucault Studies]—an electronic, refereed, international journal
Miscellaneous:
*[http://foucault.info/$/ Dossiers]—Thematic micro-sites
*[http://csac.buffalo.edu/foucault/foucault.html Michel Foucault, Buffalo 1971 & Paris 1975]—Ten photographs of Foucault by Bruce Jackson
*[http://www.comm.umn.edu/Foucault/ppc.html University of Minnesota – Dept. of Communications Studies]—Detailed summary of the book ''“Politics, Philosophy, Culture—Interviews and other writings 1977–1984”'', chapter by chapter.
*[http://www.theory.org.uk/foucault Foucault resources at theory.org.uk] — includes Walking Tour of Foucault's Paris
===Works available online===
* [http://foucault.info/documents/ Repository of texts] from Foucault.info (excerpts from Discipline & punish, Archeology of knowledge, Heterotopia, Manet, Pierre Rivière, Enlightenment, Author Function, etc.)
* [http://www.thefoucauldian.co.uk/library.htm Thefoucauldian.co.uk] 18 online texts on Pierre Rivière, technologies of the self, archeology of knowledge, Nietzsche & genealogy, etc.
* [http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpfoucault1.htm Michel Foucault's Introduction to Kant's Anthropology original version translated by Arianna Bove, 2002]
*[http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/audiofiles.html#foucault Online audiorecording of Foucault at UC Berkeley, April 1983: "The Culture of the Self"]
*[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html "What are the Iranians Dreaming About?"] - an excerpt from ''Foucault and the Iranian Revolution''
{{Philosophy topics}}
{{IPA|}}
{{Persondata
|NAME=Foucault, Michel
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Foucault, Paul-Michel
|SHORT DESCRIPTION=[[France|French]] [[philosophy|philosopher]]
|DATE OF BIRTH=[[October 15]], [[1926]]
|PLACE OF BIRTH=[[Poitiers]], [[France]]
|DATE OF DEATH=[[June 25]], [[1984]]
|PLACE OF DEATH=[[Paris]], [[France]]
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foucault, Michel}}
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