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A Brief Overview
His Work
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.
Hes well known for his critiques of various social
institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine and
the prison system, and also for his ideas on the
history of sexuality.
His general theories concerning power and the
relation between power and knowledge, as well as
his ideas concerning "discourse" in relation to the
Brief Overview
history of Western thought have been widely
discussed and applied.
Foucault was also opposed to all social
constructs that implied an identity, which included
everything from the identity of male/female and
homosexuality, to that of criminals and political
activists.
His work is often described as postmodernist or
post-structuralist by contemporary commentators
and critics.
Brief Overview
During the 1960s, however, he was more often
associated with the structuralist movement.
Although he was initially happy to go along with
this description, he later emphasized his
distance from the structuralist approach, arguing
that unlike the structuralists he did not adopt a
formalist approach.
Neither was he interested in having the
postmodern label applied to his own work,
saying he preferred to discuss how 'modernity'
was defined.
Criticisms
Many thinkers have criticized Foucault, ranging
from Jrgen Habermas, and Jacques Derrida to
Slavoj iek.
While each of them takes issue with different
aspects of Foucault's work, all of these approaches
share the same basic orientation:
Foucault seems to reject the liberal values and
philosophy associated with the Enlightenment while
simultaneously secretly relying on them.
Criticisms
Criticisms