The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Foucault, Michel
Foucault, Michel
(
1926
–
84
), French historian, born in Poitiers. He studied in Paris at the École Normale Supérieure before pursuing a varied academic career in Poland, Sweden, Tunisia, and France, culminating in his chair in the history of systems of thought at the Collège de France. His early work, notably Folie et déraison: histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (Madness and Civilization,
1961
), Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things,
1966
), and L'Archéologie du savoir (The Archaeology of Knowledge,
1969
), is devoted to the history of institutions (scientific, medical, penal, etc.) and the
discourses
on which their power is founded. It expresses a libertarian distrust of the ways in which modern institutions since the
Enlightenment
regulate knowledge and submit people to the control of ‘experts’. His Surveiller et punir (Discipline and Punish,...
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