Michel Foucault

Details

Nationality

French

Classifications

Holder

Individual

Source of authority

Reason

Subject

Human centred

Political position

Subaltern resistant

Mode of transmission

Text drawing

Knowledge type

Propositional

Epistemic cluster

Western philosophical

Notes

Foucault's 'networks of power' identified cultural practices dominating beyond direct physical aggression, including architectural spaces as 'machines for the control of the self'; his panoptic analysis of prisons/asylums and his notion of heterotopias as 'other' spaces briefly outside normative behaviour were especially important theoretical influences on postcolonial architectural thought.

Connections

• authored Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
• proposed Panopticism (disciplinary power)
• proposed Heterotopia
• relates to The Instituted Imaginary
• developed Heterotopia
• influenced Edward W. Said

Referenced by

• Edward W. Soja extends

Sources

1. Michel Foucault. Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Discipline and Punish). Gallimard, 1975.
2. in Crysler, Cairns & Heynen (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, SAGE, 2012 — export p. 4, 16-17 of 22
3. in Crysler, Cairns & Heynen (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, SAGE, 2012 — export p. 4-5 of 22