* 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.

Born into a middle-class family in Poitiers, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV and then the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed a keen interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser.

Hyppolite devoted his energies to uniting the existentialist theories then in vogue among French philosophers with the dialectical theories of Hegel and Karl Marx ( 1818 – 1883 ); these ideas influenced the young Foucault, who would adopt Hyppolite's conviction that philosophy must be developed through a study of history.

In the summer of 1983, he noticed that he had a persistent dry cough ; friends in Paris became concerned that he may have contracted the HIV / AIDS virus then sweeping the San Francisco gay population, but Foucault insisted that he had nothing more than a pulmonary infection that would clear up when he spent the autumn of 1983 in California.

Foucault then inquires how such a change in French society's punishment of convicts could have developed in such a short time.

Foucault proceeds to examine how the confession of sexuality then came to be " constituted in scientific terms ", arguing that scientists began to trace the cause of all aspects of human psychology and society to sexual factors.

In the second and third volumes of The History of Sexuality, namely, The Use of Pleasure ( 1984 ) and The Care of the Self ( 1984 ), and in his lecture on " Technologies of the Self " ( 1982 ), Foucault elaborated a distinction between subjectivation and forms of subjectification by exploring how selves were fashioned and then lived in ways which were both heteronomously and autonomously determined.

The dildo was academically analyzed in a paper presented at the 1995 Bowling Green State University Conference in Cultural Studies: Lesbian Pornography and Transformation: Foucault, Bourdieu, and de Certeau Make Sense of the Jeff Stryker Dildo, by Mary T. Conway, then a graduate student at Temple University.

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.

" The problem for Foucault is in some sense a theoretical modeling which posits a soul, an identity ( the use of soul being fortunate since ' identity ' or ' name ' would not properly express the method of subjection — e. g., if mere materiality were used as a way of tracking individuals then the method of punishment would not have switched from torture to psychiatry ) which allows a whole materiality of prison to develop.

Foucault then goes on further to investigate what was the reasoning behind this modern biopolitical state racism.

Unfortunately, from the classical standpoint investigative work is viewed upon as having difficulty to interpret ; data with no end product isolating power and then man, as either in a position of interpretation by the classical theorists as the final conclusion or man having anthropological characteristics with ancient relic features borrowed from the Pleistocene era which have never altered with additional evolutionary, cultural and biological salient features rather than having a real historical and social character involved. Or to investigate critically this power, with man and his involvement with his interactions with the environment making it impossible to have any rigorous explanation or conclusions. Political systems, or knowledge systems in general, from the classical perspective, become too large to be comprehended interpreting the environment of man as an anachronism ; information and data produced surrounding man as poorly understood viewing historical information as having no, or absence of history. Obviously from the classical point of view, modern research methods ( all from " Social sciences, Sociology, Humanities ") cannot be used to penetrate observation leaving gaps in our knowledge and an accepted taken for granted approach to any analysis. Foucault views this as the exact opposite of rational analysis, with its operations ( power ) as nothing more than a series of contingencies and networks.

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.

Although Michel Foucault is the name primarily associated with the concept of biopower and bio-politics, the term Biopolitics was in fact used tentatively in 1911 when the magazine The New Age published the article " Biopolitics " by G. W. Harris and then reused in 1938 by Morley Roberts ( 1857 – 1942 ) in his book Biopolitics.

Foucault then offers from his lectures his conclusions from both the schools of thought of the twentieth century from this time ; neo-liberalism, German ordoliberalism ( the Freiburg School ) and the Chicago school ( sociology ).

Foucault then takes on the concept into a different direction by positioning it between biological processes, the control of human populations through political means ; government, management and Social organization ; through work, the labor force and the ruthless efficiency of the organization of money through the International monetary systems of whole human populations ( bio ) and politics ( polis ), this is essentially Foucault's meaning of biopolitics ; human biology and its amalgamation with politics.

Foucault then situates liberalism's take on society where liberalism sees the state and society as a societal organism ( neoliberalism never mentions it in any of their narratives nor is it ever mentioned by name as it is automatically assumed by liberalism that state organization was automatically, ingrained in the human psyche in the guise of an invisible organic whole called the body politic, where all humans are involved regardless of their class position ) capable of producing, multiplying, reproducing and if necessary, having a destructive capability.

The industrial working population which comprises the overwhelming majority of human populations anywhere in the world, in a wider context unwittingly there must be at least seen, essentially a systematic position however clandestinely operated, without disruption taking place of economic productivity and activity which still has to take place in a smooth, transitory and unfussy way this then takes on a new meaning Foucault offers us a chilling reminder of those who take part, through no fault of their own, in this involuntary naive complicity he introduces to us the concept of Homo economicus ( economic man )

Foucault then briefly touches on B F Skinner ; ( the founder of radical behaviorism ), and Robert Castel but unfortunately it is very brief however, in Foucault's defence, he himself does admit ' there is little literature ' available in France on these techniques, however, to be critical, Foucault did belong to the most prestigious academic institutions in Europe ( Collège de France ) with unprecedented access to many journals in France and it would be unlikely that they would be unavailable to him.

