Skip to main content Skip to Search Box

Michel Foucault

From Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia
Historian of ideas Michel Foucault (1926–84) has realized a reputation that has spread far and wide from both his native France and disciplinary specialism. Foucault's writings inscribe a wide arc, encompassing early contributions to epistemological debate, such as The Archaeology of Knowledge ; specific studies of psychiatry, medicine, and prisons; and the history of sexuality, which he was working on when he died of AIDS in 1984. Foucault became something of a celebrity intellectual, in common with any number of other Parisian intellectuals before him, and the fame of his scholarship, as well as the notoriety attached to his private life, attracted attention. More than 30 years later, his work remains influential and has had a considerable impact on “critical” and “discourse” scholarship, especially on power. At the core of his writings was an influential and innovative conception of power, which, unlike most other contemporary writers on the topic, was influenced by Friedrich…
887 results

Full text Article Foucault, Michel

From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
Elected to the Collège de France in 1969 and the chair of the History of Systems of Thought, Foucault had spent much of his early career outside France as an assistant at the University of Uppsala (1955-8), director of the French Centre at the University of Warsaw, Poland (1958), and director of the…
| 1,146 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Foucault, Michel (1926-1984)

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
Foucault was born in Poitiers, France, and died at the age of fifty-seven from an AIDS-related illness. He studied both psychology and philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure and went on to teach psychology in a department of philosophy while also working as a researcher in a hospital in Paris. …
| 979 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Michel Foucault

From Great Thinkers A-Z
Michel Foucault trod a new path for French philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on the disciplines of history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, he was interested in the way in which power and knowledge interact to produce the human subject (the self). Foucault sought…
| 842 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Foucault, Michel (1926 - 1984)

From World of Criminal Justice, Gale
Michel Foucault (Corbis-Bettmann)
Michel Foucault was a twentieth-century French philosopher who produced a set of works that challenged the philosophical, historical, and sociological underpinnings of Western Civilization. An idiosyncratic thinker who has been compared to the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, Foucault…
| 819 words , 1 image
Key concepts:
Michel Foucault (Corbis Corporation [Bellevue])
Michel Foucault is remembered as a thinker who tried to show that the basic ideas which people normally believe to be permanent truths about human nature and society actually change throughout the course of history. He regularly tested long-held assumptions, especially about mental illness, prisons, …
| 496 words , 1 image
Key concepts:

Full text Article Foucault, Michel

From Political Philosophy A-Z
Foucault was a French theorist and philosopher of power, discourse and sexuality. Foucault’s influence has been strong in the social sciences, and he has directed a critical view towards various social institutions, including prisons, medicine, psychiatry and sexuality. However, he is a more minor…
| 143 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Foucault, Michel

From Philip's Encyclopedia
| 91 words
Key concepts:
One finds very few explicit references to the writings of Foucault in the books and papers written by members of psychology departments in universities. However, these places are isolated islands in the great sea of ‘psychology’ in which our culture is embedded. If we look more broadly at ways of…
| 3,185 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Foucault, Michel (1926–1984)

From Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
The French philosopher and cultural historian Michel Foucault, who challenged the received wisdom of Enlightenment humanism and rationality, is noted for his theories on the interrelationship of knowledge and the enforcement of moral norms, resistance to power, the establishment of modern medicine…
| 1,097 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Foucault, Michel (1926-1984)

From Encyclopedia of Philosophers on Religion
Foucault was born into a nominally Catholic family that adhered to traditional rites of baptism, first communion, marriage and burial, but as was typical of their French bourgeoise class, harbored a bit of anti-clericalism and agnosticism. Along with his mother (and/or grandmother) and his two…
| 931 words
Key concepts:
Mind Map

Stack overflow
More Library Resources