Category: Michel Foucault

In modern society, the dominant social account of ‘madness’, the attached characteristics, meanings, and treatment is monopolized by psychiatry and medicine, reducing the basis for its existence simply to biological differences. Historically, individuals were provided with socially produced images and descriptions of specific characteristics of madness and insanity, particularly in Western society, beginning with the…

Based on the theory of the Panopticon by Michel Foucault, this essay considers the view that the existence of power is intrinsically linked to the existence of resistance to it, with his idea being true for power within the media as well. I argue that power is part of the function of the media as…

Foucault (1976) describes biopower as the mechanisms and techniques that manage and control the lives of a population. The powerful statement “to make life, or to let die” (Foucault, 1976), highlights two different ways of looking at biopower and the state. On one hand, the main objective of the state is to make people live…

Before Foucault, ethics was focused on the finding of oneself within a predetermined moral order or the creation of oneself in terms of a great transcendental ought. Thinkers like Bentham believe in an ethical theory rooted in an empiricist account of human nature. Bentham’s ethics reflects what he calls “the greatest happiness principle,” where he…

The word ‘discourse’ becomes a significant part of theoretical and academic discourse with Michel Foucault. Foucault explains how discourse is guided by the people in power: ruling elite or state and that through discourse the power is exercised by them. It is a discourse that constructs the reality, that we see or believe to be…

Michel Foucault’s 1977 work, Discipline and Punish, philosophically analyses the development of the modern penal system. Foucault’s focus on the social contextualization of power relationships associated with punishment led to numerous new ways of thinking including the carceral continuum. He notes that the continuum acts as a means for the sentencing authority to infiltrate “all…

In this essay, I will argue that Foucault’s two registers of the modern machine-body – the anatomico-metaphysical and the technical-political, although distinct in construction share a common purpose to achieve their respective goals. The approach they have in common is to dehumanize the body and use the docile body for manipulation. To illustrate this, I…

Norm Kelly, a famous politician and councilor for the City of Toronto. Not only is he popular within the political community but is a well-liked and trendy figure within the world of social media. Norm Kelly belongs to the Liberal Party of Canada and also represented the City of Scarborough as a councilor as well…