Foucault, Michel (1926–1984)

Biographical Information

Born in Poitiers on October 15, 1926, Foucault moved to Paris to study at the prestigious lycée Henri-IV. In 1946, he was admitted to the Ecole Normale Supérièure where he studied philosophy with Maurice Merlau-Ponty. In 1948, Foucault received his degree in philosophy. He followed this in 1950 with a degree in psychology, and in 1952 was awarded a diploma in psychopathology.

Foucault published his first book, Madness and Civilization, in 1960. From this point until his death from an AIDS-related illness in 1984, he maintained an active publishing record, on a dizzying array of subjects. While all of his work has influenced the study of prisons in some form or another, his book Discipline and Punish, which analyzes the historical development of the prison, is most often cited. In addition to his academic work, Foucault influenced prison policy through his involvement with the Prison Information Group (GIP) that [Page 340]sought to give inmates a voice in shaping penal practices in France.

Foucault's Main Theoretical Ideas

Foucault sought the explanation of modern life in its historical origins. He believed that the social world of the past was an ordered place and that traces of that order could still be found. Searching for those traces in accounts from that epoch or period was an undertaking much like the work of archaeologists searching for relics and artifacts of ancient societies and cultures. Each specimen had a story to tell, and several of those stories could be combined to give an account of how the pharaohs of Egypt or the Aztecs of South America lived. Similarly, texts, records, accounts, and inventories could tell the story of a social organization such as a prison or correctional system in the same way that an artifact could offer up explanations of how food was prepared, how clothes were made, how animals were hunted and caught, or how battles were fought and won.

Foucault was not so much interested in extinct and ancient civilizations as in how archaeological features of recently passed social institutions and organizations could help explain how modern society came to be like it is. The social archaeology of the 15th or 16th centuries could offer sources and evidence of the origins of modern institutions such as the hospital, the school, or the prison. Knowledge was the key source to be sifted for archaeological discoveries.

In much the same way that an Egyptologist would dig in and around pyramids or burial sites looking for artifacts or cultural symbols such as paintings or ancient scriptures, the discourse (i.e., how knowledge was created, discovered, secreted and stored, displayed, replicated, and communicated) was the “site” where Foucault proposed to dig. How knowledge was ordered reflected how power was exercised in the society. Its consequences for individuals and for the society at large would describe for the archaeologist the world in which people had lived, which, in turn, described the origins of so much of modern living. Out of this discourse emerged the knowledge and ways of knowing that characterize later epochs. We see how the power of religion has given way to the power of science, and how the power of confession has given way to therapy. Interpreting acts of nature as acts of God has given way to scientific experimentation and discovery. Eventually, the sciences of the natural world extended to sciences of the social world such as psychology, sociology, criminology, and penology.

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