Michel Foucault
Knowledge and power are intertwined: prisons, schools and clinics shape how we think and behave, and what counts as truth changes with history.
Placement
Knowledge and power are inseparable: an archaeology of discourses and a genealogy of disciplinary society.
Key ideas
- Power/knowledge
- Discipline
- Biopolitics
- Discourse
Teachers: Georges Canguilhem, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Louis Althusser
Students: Jacques Derrida
Influence
Influenced by 9
Immanuel Kant
influenced by ✓
Foucault translated Kant’s Anthropology for his secondary thesis (1961) and later read ‘What is Enlightenment?’ as the start of a critical ontology of ourselves (‘What is Enlightenment?’, 1984). M. Foucault, Introduction à l’Anthropologie de Kant (1961; publ. 2008); I. Kant, Anthropologie du point de vue pragmatique, trans. M. Foucault (1964); M. Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?”, in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (1984); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
influenced by ✓
Foucault wrote his diploma thesis on Hegel’s Phenomenology under Hyppolite (1949) and later said that his whole age was trying to escape Hegel (L’ordre du discours, 1971). M. Foucault, La constitution d’un transcendantal historique dans la Phénoménologie de l’esprit de Hegel (mémoire de DES, 1949, unpublished); L’ordre du discours (1971)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Friedrich Nietzsche
influenced by ✓
Foucault took over Nietzsche’s genealogy of descent and emergence, without origin or goal (‘Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire’, 1971), and applied it to the prison (Discipline and Punish, 1975). M. Foucault, “Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire” (1971); Surveiller et punir (1975); SEP “Michel Foucault”; SEP “Friedrich Nietzsche”
Friedrich Nietzsche › 1844–1900
Martin Heidegger
influenced by ✓
In his last interview (1984) Foucault said that reading Heidegger, with Nietzsche, had determined his philosophical development, though he wrote almost nothing on him. M. Foucault, “Le retour de la morale” (1984), in Dits et écrits IV (1994); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Martin Heidegger › 1889–1976
Maurice Merleau-Ponty studied with
studied with ✓
Foucault entered the École normale supérieure in 1946 and attended Merleau-Ponty’s lectures there, among them those on the union of soul and body in Malebranche, Maine de Biran and Bergson (1947–48); Merleau-Ponty was an important early influence. SEP “Michel Foucault”; D. Eribon, Michel Foucault (1989)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Maurice Merleau-Ponty › 1908–1961
Louis Althusser studied with
studied with ✓
Foucault was a student at the École normale supérieure when Althusser became its philosophy tutor (agrégé-répétiteur, ‘caïman’) in 1948 and prepared for the agrégation (1951) under him; under Althusser’s influence he joined the Communist Party in 1950 and left it in 1953. D. Eribon, Michel Foucault (1989); SEP “Louis Althusser”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Louis Althusser › 1918–1990
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Diogenes of Sinope
influenced by
In his last course (Le courage de la vérité, 1984; publ. 2009) Foucault read Diogenes’ Cynic parrhesia as a life that makes truth visible as scandal. M. Foucault, Le courage de la vérité (lectures 1984; ed. F. Gros, 2009); Fearless Speech (lectures 1983; ed. J. Pearson, 2001)
Evidence: AI draft
Diogenes of Sinope › c. 412–323 BCE
Seneca
influenced by
Foucault drew on Seneca’s letters and his evening examination of conscience for the ‘culture of the self’ (L’herméneutique du sujet, 1981–82; publ. 2001; Le souci de soi, 1984). M. Foucault, L’herméneutique du sujet (lectures 1981–82; ed. F. Gros, 2001); Le souci de soi (1984); Seneca, De ira; Epistulae morales; SEP “Seneca”
Evidence: AI draft
Seneca › c. 4 BCE – 65 CE
Georges Canguilhem studied with
studied with ✓
Canguilhem, proposed by Jean Hyppolite, was the rapporteur of Foucault’s thèse d’État Folie et déraison, defended at the Sorbonne in 1961, and remained one of his most important supporters; a sponsor rather than a teacher in the narrower sense. SEP “Michel Foucault”; D. Eribon, Michel Foucault (1989)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Georges Canguilhem › 1904–1995
Influenced 21
Talal Asad
influenced ✓
Asad’s genealogies of religion and of the secular take up Foucault’s analysis of power, discipline and the formation of subjects. T. Asad, Genealogies of Religion (1993); Formations of the Secular (2003); D. Scott and C. Hirschkind (eds.), Powers of the Secular Modern (2006)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Talal Asad › b. 1932
Antonio Negri
influenced ✓
