In the 1980s books like Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter pondered anthropology's ties to colonial inequality, while the immense popularity of theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault moved issues of power and hegemony into the spotlight.

Following an interpretation of power similar to that of Machiavelli, Foucault defines power as immaterial, as a " certain type of relation between individuals " that has to do with complex strategic social positions that relate to the subject's ability to control its environment and influence those around itself.

According to Foucault, power is intimately tied with his conception of truth.

Political freedom has also been theorized in its opposition to ( and a condition of ) " power relations ", or the power of " action upon actions ," by Michel Foucault.

According to Foucault, it is the " effect " of power and " disciplines " ( See Discipline and Punish: construction of the subject as student, soldier, " criminal ", etc.

* Michel Foucault: Critiqued the modern conception of power on the basis of the prison complex and other prohibitive institutions, such as those that designate sexuality, madness and knowledge as the roots of their infrastructure, a critique which then demonstrated that subjection is the power formation of subjects in any linguistic forum and that revolution cannot just be thought as the reversal of power between classes.

Foucault was known for his controversial aphorisms, such as " language is oppression ", meaning that language functions in such a way as to render nonsensical, false or silent tendencies that might otherwise threaten or undermine the distributions of power backing a society's conventions-even when such distributions purport to celebrate liberation and expression or value minority groups and perspectives.

Following Nietzsche, Foucault argued that knowledge is produced through the operations of power, and changes fundamentally in different historical periods.

Using ideas about power and subjectification first broached by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish, and the linguistic theories of J. L. Austin, Butler argued that sex was an effect rather than the cause of social gender difference, and that the fiction of a stable core gender identity was maintained through socially coerced performances of gender.

Western philosopher Michel Foucault, claimed that as sexual subjects, humans are the object of power, which is not an institution or structure, rather it is a signifier or name attributed to " complex strategical situation ".

" Foucault traces the role of discourses in wider social processes of legitimating and power, emphasizing the construction of current truths, how they are maintained and what power relations they carry with them .” Foucault later theorized that discourse is a medium through which power relations produce speaking subjects.

Foucault ( 1977, 1980 ) argued that power and knowledge are inter-related and therefore every human relationship is a struggle and negotiation of power.

Foucault further stated that power is always present and can both produce and constrain the truth.

Discourse according to Foucault ( 1977, 1980, 2003 ) is related to power as it operates by rules of exclusion.

Coining the phrases power-knowledge Foucault ( 1980 ) stated knowledge was both the creator of power and creation of power.

However, by the late 1960s, many of Structuralism's basic tenets came under attack from a new wave of predominantly French intellectuals such as the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, the philosopher and social commentator Jacques Derrida, the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and the literary critic Roland Barthes.

Drawing on Michel Foucault ’ s concept of liberal government, Tony Bennett has suggested the development of more modern 19th century museums was part of new strategies by Western governments to produce a citizenry that, rather than be directed by coercive or external forces, monitored and regulated its own conduct.

Foucault would subsequently experience a groundbreaking self-revelation when watching a Parisian performance of Samuel Beckett's new play, Waiting for Godot, in 1953.

In the aftermath of 1968, the French government created a new experimental university, Paris VIII, at Vincennes and appointed Foucault the first head of its philosophy department in December of that year.

In 1979 Foucault made two tours of Iran, undertaking extensive interviews with political protagonists in support of the new interim government established soon after the Iranian Revolution.

Both Foucault and the revolutionaries were highly critical of modernity and sought a new form of politics, they both also looked up to those who risked their lives for ideals ; and both looked to the past for inspiration.

Later on when Foucault went to Iran “ to be there at the birth of a new form of ideas ,” he wrote that the new “ Muslim ” style of politics could signal the beginning of a new form of “ political spirituality ,” not just for the Middle East, but also for Europe, which had adopted the practice of secular politics ever since the French Revolution.

These essays caused some controversy, with some commentators arguing that Foucault was insufficiently critical of the new regime.

Foucault argues between the 17th and 18th centuries a new, more subtle form of power was being exercised transnationally.

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.

* Advocates of new social movements ( including Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Bourdieu )

The new station offered an ideal venue for the Foucault pendulum.

Foucault makes an observation on what kind of tool was used to make this new kind of punishment possible ; Semiology, propagated by a group Foucault calls the Ideologues.

