132 Facts About Michel Foucault

Paul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic.

Michel Foucault's thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory.

From 1966 to 1968, Michel Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII.

In 1970, Michel Foucault was admitted to the College de France, a membership he retained until his death.

Michel Foucault became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform.

Paul-Michel Foucault was born on 15 October 1926 in the city of Poitiers, west-central France, as the second of three children in a prosperous, socially conservative, upper-middle-class family.

Michel Foucault's father, a successful local surgeon born in Fontainebleau, moved to Poitiers, where he set up his own practice.

Michel Foucault married Anne Malapert, the daughter of prosperous surgeon Dr Prosper Malapert, who owned a private practice and taught anatomy at the University of Poitiers' School of Medicine.

Paul Michel Foucault eventually took over his father-in-law's medical practice, while Anne took charge of their large mid-19th-century house, Le Piroir, in the village of Vendeuvre-du-Poitou.

The children were raised to be nominal Catholics, attending mass at the Church of Saint-Porchair, and while Michel Foucault briefly became an altar boy, none of the family was devout.

In later life, Michel Foucault revealed very little about his childhood.

In 1930, two years early, Michel Foucault began his schooling at the local Lycee Henry-IV.

Michel Foucault's parents opposed the occupation and the Vichy regime, but did not join the Resistance.

That year, Michel Foucault's mother enrolled him in the College Saint-Stanislas, a strict Catholic institution run by the Jesuits.

Michel Foucault remained largely unpopular, spending much time alone, reading voraciously.

Prone to self-harm, in 1948 Michel Foucault allegedly attempted suicide; his father sent him to see the psychiatrist Jean Delay at the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center.

At the time, Michel Foucault engaged in homosexual activity with men whom he encountered in the underground Parisian gay scene, indulging in drug use; according to biographer James Miller, he enjoyed the thrill and sense of danger that these activities offered him.

Michel Foucault began reading the publications of philosopher Gaston Bachelard, taking a particular interest in his work exploring the history of science.

Michel Foucault did so in 1950, but never became particularly active in its activities, and never adopted an orthodox Marxist viewpoint, rejecting core Marxist tenets such as class struggle.

Michel Foucault left the Communist Party in 1953, but remained Althusser's friend and defender for the rest of his life.

Michel Foucault adopted many of the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, undertaking psychoanalytical interpretation of his dreams and making friends undergo Rorschach tests.

Michel Foucault subsequently experienced another groundbreaking self-revelation when watching a Parisian performance of Samuel Beckett's new play, Waiting for Godot, in 1953.

Interested in literature, Michel Foucault was an avid reader of the philosopher Maurice Blanchot's book reviews published in Nouvelle Revue Francaise.

Michel Foucault came across Hermann Broch's 1945 novel The Death of Virgil, a work that obsessed both him and Barraque.

Interested in the work of Swiss psychologist Ludwig Binswanger, Michel Foucault aided family friend Jacqueline Verdeaux in translating his works into French.

Michel Foucault was particularly interested in Binswanger's studies of Ellen West who, like himself, had a deep obsession with suicide, eventually killing herself.

That same year, Michel Foucault published his first book, Maladie mentale et personalite, in which he exhibited his influence from both Marxist and Heideggerian thought, covering a wide range of subject matter from the reflex psychology of Pavlov to the classic psychoanalysis of Freud.

Biographer James Miller noted that while the book exhibited "erudition and evident intelligence", it lacked the "kind of fire and flair" which Michel Foucault exhibited in subsequent works.

Michel Foucault grew to despise it, unsuccessfully attempting to prevent its republication and translation into English.

Michel Foucault spent the next five years abroad, first in Sweden, working as cultural diplomat at the University of Uppsala, a job obtained through his acquaintance with historian of religion Georges Dumezil.

In spring 1956 Barraque broke from his relationship with Michel Foucault, announcing that he wanted to leave the "vertigo of madness".

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

Later, Michel Foucault admitted that the work was a first draft with certain lack of quality.

