PAUL-MICHEL FOUCAULT

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) is a

famous French philosopher who is known
as one of the founders of post-
structuralism.
Foucault was an active member of
French Communist Party in the early
1950’s but his disillusionment with
Marxism directed him to form new
theories.
Foucault’s method of binary
oppositions can be said to be the source
of inspiration to Edward Said in creating
“Orientalism”. Foucault analyzed power
relations in different social institutions and
criticized enslaving discourses.
 INTRODUCTION
Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they
are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a post-structuralist and
postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working
in communication studies, anthropology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, and
critical theory.
After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major
book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the
University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966),
publications which displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced
himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called
"archaeology.“
From 1966 to 1968, 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. Foucault
subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the
Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing
groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to
die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
 Post structuralism
• With the emergence of post-structuralism, we see a shift from ideology to discourse in social
theory. Let us begin with the two main tendencies in post-structuralism: textuality and
discursivity.
• Textuality refers to a movement within literary, cultural theory and in philosophy emphasizing
the revaluation and revalorization of text as text.
• Textual researches focus on language as a producer of meaning rather than a pale reflection
of some prior reality (Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva etc).
• Jacques Derrida even rejects such things as summary and translation and thinks that there
are only other texts. In accordance with textuality wave, historical legal and medical records
are analysed as producers of their own right rather than a pale reflection of some prior reality.
• Discursivity (relating to discourse or modes of discourse) on the other hand, has an area of
research much broader than textual analyses.
• Foucault’s discourse contains all traditions, norms, rules, texts, symbols, words and
expressions where hierarchical power relations could be found. Discursivity unlike textuality,
not only deals with the “text”, but also with the “context”.
 PANOPTICISM
• In “Panopticism” article, Foucault talks about three types of
power. In his view, the relation between a master and a slave
is not a relation of power.
• The first type of power is based on classical discipline and
punish principle.
• The second type of power which Foucault calls as
“panopticism” takes its name from Jeremy Bentham’s famous
prison design: Panopticon.
• In Panopticon, prisoners are closed in dark cells and all cells
are arranged in a way to see a long tower at the center of the
prison.
• The tower’s inside is invisible but people in the tower can
observe the behaviours of the prisoners. According to
Foucault, this fear of being observed is strongly felt by the
prisoners and after a period it becomes a habit for the
prisoners.
• Thus, people act very carefully with the fear of being observed
in the social life. Foucault asserts that liberal society does not
need chains to force people to do something.
 PANOPTICISM
• Rather, Panopticism fulfils this duty. “So, it is not
necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good
behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the
schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of
the regulations.
• Bentham was surprised that panoptic institutions could be
so light: there were no more bars, no more chains, no
more heavy locks; all that was needed was that the
separations should be clear, and the openings well
arranged” (Foucault, “Panopticism”, pg 202).
• Foucault believes that Panopticism is one of the most
important aspects of modern societies and it
“automatizes and deindividualizes the power” (Foucault,
pg 202). Panoptic power works with the internalization of
the fear of surveillance.
• The third type of power is called as “plague power” and
it is based on record keeping and the controlling of
individuals by their records
“The Body of the Condemned”

Michael Foucault’s classic “The Body of the

Condemned” covers that drastic changes that crime and
punishment has seen in the past couple centuries, both in
morality and in practice.
Foucault begins by comparing a public execution from
1757 to an account of prison rules from 1837.
According to the first public execution model, torture and
punishment are used as public spectacles and included
characteristics like physical punishment, the art of inflicting pain,
visible display of suffering. By doing this, a confused horror
spread from the scaffold; it enveloped both executioner and
condemned, it often turned the legal violence of the executioner
into shame.
However, later the exhibition of prisoners, the pillory and
the public execution was replaced by the model of “punishment
as a cure”. Punishment had to become the most hidden part of
the penal process according to this new model.
The effectiveness of punishment is seen as resulting from
its inevitability, not from its visible intensity. It is the certainty of
being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public
punishment that must discourage crime.