Michel Foucault

Twentieth century French philosopher. Foucault constructed a series of genealogies tracing the transmission of power through discuourse (citing in particular JeremyBentham and the notion of the Panopticon) and its instantiation in terms of social norms (as opposed to cruder forms of coercion); Power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organisation." As an example, these texts trace the evolution of prisons, hospitals, schools and asylums as instruments of social control. What, in other terms, was termed by Thomas Ssaz as 'the therapeutic state.'

Combining the diverse positions of Freud and Marx, Foucault came to regard discourse (and, by extension, the exercise of power) as constituting the notion of the self, as with the example of the homosexual subject being 'produced' through medical science (see OnHomosexuality). To Foucault, the self represents little more than an illusion of social autonomy. Arguably, one of the problems with Foucault lies with what is elided in Foucault, namely a means of stepping outside the discourse of power in his work, since to seek to resist power is a act of power in itself (Foucault does suggest a number of practises of the self - the self as action rather than reflection - that supposedly cut this particular gordian knot, concerning norms that were prevalent prior to christian subjectivisation. However, since these practises are themselves subject to discourse and the exercise of power, they do not seem to represent an alternative to the prevalence of discursive coercion). Accordingly, when André Glucksmann spoke of the "the fascism within us all," Foucault agreed. Since Foucault saw the construction of the self as a function of power the only solution is the disappearance of the self, a concept he advocated, sinc he regarded the notion of the subject and subjection as being essentially contingent. As such, the only distinction between forms of power is what Slavoj Zizek termed 'the good terror.'

"My idea is that the subject is inherently political, in the sense that 'subject', to me, denotes a piece of freedom - where you are no longer rooted in some firm substance, you are in an open situation."

It may instead be argued that without the individual self as a point of resistance totalitarianism is inveitable (for instance, as dramatised Koestler's Darkness at Noon, the notion that the needs of the individual must be subordinated to the comon good leads inexorably to the oppression of the individual). See: OnCommunism. A further problem with Foucault's theories is increased modern scepticism towards the idea of environmental influences being predominant in development of the self, as the Lockean notion of the tabula rasa moves back towards an emphasis on innate characteristics and genetics.