Teoria de michel foucault philosophy

Michel Foucault, the French postmodernist, has been hugely influential in shaping understandings of power, leading away from the analysis of actors who use power as an instrument of coercion, and even away from the discreet structures in which those actors operate, toward the idea that ‘power is everywhere’, diffused and embodied in discourse, knowledge and ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault 1991; Rabinow 1991). Power for Foucault is what makes us what we are, operating on a quite different level from other theories:

‘His work marks a radical departure from previous modes of conceiving power and cannot be easily integrated with previous ideas, as power is diffuse rather than concentrated, embodied and enacted rather than possessed, discursive rather than purely coercive, and constitutes agents rather than being deployed by them’ (Gaventa 2003: 1)

Foucault challenges the idea that power is wielded by people or groups by way of ‘episodic’ or ‘sovereign’ acts of domination or coercion, seeing it instead as dispersed and pervasive. ‘Power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’ so in this sense is neither an agency nor a structure (Foucault 1998: 63). Instead it is a kind of ‘metapower’ or ‘regime of truth’ that pervades society, and which is in constant flux and negotiation. Foucault uses the term ‘power/knowledge’ to signify that power is constituted through accepted forms of knowledge, scientific understanding and ‘truth’:

‘Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.  And it induces regular effects of power.  Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are char

Foucault’s Political Philosophy: The Discourse of power, history and sexuality Victoria Borges Dr. Dooley PS-222-01 Modern Political Thought January 25th 2016 Biography During a time when structure, concrete concepts, and conformity was praised, Michel Foucault was one of many people who decided to deviate from the norm. As a result Foucault became one of the most influential, and radical political philosophers during the second half of the Twentieth century Miller, J. (1993). The Passion of Michel Foucault. New York City: Simon & Schuster. . Foucault was born in Poitier, France on October 15, 1926 Kelly, M. (2016, Feburary 25). Michel Foucault: Political Thought. United Kingdom. Retrieved from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosphy .. Foucault was born into a privileged family, his father and grandparents were all doctors Kelly, M. (2016, as a result Foucault was also expected to be a doctor Ibid.. Ironically, Foucault started his intellectual journey hating the type of bourgeois society and culture, from which he came from Miller, J. (1993).. During his childhood he attended Saint-Stanislaus for middle school, and graduated from a prestigious high school Lycee Henri IV Ibid.. Regardless of Foucault’s socio-economic background, he was not like many others his age. Unfortunately, Foucault was reluctant in providing details about his childhood and described his father, Paul Foucault, as a bully Miller, J. (1993).. Foucault did however excel in school, and entered École Normale Supérieure. In this university he did not fit in. His classmates noticed that he was obsessed with self-harm, and suicide; Foucault’s dorm room was decorated with paintings of murder and torture Ibid.. Foucault’s struggle with his own sanity, is potentially one of many reasons he empathized with marginalized groups. During Foucault’s early career, he was influenced by Karl Marx Counterpoints. (1997). Appendix

Michel Foucault was undoubtedly one of the most important and influential philosophers and intellectuals of the twentieth century. He is the author of seminal works that are now considered veritable classics of contemporary thought, including: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1961), Naissance de la clinique (1963), Les mots et les choses (1966), L’archéologie du savoir (1969), Surveiller et punir (1975), and Histoire de la sexualité (vol. 1, 1976; vol. 2, 1984; vol. 3, 1984). But that is not all. In addition to the texts published during Foucault’s lifetime, many other works of Foucault have become essential over the past forty years. These works have, in fact, made it possible to take a new look at his work; a perspective that, in many respects, is not merely different but also renewed. This perspective leads to a reinterpretation, reworking, and, in some cases, even correction of many analyses of Foucault’s oeuvre developed in the previous years.

Already in 1994, with the publication of the volumes of the collection Dits et écrits—which grouped, in chronological order, almost all the texts that had appeared during Foucault’s life (interviews, articles, conferences, etc.) and also some confidentially disseminated writings—it was possible to begin examining, with greater precision, the state and development of his intellectual work. Subsequently, in 2015, a new fundamental stage was reached: the completion, after 25 years, of the publication of all the thirteen courses taught by Foucault at the Collège de France (from 1970 to 1984, with the sole exception of 1977), which convey and in a certain sense capture the distinctly in-progress nature of Foucauldian research. Finally, the most recent step. This path of “emergence” of Foucauldian thought—which, preliminarily, we can define as a path of “reconstruction”—is accompanied indeed by another novelty that, until about a decade ago, seemed absolutely unthinkable. Today we