Again at Dumezil's behest, in October 1958 Michel Foucault arrived in the capital of the Polish People's Republic, Warsaw and took charge of the University of Warsaw's Centre Francais.

Michel Foucault found life in Poland difficult due to the lack of material goods and services following the destruction of the Second World War.

Various positions were available in West Germany, and so Michel Foucault relocated to the Institut francais Hamburg, teaching the same courses he had given in Uppsala and Warsaw.

Michel Foucault refers to a bewildering variety of sources, ranging from well-known authors such as Erasmus and Moliere to archival documents and forgotten figures in the history of medicine and psychiatry.

The work alludes to the work of French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud, who exerted a strong influence over Michel Foucault's thought at the time.

Michel Foucault submitted it at the University of Paris, although the university's regulations for awarding a State doctorate required the submission of both his main thesis and a shorter complementary thesis.

The first step was to obtain a rapporteur, or "sponsor" for the work: Michel Foucault chose Georges Canguilhem.

The second was to find a publisher, and as a result Folie et deraison was published in French in May 1961 by the company Plon, whom Michel Foucault chose over Presses Universitaires de France after being rejected by Gallimard.

Michel Foucault's secondary thesis, written in Hamburg between 1959 and 1960, was a translation and commentary on German philosopher Immanuel Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View ; the thesis was titled Introduction a l'Anthropologie.

The academics responsible for reviewing his work were concerned about the unconventional nature of his major thesis; reviewer Henri Gouhier noted that it was not a conventional work of history, making sweeping generalisations without sufficient particular argument, and that Michel Foucault clearly "thinks in allegories".

In October 1960, Michel Foucault took a tenured post in philosophy at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, commuting to the city every week from Paris, where he lived in a high-rise block on the rue du Dr Finlay.

Michel Foucault then took Vuillemin's job when the latter was elected to the College de France in 1962.

Michel Foucault made life at the university difficult for Garaudy, leading the latter to transfer to Poitiers.

Michel Foucault caused controversy by securing a university job for his lover, the philosopher Daniel Defert, with whom he retained a non-monogamous relationship for the rest of his life.

Michel Foucault maintained a keen interest in literature, publishing reviews in literary journals, including Tel Quel and Nouvelle Revue Francaise, and sitting on the editorial board of Critique.

Michel Foucault was selected to be among the "Eighteen Man Commission" that assembled between November 1963 and March 1964 to discuss university reforms that were to be implemented by Christian Fouchet, the Gaullist Minister of National Education.

Michel Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, from one period's episteme to another.

In September 1966, Michel Foucault took a position teaching psychology at the University of Tunis in Tunisia.

Michel Foucault moved a few kilometres from Tunis, to the village of Sidi Bou Said, where fellow academic Gerard Deledalle lived with his wife.

Michel Foucault was in Tunis during the anti-government and pro-Palestinian riots that rocked the city in June 1967, and which continued for a year.

Michel Foucault hid their printing press in his garden, and tried to testify on their behalf at their trials, but was prevented when the trials became closed-door events.

In 1968, Michel Foucault returned to Paris, moving into an apartment on the Rue de Vaugirard.

Lectures began at the university in January 1969, and straight away its students and staff, including Michel Foucault, were involved in occupations and clashes with police, resulting in arrests.

Michel Foucault refused national accreditation of the department's degrees, resulting in a public rebuttal from Foucault.

Michel Foucault desired to leave Vincennes and become a fellow of the prestigious College de France.

Michel Foucault requested to join, taking up a chair in what he called the "history of systems of thought", and his request was championed by members Dumezil, Hyppolite, and Vuillemin.

In November 1969, when an opening became available, Michel Foucault was elected to the College, though with opposition by a large minority.

Michel Foucault gave his inaugural lecture in December 1970, which was published as L'Ordre du discours.

Michel Foucault enjoyed this teamwork and collective research, and together they published a number of short books.

In 1970 and 1972, Michel Foucault served as a professor in the French Department of the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York.

In May 1971, Michel Foucault co-founded the Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons along with historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet and journalist Jean-Marie Domenach.

