Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title "The History of Systems of Thought". His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucault's influence extends across the humanities and social sciences, and across many applied and professional areas of study.

Intellectual contexts

Influences on Foucault's work

Thinkers whose work strongly influenced Foucault's thought included:

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• Louis Althusser — French structuralist Marxist philosopher and Foucault's sometime teacher.
• Georges Bataille — French Nietzschean political and aesthetic philosopher.
• Georges Canguilhem — French historian of science.
• Gilles Deleuze — French philosopher. A great friend and ally of Foucault's in the early 1970s.
• Georges Dumézil — French structuralist mythologist, known for his reconstruction of Indo-Aryan mythology.
• Martin Heidegger — German philosopher whose influence was enormous in post-war France. Foucault rarely referred to him, but called him 'the essential philosopher'.
• Jean Hyppolite — French Hegel scholar and Foucault's sometime khâgne teacher.
• Karl Marx — Marx's influence in French intellectual life was dominant from 1945 through to the late 1970s. Foucault often found himself opposing Marxists, but claimed that he still quoted Marx without acknowledging him during this time as a kind of game.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty — French philosopher and sometime teacher of Foucault. Phenomenologist instrumental in popularising Saussure's structuralism for a philosophical audience.
• Friedrich Nietzsche — German philosopher whose work influenced Foucault's conception of society and power.
• Roland Barthes — French (post) structuralist literary critic who was at one time very close to Foucault.

Influence of Foucault's work

Foucault's work is frequently referred to in disciplines as diverse as philosophy, history, cultural studies, sociology, education, psychology, literary theory, management studies, the philosophy of science, urban design, museum studies, and many others. Quantitative evidence of the impact of his work can be found in the sheer volume of citations in standard academic journal indexes such as the Social Sciences Citation Index http://www.isinet.com/products/citation/ssci/ (more than 9000 citations). A keyword search of the Library of Congress catalogue http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=foucault&Search_Code=FT*&PID=10505 reveals over 750 volumes in a variety of languages relating to his writings, and a search on Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=michel+foucault reveals thousands of citations.

Related Topics:
Philosophy - History - Cultural studies - Sociology - Education - Psychology - Literary theory - Management studies - Philosophy of science - Urban design - Museum studies - Library of Congress - Google Scholar

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The World Social Forum and other Anti-Globalization/Anti-Capitalist movements have applied Foucault's philosophy of power dynamics (de-centralized logic of power working from the bottom up) through a lack of unification, hoping to spread an ideological influence in all levels of society.

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