Foucault portrait. Flickr/Thierry Ehrmann. Some rights reserved.Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was one of the most influential intellectuals of our era. His work on sites of power-knowledge such as asylums, schools, hospitals, prisons, and factories continue to resonate and inspire empirical-political work in sociology, politics, geography, anthropology, as well as gender studies, international studies, urban studies, citizenship studies, postcolonial studies, and, cultural studies.
Until recently, perhaps with support from how Foucault occasionally portrayed himself as an archivist, a bookish image of him prevailed. With the publication of his many lectures and speeches in Dits et Ecrits (1994) a rather different image of Foucault emerged. We have yet to name this image – I would be inclined to call it ‘activist intellectual’ as opposed to ‘public intellectual’ – but it involves performing as a speaking subject in interviews, press conferences, meetings, gatherings, and other sites where the task is ‘confronting governments’.
In these performances ‘government’ is neither an addressee as such nor an object of analysis but something that the speaking subject confronts as a political subject.
