Forty years after his death in Paris on June 25, 1984, many of Michel Foucault’s once radical ideas now seem self-evident. Even critics like Noam Chomsky, who derided Foucault’s moral theories as “incoherent”, find themselves in a world wallpapered with Foucauldian terms like “discourse”, “power-knowledge”, “biopower”, and “governmentality”.
Today, who could thrive without knowing how to “control the narrative”, call out a “social construct” or navigate “power dynamics”?
After contributing so much to this way of seeing the world, however, a lot of Foucault’s effort in his later years went to the idea of the self.