With Michael Hardt, Negri took over Foucault’s concept of biopower, power over life itself, and made it the core of the new global sovereignty they called Empire (2000). M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (2000); M. Foucault, La volonté de savoir (1976)
Antonio Negri › 1933–2023
Edward Said
influenced ✓
Said used Foucault’s notion of discourse to describe Orientalism as knowledge bound up with colonial power, while giving more weight than Foucault to individual authors (Orientalism, 1978). E. W. Said, Orientalism (1978), introduction; M. Foucault, L’archéologie du savoir (1969); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Edward Said › 1935–2003
Giorgio Agamben
influenced ✓
Agamben took up Foucault’s biopolitics (1976) but argued that bare life’s inclusion in politics is the original core of sovereignty, not a modern novelty (Homo Sacer, 1995). G. Agamben, Homo sacer (1995); Che cos’è un dispositivo? (2006); M. Foucault, La volonté de savoir (1976); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Giorgio Agamben › b. 1942
Nancy Fraser
influenced ✓
Fraser took up Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary power as empirically insightful but normatively confused (‘Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions’, 1981). N. Fraser, “Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions”, Praxis International 1 (1981); Unruly Practices (1989)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Nancy Fraser › b. 1947
Judith Butler
influenced ✓
Butler took Foucault’s view that power produces subjects it regulates and applied it to sex and gender, drawing on his edition of Herculine Barbin’s memoirs (Gender Trouble, 1990). J. Butler, Gender Trouble (1990); M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité I. La volonté de savoir (1976); Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B. (1978); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Judith Butler › b. 1956
Show all (21)Show fewer
Mohammed Arkoun
influenced
Arkoun applied Foucault’s notions of episteme and archaeology of knowledge to classical Islamic thought, asking what each period made thinkable and unthinkable. M. Arkoun, Pour une critique de la raison islamique (1984); Rethinking Islam, tr. R. D. Lee (1994)
Evidence: AI draft
Mohammed Arkoun › 1928–2010
Sylvia Wynter
influenced
Wynter took up Foucault’s view of ‘Man’ as a recent invention of the modern episteme and traced its colonial forms (‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being’, 2003). S. Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom”, CR: The New Centennial Review 3 (2003); M. Foucault, Les Mots et les choses (1966)
Evidence: AI draft
Sylvia Wynter › b. 1928
Stuart Hall
influenced
Hall adopted Foucault’s concept of discourse to study representation as the production of knowledge and power, not the mere reflection of meaning (‘The Work of Representation’, 1997). S. Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997), “The Work of Representation”; SEP “Michel Foucault”
Evidence: AI draft
Stuart Hall › 1932–2014
V. Y. Mudimbe
influenced
Mudimbe used Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge to ask how Africa became an object of Western discourse, its ‘colonial library’ (The Invention of Africa, 1988). V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (1988); M. Foucault, L’Archéologie du savoir (1969)
Evidence: AI draft
V. Y. Mudimbe › 1941–2025
Donna Haraway
influenced
Haraway took up Foucault’s biopolitics but called it ‘a flaccid premonition of cyborg politics’, extending the analysis to technoscience (‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, 1985). D. Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”, Socialist Review 80 (1985), rev. in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991); M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité I (1976)
Evidence: AI draft
Donna Haraway › b. 1944
Iris Marion Young
influenced
Young drew on Foucault’s analysis of power in everyday practices to define oppression as structural, not as rule by tyrants (Justice and the Politics of Difference, 1990). I. M. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990); M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir (1975)
Evidence: AI draft
Iris Marion Young › 1949–2006
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
influenced
Taking up Foucault’s History of Sexuality I (1976), Sedgwick argued that the homo/heterosexual definition fixed around 1900 structures modern thought far beyond sexuality (Epistemology of the Closet, 1990). E. K. Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (1990), introduction “Axiomatic”; M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité I (1976)
Evidence: AI draft
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick › 1950–2009
Linda Tuhiwai Smith
influenced
Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) draws on Foucault’s analyses of knowledge, power and “regimes of truth” to show how Western research on Indigenous peoples was embedded in imperialism. L. Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999), part I
Evidence: AI draft
Linda Tuhiwai Smith › b. 1950
Didier Eribon
influenced
Eribon, Foucault’s biographer (1989), drew on his analyses of subjection and sexuality to show how insult shapes gay subjectivity (Réflexions sur la question gay, 1999). D. Eribon, Michel Foucault (1989); Réflexions sur la question gay (1999); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Evidence: AI draft
Didier Eribon › b. 1953
Achille Mbembe
influenced ✓
Mbembe extended Foucault’s biopower into ‘necropolitics’: sovereignty shows itself in deciding who may live and who must die, from plantation to colony (‘Necropolitics’, 2003). A. Mbembe, “Necropolitics”, Public Culture 15 (2003); M. Foucault, « Il faut défendre la société » (lectures 1976; publ. 1997)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Achille Mbembe › b. 1957
Saba Mahmood
influenced
Mahmood used Foucault’s late work on ethics as practices of self-formation to analyse how women in Cairo’s mosque movement cultivate piety through bodily discipline (Politics of Piety, 2005). S. Mahmood, Politics of Piety (2005); M. Foucault, L’usage des plaisirs (1984); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Evidence: AI draft
Saba Mahmood › 1962–2018
Miranda Fricker
influenced
Fricker adopted Foucault’s point that power can operate structurally, without a particular agent, in her notion of identity power behind testimonial injustice (Epistemic Injustice, 2007). M. Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (2007); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Evidence: AI draft
Miranda Fricker › b. 1966
José Medina
influenced
Following Foucault’s idea of counter-memory, Medina proposed a ‘guerrilla pluralism’ of resistant memories that create epistemic friction against official histories (The Epistemology of Resistance, 2013). J. Medina, “Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and Guerrilla Pluralism”, Foucault Studies (2011); The Epistemology of Resistance (2013)
Evidence: AI draft
José Medina › b. 1968
Andreas Reckwitz
influenced
Reckwitz drew on Foucault’s genealogy of subjectivation to trace bourgeois, organised-modern and postmodern subject cultures from the eighteenth century to the present (Das hybride Subjekt, 2006). A. Reckwitz, Das hybride Subjekt. Eine Theorie der Subjektkulturen von der bürgerlichen Moderne zur Postmoderne (2006); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Evidence: AI draft
Andreas Reckwitz › b. 1970
Amia Srinivasan
influenced
Srinivasan took Foucault, following Nietzsche, as a paradigm of critical genealogy whose force is not epistemic but shows what our representations do (‘Genealogy, Epistemology and Worldmaking’, 2019). A. Srinivasan, “Genealogy, Epistemology and Worldmaking”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 119 (2019)
Evidence: AI draft
Amia Srinivasan › b. 1984
Criticism
Mutual critique 1
Jacques Derrida ⇄ mutual taught
taught ✓
Derrida attended Foucault’s classes at the École normale supérieure in the early 1950s, when Foucault taught psychology there; he opened ‘Cogito and the History of Madness’ (1963) by recalling that he had had ‘the good fortune to study under’ Foucault. J. Derrida, “Cogito et histoire de la folie” (lecture 1963), in L’écriture et la différence (1967); B. Peeters, Derrida (2010)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
criticised
Answering Derrida’s critique of his Descartes reading, Foucault called Derrida’s method ‘a little pedagogy’ that reduces discursive practices to textual traces (‘Mon corps, ce papier, ce feu’, 1972). M. Foucault, “Mon corps, ce papier, ce feu”, appendix to Histoire de la folie (2nd ed., 1972); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Evidence: AI draft
criticised by
In ‘Cogito and the History of Madness’ (1963) Derrida questioned whether madness can be given a history in the language of reason, and disputed Foucault’s reading of Descartes. J. Derrida, “Cogito et histoire de la folie” (lecture 1963), in L’écriture et la différence (1967); SEP “Jacques Derrida”
Evidence: AI draft
Jacques Derrida › 1930–2004
Criticized by 7
Jean Baudrillard
criticised by
In Oublier Foucault (1977) Baudrillard argued that Foucault’s analysis of power and sexuality mirrors the powers it describes, just as these are dissolving into simulation. J. Baudrillard, Oublier Foucault (1977)
Evidence: AI draft
Jean Baudrillard › 1929–2007
Jürgen Habermas
criticised by
Habermas charged Foucault’s genealogy of power with presentism, relativism and ‘cryptonormativism’, since it cannot account for the norms its own critique presupposes (Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 1985, IX–X). J. Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (1985), Lectures IX–X
