Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault enters this wiki as a non-libertarian genealogist of power. His relevance is not property rights or market order, but the analysis of institutions, surveillance, normalization, population, and the modern state as a producer of subjects.

Biographical Frame

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher and historian of systems of thought. His work is associated with genealogy, archaeology, discipline, normalization, sexuality, governmentality, and biopolitics.

Works Present Here

Discipline and Punish supplies the disciplinary-power and panopticism thread.

Society Must Be Defended supplies the sovereignty-to-biopower thread, including population, state racism, and the formula of making live and letting die.

Place in This Wiki

Foucault is not a libertarian. He does not argue from self-ownership, voluntary exchange, or the nonaggression principle. His convergence with this wiki is diagnostic: he shows how modern power can present itself as care, normalization, health, security, discipline, and knowledge rather than only command.

See Also

• Discipline and Punish - work on discipline, prison, and panopticism
• Society Must Be Defended - lectures on sovereignty, war, race, and biopower
• Disciplinary Power - concept from Discipline and Punish
• Biopower - concept from Society Must Be Defended
• Critiques of Sovereignty and Power - topic collecting Schmitt and Foucault
• Carl Schmitt - contrasting sovereignty/decision tradition
• The State as Parasite: A Thesis - thesis briefly updated with the biopower disguise layer

Sources

• Discipline and Punish - Internet Archive OCR ingest
• Society Must Be Defended - Internet Archive OCR ingest