Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was born in Poitiers in 1926. He joined the French Communist Party in 1950 but left in 1953, put off by homophobia in its ranks and the antisemitism of the Soviet 'doctors' plot'. His books, including History of Madness (1961), Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), traced how institutions shape and control people. He was elected to the College de France in 1969 and became a prominent activist in the 1970s, co-founding the Prison Information Group in 1971. He died in Paris in 1984, an early victim of AIDS.

Foucault is among the most cited thinkers in the humanities and social sciences, and his ideas about discipline, surveillance, biopower and the history of sexuality shaped criminology, queer theory, postcolonial studies and critical theory. Admirers credit him with revealing forms of control hidden inside institutions presented as neutral or humane. Critics argue that his account of power leaves no clear standard for judging what is just, and others fault his historical method. His 1978 articles praising the Islamist movement in Iran's revolution drew wide criticism in the French press at the time and are still debated. Prison reform and gay rights activists continue to draw on his work.