Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher and historian of ideas whose work fundamentally transformed understanding of power, knowledge and subjectivity. His genealogical method traced how modern institutions produce subjects through disciplinary mechanisms, medical classification and sexual regulation.
Foucault’s major contributions include analyses of psychiatric power, clinical medicine, prison systems, and sexuality. His concepts of biopower, disciplinary society and technologies of the self provide essential frameworks for understanding contemporary forms of domination and resistance.
Related concepts: biopolitics, disciplinary-power, psychopolitics