Foucault, Michel
Foucault, Michel (1926–84)A controversial French post-structuralist philosopher, professor of ‘the history of systems of thought’, who had a pronounced (some say unfortunate) impact on sociology from the mid 1970s onwards. His work defies easy description and characterization. The one major intellectual influence on his work was probably Nietzsche.
The most straightforward way to approach Foucault's work is to read his case-studies of madness, medicine, prisons, and sexuality. In Madness and Civilization (1961), he charts the emergence of a world of reason and unreason, symbolized in the segregating asylum and the birth of psychiatry. The book spans the period that was Foucault's principal concern: the Middle Ages through the Renaissance to the Modern Period starting with the early 19th century. In The Birth of the Clinic...
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