Michel foucault major works

Michel foucault contribution to philosophy
Michel foucault education
What is michel foucault's theory

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Scientist of the Day - Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, was born Oct. 15, 1926. At the College de France, he was Professor of the History of Systems of Thought, which was a pretty post indeed, since you can teach about anything you want under that rubric. Foucault is best known for his studies of social institutions, such as mental hospitals and prisons, but for me, his most important book was Les Mots et les choses ("Words and Things"), published in 1966 and translated into English as The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences in 1970 (second image).

Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, the English translation of Les Mots et les Choses, 1970 (author’s copy)

Foucault maintained that different historical periods had different ways of looking at nature that determined what scientists saw and thought important. He called these mental frameworks "epistemes." Foucault pointed out that in the Renaissance, naturalists like Conrad Gessner primarily looked for resemblances and similitudes when they studied the wo

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Michel Foucault

1. Biographical Sketch

Foucault was born in Poitiers, France, on October 15, 1926. As a student he was brilliant but psychologically tormented. He became academically established during the 1960s, holding a series of positions at French universities, before his election in 1969 to the prestigious Collège de France, where he was Professor of the History of Systems of Thought until his death. From the 1970s on, Foucault was very active politically. He was a founder of the Groupe d’information sur les prisons and often protested on behalf of marginalized groups. He frequently lectured outside France, particularly in the United States, and in 1983 had agreed to teach annually at the University of California at Berkeley. An early victim of AIDS, Foucault died in Paris on June 25, 1984. In addition to works published during his lifetime, his lectures at the Collège de France, published posthumously, contain important elucidations and extensions of his ideas.

One might question whether Foucault is in fact a philosopher. His academic formation wa

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Michel Foucault: key concepts

This page offers brief definitions of some of the key concepts in Foucault’s work. For a more complete list which also includes extensive details of where these concepts can be found in Foucault’s work please see Appendix 2: ‘Key Concepts in Foucault’s work’ in my book Michel Foucault (London: Sage, 2005). The list below places more emphasis on definitions, whereas the list in the book provides a detailed structure of references for users of Foucault’s work.

If there are any key concepts that are not on this list but that you would like to see here send me an email and I will see what I can do.

apparatus (dispositif)

Foucault generally uses this term to indicate the various institutional, physical and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures, which enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body. The original French term dispositif is rendered variously as ‘dispositif’, ‘apparatus’ and ‘deployment’ in Englis