It is clear then that any standard neuroscience journal will show you this, it is not the body but the mind, as is often thought by Foucault and the postmodernism movement, both thought that the body ( not the mind ), an often repeated mistake a simple mistake, but a crucial one.

Foucault then notices that this art of government were internal to society itself, not external, this type of self-government was practiced right throughout European society ; such as Italy, Germany, France, etc.

Foucault then reads into Robert Castel's work ; The Psychiatric Order, an essential read according to Foucault, where the techniques were finally finalised during the 18th century of this absolute global project which was directed towards the whole of society.

He considers devices by James Watt, Professor James Thomson, Fleeming Jenkin, William Thomson, Léon Foucault and Carl Wilhelm Siemens ( a liquid governor ).

Foucault then considers these great upheavals of Medieval Europe as nothing else but the translation of the continuum from god to men, political institutions and the political order.

Foucault considers the breakthrough of " this governmental reasoning " of the population as a substantial event in Western history and society comparable to the scientific revolution of the 16th century.

Michel Foucault's book The Order of Things examined the history of science to study how structures of epistemology, or episteme, shaped the way in which people imagined knowledge and knowing ( though Foucault would later explicitly deny affiliation with the structuralist movement ).

" 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.

Responding to the criticism with a vicious retort, Foucault ignored some of Derrida's points, focusing in on a criticism of how the younger philosopher had interpreted the work of René Descartes.

* Foucault Disk-Interactive Java Tutorial Foucault created this device showing how eddy currents work ( National High Magnetic Field Laboratory )

Foucault main feature in his work discipline and punish traces how it was possible that our society has become one in which surveillance and monitoring are permanent and constant features of our world.

Punishment, according to Foucault, was concerned with being a better criminal about learning how to be punished ' better ', hence the ' trick ' of ' rehabilitation '.

Foucault was interested in the creation of the subject and how the individual was constituted.

Instead, Foucault looks at the critical tools of using one's own reason, and how disputing Kant's other arguments only serves to reinforce the value of Sapere Aude ( Foucault uses the term critical ontology as a synonym for his concept ) with a sort of faithful betrayal.

Moreover, Kuhn's concept seems to correspond to what Foucault calls theme or theory of a science, but Foucault analysed how opposing theories and themes could co-exist within a science.

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.

Following Michel Foucault, writing on ecogovernmentality focuses on how government agencies, in combination with producers of expert knowledge, construct " The Environment.

In a later work, Security, Territory, Population, Foucault admits that he was somewhat overzealous in his descriptions of how disciplinary power conditions society ; he qualifies and develops his earlier ideas.

For Foucault the work on this is unfinished business but however, it is pivotal to Foucault's understanding of how it was possible in the past of ancient society and now modern society how they were able ( both ancient and modern ) to produce docile populations through the government of souls to the government of men politically, he gives an outline of just what he was able to come with in his research.

Political means the institutions that are governing the rest of society ; government covered by legal institutions which gives both the political electorate, political executive and political legitimacy, Foucault traces this practice to the ancient Greek text from the Pythagoreans known as nomas ( meaning the law ) and according to this text the shepherd is the lawmaker, he directs the flock, indicates the right direction and says how the sheep must mate to have good offspring.

Foucault then derives from this that from the 11th to the 18th century all the struggles of religion ( wars of religion ) were fundamentally struggles over who would actually have the right to govern men, and to govern men in their daily lives and in details and materiality of their existence ; they were struggles over who has this power, from whom it derives, how it is exercised, the margin of autonomy for each, the qualification of those who exercise it, the limits of their jurisdiction, what recourse is possible against them, and what control is exercised over each.

Mercantilism, according to Foucault, was the first rationalization of the exercise of power as a practice of government ; it is the first time that a knowledge of the state can be employed as tactics for the state, namely statistics.

Foucault begins to trace through this development through the political model of reform and one crucial development was the economy, a politics of economic calculation with Mercantilism and for Foucault this was not just a theory but was above all else a political practice.

Foucault takes a look at these general practices through looking at the economic practices involved from the 18th century ( where Mercantilism was at its peak ) where a coherence strategy established an intelligible mechanism which provided a coherent link, together these different practices and their effects, and consequently allows one to judge all these practices as good or bad, not in terms of a law or moral principle, but in terms of propositions subject to the false dichotomy between true and false.