Also campaigning against the death penalty, Michel Foucault co-authored a short book on the case of the convicted murderer Pierre Riviere.

Michel Foucault was active in anti-racist campaigns; in November 1971, he was a leading figure in protests following the perceived racist killing of Arab migrant Djellali Ben Ali.

Michel Foucault was involved in founding the Agence de Press-Liberation, a group of leftist journalists who intended to cover news stories neglected by the mainstream press.

In 1973, they established the daily newspaper Liberation, and Michel Foucault suggested that they establish committees across France to collect news and distribute the paper, and advocated a column known as the "Chronicle of the Workers' Memory" to allow workers to express their opinions.

Michel Foucault wanted an active journalistic role in the paper, but this proved untenable, and he soon became disillusioned with Liberation, believing that it distorted the facts; he did not publish in it until 1980.

Michel Foucault intended it as the first in a seven-volume exploration of the subject.

Michel Foucault soon became dissatisfied with Gallimard after being offended by senior staff member Pierre Nora.

Michel Foucault produced introductions for the memoirs of Herculine Barbin and My Secret Life.

Michel Foucault defines truth as a system of ordered procedures for the production, distribution, regulation, circulation, and operation of statements.

Michel Foucault remained a political activist, focusing on protesting government abuses of human rights around the world.

Michel Foucault was a key player in the 1975 protests against the Spanish government who were set to execute 11 militants sentenced to death without fair trial.

In 1977, Italian newspaper Corriere della sera asked Michel Foucault to write a column for them.

Michel Foucault's articles expressed awe of Khomeini's Islamist movement, for which he was widely criticised in the French press, including by Iranian expatriates.

Michel Foucault's response was that Islamism was to become a major political force in the region, and that the West must treat it with respect rather than hostility.

Michel Foucault continued to support Solidarity, and with his friend Simone Signoret traveled to Poland as part of a Medecins du Monde expedition, taking time out to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In October 1980, Michel Foucault became a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, giving the Howison Lectures on "Truth and Subjectivity", while in November he lectured at the Humanities Institute at New York University.

Michel Foucault's growing popularity in American intellectual circles was noted by Time magazine, while Foucault went on to lecture at UCLA in 1981, the University of Vermont in 1982, and Berkeley again in 1983, where his lectures drew huge crowds.

Michel Foucault praised sado-masochistic activity in interviews with the gay press, describing it as "the real creation of new possibilities of pleasure, which people had no idea about previously".

In summer 1983, he developed a persistent dry cough, which concerned friends in Paris, but Michel Foucault insisted it was just a pulmonary infection.

Only when hospitalized was Michel Foucault correctly diagnosed as being HIV-positive; treated with antibiotics, he delivered a final set of lectures at the College de France.

On 26 June 1984, Liberation announced Michel Foucault's death, mentioning the rumour that it had been brought on by AIDS.

Michel Foucault's body was then buried at Vendeuvre-du-Poitou in a small ceremony.

Michel Foucault noted that he exhibited an "enormous capacity for work".

Michel Foucault noted that in 1969, Foucault embodied the idea of "the militant intellectual".

Michel Foucault loved classical music, particularly enjoying the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and became known for wearing turtleneck sweaters.

Politically, Michel Foucault was a leftist throughout much of his life, though his particular stance within the left often changed.

The theme that underlies all Michel Foucault's work is the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter.

Philosopher Philip Stokes of the University of Reading noted that overall, Michel Foucault's work was "dark and pessimistic".

Later in his life, Michel Foucault explained that his work was less about analyzing power as a phenomenon than about trying to characterize the different ways in which contemporary society has expressed the use of power to "objectivise subjects".

Michel Foucault described it as "by far the book I wrote most easily, with the greatest pleasure, and most rapidly".

Michel Foucault explores theory, criticism, and psychology with reference to the texts of Raymond Roussel, one of the first notable experimental writers.

Michel Foucault describes three types of power in his empirical analyses: sovereign power, disciplinary power, and biopower.

Michel Foucault is generally critical of "theories" that try to give absolute answers to "everything".

