Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault (Paul-Michel Foucault) (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was a French philosopher,historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic. His theories addressed the relationship between power andknowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a post-structuralistand postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels, preferring to present his thought as a critical history of modernity. His thought has been highly influential for both academic and activist groups.
Born in Poitiers, France to an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV and then the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness. After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced two more significant publications, The Birth of the Clinic and The Order of Things, which displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, a theoretical movement in social anthropology from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories were examples of a historiographical technique Foucault was developing which he called "archaeology".
== Tossup Questions ==
# This author described a discipline as "spaces of ordered and exploratory experience" and declares that "Don Quixote reads the world in order to prove his books" in a text that describes the "epistemes" of different generations. This author wrote about a concept that creates a form of individuality that is cellular, organic, genetic, and combinatory. A book by this man rejects the "repressive hypothesis" and introduces the term "biopower" to describe state control over the bodies of individuals. This author of The Order of Things analyzed the Panopticon to explain the birth of the prison system. For 10 points, name this French author of The History of Sexuality and Discipline and Punish.
# In one work, this thinker showed how one of the title concepts produces a construct of individuality based on genetic, combinatory, cellular, and organic characteristics. This philosopher described the "Great Confinement" in which the mentally ill were no longer allowed to exist on the fringe of society, but were rather institutionalized. He defined each era's conception of the meaning of knowledge as its episteme. This author of Madness and Civilization discussed the public torture of Damiens and the idea of Bentham's Panopticon in a history of the penal system. For 10 points, name this French poststructuralist author of The Order of Things and Discipline and Punish.
# This philosopher wrote an unpublished work about the manifestation of sexuality in Christian confessions. This thinker used the example of Apollo denying his rape of Creusa in Euripedes' Ion as an example of parrhesia, or truthful speech, in his lectures collected as Fearless Speech. He discussed the presence of a series of Xs [exes] in the opening of a work that explores the origins of the humanities and the concept of representation from Descartes to Kant. This thinker used the ship of fools as a central symbol in one work, and considered Velasquez's Las Meninas in the first chapter of his The Order of Things. This philosopher analyzed power systems used to control abnormal individuals through hierarchical observation, judgment based on social norms, and examination in a work that idealized Bentham's Panopticon. For 10 points, name this French thinker who wrote Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality.
# This philosopher noted that the exclusion of lepers eventually transitioned to other exclusion rituals in an analogy of a ship of fools. His genealogy of knowledge is a direct allusion to Nietzsche's genealogy of morality. This thinker developed the concept of the medical gaze in his The Birth of the Clinic and argued that the conditions of discourse changed over time in The (*) Order of Things. This man analyzed Bentham's Panopticon in work,.and he developed the theory of biopower in his The Will to Knowledge. For ten points, name this French philosopher and author of Discipline and Punish.
# One work by this man claims that the enduring importance of kinship is due to blood being a "reality with a symbolic function". That work by this thinker rejects the "repressive hypothesis" in the opening section "We Other Victorians". Another book by this author of The Will to Knowledge outlines the transformation of biology, economics, and linguistics during the Renaissance, Classical, and contemporary (*) epistemes. That book opens with an extended examination of a Velazquez painting. This man followed the violent-to-regimented evolution of torture in a work that compares the modern prison system to Bentham's Panopticon. For 10 points, name this post-structuralist thinker who wrote History of Sexuality, The Order of Things, and Discipline and Punish.