Anne Foucault Research Paper

French historian, social theorist, philosopher and public intellectual Michel Foucault is remembered for his means of using historical research to elucidate the changes in discourse over time and the ever growing links between discourse, knowledge, institutions, and power. Born October 15th, 1926 in Poitiers, France, Michel Foucault was the second of three children in a middle-class family. His father, Paul Foucault, was an esteemed local surgeon. Both of Foucault's grandfathers were also doctors and his father was hoping, much to his dismay, that he would also follow in the family's footsteps and enter the medical profession. Anne Foucault, his mother, played a very active role in Foucault's early education. After Foucault graduated from …show more content…
Foucault particularly accentuates how this new wave method of imprisonment becomes an instrument of more effective jurisdiction: ''to punish less, but certainly to punish better'' Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish. Additionally, he maintains that that this new means of punishment becomes the seed for ever growing control of an entire society with hospitals, factories, and even educational institutions modeled on the modern prison system. However, this does not mean that we should believe that this formation of this new means was a result of a centrally controlling body, or ''the establishment''. In a typical genealogic fashion, Foucault's interpretation demonstrates how systems and institutions, created for different and commonly innocent purposes are brought together to mold the modern scheme of disciplinary power. “The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.” Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and …show more content…
''Knowledge is not for knowing; knowledge is for cutting'' Foucault, M. (1984) The Foucault Reader. It is the best example of what Michel Foucault calls power/knowledge since it merges into a unit of ''the deployment of force and the establishment of truth'' Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punishment. This method both extracts the facts regarding those who undergo the examination, whether it be what they know, or their state of mind, and also dictates how they are then treated, (by forcing them to study or placing them on a course of treatment).
To Foucault, the relation of power and knowledge is far closer than in the commonly familiar mantra ''knowledge is power'' meaning that knowledge is an instrument of power, although the two elements exist individually and independently. What Foucault is trying to emphasize is that, in the case of human beings, the ambitions of power and the ambitions of knowledge cannot be separated; in knowing we control, and in controlling we