Foucault studied two related issues: what information was on hand and what people chose to do with the information. In many ways, this took him in a new direction, suggesting perhaps ways of living in the carceral archipelago without striving to escape from it.

For Foucault, Las Meninas contains the first signs of a new episteme, or way of thinking, in European art.

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.

Recent studies have broken new ground by applying Foucault ’ s concept of governmentality to non-western and non-liberal settings, such as China.

Such new studies thus use Foucault ’ s Governmentalities to outline the nature of shifts in governance and contribute to emerging studies of governmentality in non-western contexts.

He also co-authored Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, translated Merleau-Ponty's Sense and Non-Sense, and authored the controversial 1972 book What Computers Can't Do, revised first in 1979, and then again in 1992 with a new introduction as What Computers Still Can't Do.

Prison is a form used by the " disciplines ", a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc.

Foucault then develops a holistic account of power and uses methods not too dissimilar to the astonishing and outstanding Medieval Islamic polymaths scholars Alhazen, Ibn Sīnā, and Ibn Khaldūn and to a lesser extant prominent science figures from 20th century science such as ; Gregory Bateson, James Lovelock ( the founder of Gaia hypothesis ) and Robert N. Proctor ( Proctor who coined the term Agnotology ) and urges us to think outside the box of this new kind of power, therefore, opening up the possibilities of further investigations into this new perceived, impenetrable nature of biopower and according to Foucault he asks us to remember, this type of power is never neutral nor is it independent from the rest of society but are embedded within society functioning as embellished ' control technology ' specifics. Foucault argues ; nation states, police, government, legal practices, human sciences and medical institutions have their own rationale, cause and effects, strategies, technologies, mechanisms and codes and have managed successfully in the past to obscure there workings by hiding behind observation and scrutiny.

* In the work of Michel Foucault, and that of the social theoreticians he inspired: discourse describes “ an entity of sequences, of signs, in that they are enouncements ( énoncés )”.

This conception of discourse is largely derived from the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault ( see below ).

French social theorist Michel Foucault developed a notion of discourse in his early work, especially the Archaeology of knowledge ( 1972 ).

Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, from one period's episteme to another.

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 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.

But, focusing on discursive meaning, Foucault did not look for a deeper meaning underneath discourse or for the source of meaning in some transcendental subject.

In addition, Michel Foucault used the terms episteme and discourse, mathesis and taxinomia, for aspects of a " paradigm " in Kuhn's original sense.

The historico-political discourse analyzed by Michel Foucault in Society Must Be Defended ( 1975 – 76 ) considered truth as the fragile product of a historical struggle, first conceptualized under the name of " race struggle " — however, " race "' s meaning was different from today's biological notion, being closer to the sense of " nation " ( distinct from nation-states ; its signification is here closer to " people ").

Foucault regarded him as the founder of the historico-political discourse as political weapon.

According to Foucault, Marxists also seized this discourse and took it in a different direction, transforming the essentialist notion of " race " into the historical notion of " class struggle ", defined by socially structured position: capitalist or proletarian.

Foucault shows that what specifies this discourse from the juridical and philosophical discourse is its conception of truth: truth is no longer absolute, it is the product of " race struggle ".

Foucault warns that it has nothing to do with Machiavelli's or Hobbes's discourse on war, for to this popular discourse, the Sovereign is nothing more than " an illusion, an instrument, or, at the best, an enemy.

Michel Foucault referred more elaborately to mathesis as a rigorous episteme suitable for enabling cohesion of a discourse and thus uniting a community of its followers.

Further to this general theme, when one looks at much Social Constructivist discourse ( especially that informed by Michel Foucault ), one finds something of a bifurcation between the theorist and the non-theorist.

In addition to linguistic theory, the approach draws from social theory — and contributions from Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu — in order to examine ideologies and power relations involved in discourse.

According to Foucault, by the 19th-century, when capitalism and industrialisation had allowed for the development of a dominant bourgeoisie social class, discourse on sex was not suppressed, but in fact proliferated.

Entering the second chapter of this section, " The Perverse Implantation ", Foucault argues that prior to the 18th century, discourse on sexuality focused on the productive role of the married couple, which was monitored by both canonical and civil law.

In contrast, Foucault attempts to demonstrate the constitutive limits of discourse, and in particular, the rules enabling their productivity ; however, Foucault maintained that though ideology may infiltrate and form science, it need not do so: it must be demonstrated how ideology actually forms the science in question ; contradictions and lack of objectivity is not an indicator of ideology.