Michel Foucault is not critical of considering these phenomena as "power", but claims that these theories of power cannot completely describe all forms of power.

Michel Foucault writes that power always includes resistance, which means there is always a possibility that power and force relations will change in some way.

Michel Foucault says that disciplinary power is primarily not an oppressing form of power, but rather so a productive form of power.

Disciplinary power has according to Michel Foucault been especially successful due to its usage of three technologies: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and exams.

Michel Foucault says this construction creates an individuality by separating prisoners from each other in the physical room, since the prisoners cannot know if they are being watched at any given moment, they internalize the disciplinary power and regulate their own behavior as if they were always watched, the surveillance makes it possible to create extensive documentation about each prisoner and their behavior.

Michel Foucault has sometimes described biopower as separate from disciplinary power, but at other times he has described disciplinary power as an expression of biopower.

Further, Michel Foucault argues, that the body is not sufficient as a basis for self-understanding and understanding of others.

Michel Foucault turns the common saying "the body is the prison of the soul" and instead posits that "the soul is the prison of the body".

Feminists have with the help of Michel Foucault's ideas studied different ways that women form their bodies: through plastic surgery, diet, eating disorders, etc.

Butler follows Michel Foucault by saying that there is no "true" gender behind gender identity that constitutes its biological and objective fundament.

Michel Foucault has received criticism from other feminists, such as Susan Bordo and Kate Soper.

Michel Foucault considered his primary project to be the investigation of how people through history have been made into "subjects".

Michel Foucault talks of "assujettissement", which is a French term that for Michel Foucault refers to a process where power creates subjects while oppressing them using social norms.

Michel Foucault defines discourse as a form of oppression that does not require physical force.

Michel Foucault argued that "subjectivity" is a process, rather than a state of being.

Michel Foucault argues that the forces that have affected people can be changed; people always have the capacity to change the factors that limit their freedom.

For Michel Foucault there are no "good" and "bad" forms of subjectivity, since they are all a result of power relations.

Therefore, Michel Foucault argues, it is always crucial to continue with the practice of "critique".

Michel Foucault emphasizes that since the current way of being is not a necessity, it is possible to change it.

Michel Foucault argues that it is impossible to go beyond power relations, but that it is always possible to navigate power relations in a different way.

Care for the self consists of what Michel Foucault calls "the art of living" or "technologies of the self".

Michel Foucault is described by Mary Beth Mader as an epistemological constructivist and historicist.

Michel Foucault is critical of the idea that humans can reach "absolute" knowledge about the world.

Michel Foucault argues that such a spirituality was a natural part of the ancient Greek philosophy, where knowledge was considered as something that was only accessible to those that had an ethical character.

In modern times, Michel Foucault argues, anyone can reach "knowledge", as long as they are rational beings, educated, willing to participate in the scientific community and use a scientific method.

Michel Foucault's works have exercised a powerful influence over numerous humanistic and social scientific disciplines as one of the most influential and controversial scholars of the post-World War II period.

Deleuze went on to publish a book dedicated to Michel Foucault's thought in 1988 under the title Michel Foucault.

Michel Foucault's work has been compared to that of Erving Goffman by the sociologist Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Soren Kristiansen, who list Goffman as an influence on Michel Foucault.

Rather, Michel Foucault simply provides a few valuable maxims regarding the reading of history.

Michel Foucault has frequently been criticized by historians for what they consider to be a lack of rigor in his analyses.

Michel Foucault is sometimes criticized for his purported social constructionism, which some see as an affront to the concept of truth.

In Michel Foucault's 1971 televised debate with Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault argued against the possibility of any fixed human nature, as posited by Chomsky's concept of innate human faculties.

Chomsky argued that concepts of justice were rooted in human reason, whereas Michel Foucault rejected the universal basis for a concept of justice.

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, while acknowledging that Michel Foucault contributed to give a right of citizenship in cultural life to certain marginal and eccentric experiences, asserts that his radical critique of authority was detrimental to education.

One of Michel Foucault's claims regarding the subjectivity of the self has been disputed.