Michel Foucault is primarily a cultural theorist whose impact has been immense across many disciplines within the social sciences and humanities. Madness, sexuality, the history of medicine, the nature of authorship, literature and transgression, the practice of historiography, the development of the penitentiary, the nature of power and discourse in modern societies: these are just some of the manifold topics on which Foucault wrote with vision and insight. Foucault is often associated with other French thinkers such as Jacques Derrida or Jacques Lacan as a founder of post-structuralism although, arguably, Foucault's work has been the more influential across a wider range of subjects, such as cultural studies, feminism, political theory, sociology, queer theory or cultural history.…
3873 words
Citation: Thacker, Andrew. "Michel Foucault". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 March 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1599, accessed 19 April 2024.]
