Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984) was an influential French philosopher, historian and literary critic who addressed the relationship between power and knowledge in contemporary society. He argued that control over people is not achieved by acts of domination or coercion. Instead power comes from everywhere as the regime of truth. It is not concentrated, but rather dispersed and pervasive through social institutions. In this sense, Foucault believed that to challenge power is to detach the power of truth from the forms of social, economic and cultural hegemony within which it operates at the present time.