Evidence: AI draft
Jürgen Habermas › 1929–2026
Nicos Poulantzas
criticised by
Poulantzas objected that Foucault’s microphysics of power neglects the state, law and the relations of production, and underestimates the role of organised violence (State, Power, Socialism, 1978). N. Poulantzas, L’État, le pouvoir, le socialisme (1978), Introduction and Part I
Evidence: AI draft
Nicos Poulantzas › 1936–1979
Silvia Federici
criticised by
Federici objected that Foucault’s history of the disciplined body omits the witch-hunt and describes bio-power without its motive, the reproduction of labour-power (Caliban and the Witch, 2004, introduction). S. Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2004), Introduction
Evidence: AI draft
Silvia Federici › b. 1942
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
criticised by
Spivak argued that Foucault’s analysis of power stays within Europe, ignoring the epistemic violence of imperialism and the international division of labour (‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, 1988). G. C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, in C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (1988)
Evidence: AI draft
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak › b. 1942
Axel Honneth
criticised by
Honneth argued that Foucault’s theory of power, built on strategic struggle alone, cannot explain how social orders become stable and drifts into systems theory (Kritik der Macht, 1985). A. Honneth, Kritik der Macht. Reflexionsstufen einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie (1985)
Evidence: AI draft
Axel Honneth › b. 1949
Byung-Chul Han
criticised by
Byung-Chul Han argued that Foucault’s disciplinary society and biopolitics no longer describe neoliberalism, whose achievement-subject exploits itself through psychopolitics (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft, 2010; Psychopolitik, 2014). B.-C. Han, Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (2010); Psychopolitik. Neoliberalismus und die neuen Machttechniken (2014)
Evidence: AI draft
Byung-Chul Han › b. 1959
Criticizes 3
Karl Marx
criticised
Foucault held that Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought ‘like a fish in water’ and makes no radical break with political economy (The Order of Things, 1966). M. Foucault, Les mots et les choses (1966), ch. 8, section on Ricardo
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Sigmund Freud
criticised
In The Will to Knowledge (1976) Foucault challenged the ‘repressive hypothesis’ and placed Freudian psychoanalysis within the long history of confession that produces truths about sex. M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir (1976), parts II–III; SEP “Michel Foucault”
Evidence: AI draft
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Jean-Paul Sartre
criticised
Foucault called Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason ‘the magnificent and pathetic effort of a nineteenth-century man to think the twentieth century’ (interview, La Quinzaine littéraire, 1966). M. Foucault, interview with M. Chapsal, La Quinzaine littéraire 5 (May 1966), in Dits et écrits I
Evidence: AI draft
Jean-Paul Sartre › 1905–1980
Works
The Great Confinement – and Descartes' exclusion of madness.
Epistemes – and man as a face drawn in sand.
From torture to discipline: the panopticon as a diagram of power.
Against the repressive hypothesis: power produces sexuality.
200 years after Kant: enlightenment as a critical ontology of the present.
Position
Foucault asked how the forms of knowledge we take for granted came into being, and what power they exercise. His “archaeologies” uncovered the hidden rules (“epistemes”) that determine what can count as true in an era – madness, illness or “man” himself turned out to be recent historical constructions. In Discipline and Punish he described the shift from public torture to the prison and to a society of discipline, symbolised by the Panopticon, in which people are trained by constant surveillance and examination. Power, he argued, is not simply repressive but productive: it creates knowledge, norms and even subjects. With the concept of biopolitics he described the modern management of the life of populations. His work became indispensable for history, sociology and political theory.
Life & context
Foucault was born in Poitiers in 1926 and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris. He worked in Uppsala, Warsaw, Hamburg and Tunis before being elected to the Collège de France in 1970, to a chair in the history of systems of thought. He was also politically active, for instance for prisoners’ rights. He died in Paris in 1984 of an AIDS-related illness.
Further main works
- The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969)
Appears in
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