Michel Foucault (; born Paul-Michel Foucault ) ( 15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984 ) was a French philosopher, social theorist, historian of ideas, and literary critic.

The Life of the Mind: Paul-Michel Foucault philosopher and critic.

Together the couple had 3 children, a girl named Francine and two boys, Paul-Michel and Denys, all of whom shared the same fair hair and bright blue eyes.

It was in the aftermath of 1968 that Guattari met Gilles Deleuze at the University of Vincennes and began to lay the ground-work for the soon to be infamous Anti-Oedipus ( 1972 ), which Michel Foucault described as " an introduction to the non-fascist life " in his preface to the book.

While Foucault himself was deeply involved in a number of progressive political causes and maintained close personal ties with members of the far-Left, he was also controversial with Leftist thinkers of his day, including those associated with various strains of Marxism, proponents of Left libertarianism ( e. g. Noam Chomsky ) and Humanism ( e. g. Jürgen Habermas ), for his rejection of what he deemed to be Enlightenment-derived concepts of freedom, liberation, self-determination and human nature.

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.

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.

Michel Foucault believed that modern political theory was too state-centric, saying " Maybe, after all, the state is no more than a composite reality and a mythologized abstraction, whose importance is a lot more limited than many of us think.

Perhaps the most notable issue here was the nature of truth, which both Kuhn and Foucault described as a relative and contingent notion.

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.

It was Foucault who gave the device its modern name, in an experiment to see ( Greek skopeein, to see ) the Earth's rotation ( Greek gyros, circle or rotation ), which was visible in the 8 to 10 minutes before friction slowed the spinning rotor.

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

Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the Panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century " disciplinary " institutions.

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.

Foucault died in Paris of neurological problems compounded by the HIV / AIDS virus ; he was the first famous figure in France to have died from the virus, with his partner Daniel Defert founding the AIDES charity in his memory.

He had been named after his father, Dr. Paul Foucault, as was the family tradition, but his mother insisted on the addition of the double-barrelled " Michel "; while he would always be referred to as " Paul " at school, throughout his life he always expressed a preference for " Michel ".

In 1930, Foucault began his schooling at the local Lycée Henry-IV despite the fact that he was two years younger than the usual entrance age of six.

During this period, Foucault was aided in his studies by a personal tutor, the philosopher Louis Girard.

Rejecting his father's wishes that he become a surgeon, in 1945 Foucault traveled to the French capital of Paris, where he enrolled in one of the country's most prestigious secondary schools, which was also known as the Lycée Henri-IV.

Attaining excellent results at the school, in the autumn of 1946 Foucault was admitted to the elite École Normale Supérieure ( ENS ); in order to get in, he had to undertake a series of exams and oral interrogation by Georges Canguilhem and Pierre-Maxime Schuhl.

Of the hundred students entering the ENS, Foucault was ranked fourth based on his entry results, and encountered the highly competitive nature of the institution.

Taking an interest in literature, Foucault was an avid reader of the book reviews authored by the philosopher Maurice Blanchot ( 1907 – 2003 ), which were published in the Nouvelle Revue Française.

* Jean-Pierre Foucault ( born 1947 ), French television host

* Steve Foucault ( born 1949 ), former Major League Baseball pitcher

Foucault was the son of a publisher in Paris, where he was born on September 18, 1819.

* February 11-Léon Foucault ( born 1819 ), physicist.

All those concerns, born of the miasma theory of disease, were mixed with urbanistic concerns for the management of populations, which Foucault designated as the concept of " biopower ".

Literary critics Barthes and Foucault suggest that readers should not rely on or look for the notion of one overarching voice when interpreting a written work, because of the complications inherent with a writer's title of " author.

While, theoretically relying on Michel Foucault ’ s theory of discipline and governmentality, as well as related insights in the social control literature, this paper examines Project Carnivore relative to the larger context of state rationality and related privacy issues.

* 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.

In direct contradiction to what have been typified as Modernist perspectives on epistemology, Foucault asserted that rational judgment, social practice and what he called ' biopower ' are not only inseparable but co-determinant.

Instead, Foucault focused on the ways in which such constructs can foster cultural hegemony, violence and exclusion.

In this latter field, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz and Michel Foucault were instrumental in moving medicine away from emphasis on " cures " and towards concepts of individuals in balance with their society, both of which are changing, and against which no benchmarks or finished " cures " were very likely to be measurable.

* Information on Michel Foucault, including an archive of writings and lectures

", Michel Foucault proposed a concept of critique based on Kant's distinction between " private " and " public " uses of reason.

Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, social anthropology of medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality.

A Marxist, he proved to be an influence both on Foucault and a number of other students, encouraging them to join the French Communist Party ( Parti communiste français-PCF ), which Foucault duly did in 1950.

Over the following few years, Foucault embarked on a variety of odd jobs in research and teaching.

In August 1953, Foucault and Barraqué went on a holiday to Italy, where the philosopher immersed himself in Untimely Meditations ( 1873 – 1876 ), a collection of four essays authored by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ( 1844 – 1900 ).

In Uppsala, Foucault spent much of his spare time in the university's Carolina Rediviva library, where he made use of their Bibliotheca Walleriana collection of texts on the history of medicine for his ongoing research.

One of these turned out to be a Polish government agent who hoped to trap Foucault in an embarrassing situation, which would therefore reflect badly on the French embassy.

Derrida's critique came in the form of a lecture he gave on " The Cogito and the History of Madness " at the University of Paris on 4 March 1963, accusing Foucault of advocating metaphysics.

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.

While his doctorate was being assessed, in 1960 Foucault purchased his first flat, a part of a high-rise block on the rue du Dr Finlay, off the quai de Grenelle.

Aside from his teaching, Foucault also maintained a keen interest in literature, having reviews published in such literary journals as Tel Quel and Nouvelle Revue Française, and sitting on the editorial board of Critique.

Foucault in this period embarked on a six-volume project The History of Sexuality, which he never completed.