One of the greatest theorists of the twentieth century, Michel Foucault was born in Poitiers, France, in 1926.
He lectured in universities throughout the world; served as the director at the Institut Francais in Hamburg,
Germany, and at the Institute de Philosophie at the Faculte des Lettres in the University of Clermont-Ferrand,
France; and wrote frequently for French newspapers and reviews. At the time of his tragically early death in 1984,
he held a chair at France's most prestigious institution, the College de France.
Summary
Foucault offers startling evidence that "man"--man as a subject of scientific knowledge--is at best
a recent invention, the result of a fundamental mutation in our culture. He cuts across disciplines and reaches
back into the seventeenth century to show how classical systems of knowledge, which linked all of nature within
a great chain of being and saw analogies between the stars in the heavens and the features in a human face, gave
way to the modern sciences of biology, philology, and political economy. The result is nothing less than an archaeology
of the sciences that unearths old patterns of meaning and reveals the shocking arbitrariness of our received truths.
