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FORGOTTEN HISTORY: Michel foucault - The Untold Story

Lust and power: Foucault’s The History of Sexuality at 50

Fifty years ago, Michel Foucault published volume one of his monumental The History of Sexuality series, The Will to Knowledge. Foucault’s four-volume work challenging ideas about sexuality in modern societies has had huge impact.

The Conversation

Quote of the day by Michel Foucault: 'Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are' and how every self-help guru got it wrong

Michel Foucault posited that identity is sculpted by societal labels rather than an inherent human essence. He asserted that true freedom lies in critically examining and discarding these imposed identities. Today, power operates subtly through institutions dictating people's identities. Furthermore, technology and algorithms play a role in shaping digital personas,…

The Times of India

Thinking about life inside: how performance is creating space for a discussion of crime and punishment

The informal role of prison philosopher is taken up by incarcerated people across the world. With time on their hands and a proximity to other people, systems of control and narratives of morality, people in prison are well positioned to practice philosophy.

The Conversation

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“Can Your Brain Keep Up?”: Beat This 24-Question Philosophy & Culture Quiz

Prove you are a great thinker with this 24-question philosophy & culture quiz. From Latin phrases to iconic philosophers, to political revolutions, thought experiments, and famous literary works, this challenge will take you across more than 2000 years of ideas that shaped the modern world. You'll encounter figures such as…

Bored Panda

Sending women to the ‘Khia Asylum’ is music’s latest cruel trend. But it reflects an old historical bias

What do Bebe Rexha, Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor and Rita Ora all have in common? They’re all trapped in the “Khia Asylum”.

The Conversation

Why asking ‘Was Jane Austen gay?’ still causes controversy

Would Jane Austen have even understood the question of whether she was gay? Michel Foucault, French theorist and author of The History of Sexuality (1976), would answer: “Non”.

The Conversation

The Libertarian Case for Postmodernism

Political economist Mark Pennington draws on the ideas of Hayek and Foucault to show how expert rule and government surveillance are making it harder for people to think freely and live on their own terms.

Reason

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AI can be responsibly integrated into classrooms by answering the ‘why’ and ‘when’

Scroll through social media and you’ll find numerous videos such as “How to Use AI to write your essay in 5 minutes” or “How to skip the readings with ChatGPT.”

The Conversation

The voice of our own inner critic can be strong. How can we break free from the mental prison?

It’s hard, this being human thing. But the Buddha’s path, like many spiritual paths, is a hopeful one

The Guardian - AU

Bob Geldof rejects idea that Live Aid was part of a ‘white saviour complex’

The musician and activist admitted that he ‘understood the argument’ at the time

The Independent UK

Roland Barthes declared the ‘death of the author’, but postcolonial critics have begged to differ

Our cultural touchstones series examines works that have had a lasting influence

The Conversation

Computers tracking us, an ‘electronic collar’: Gilles Deleuze’s 1990 Postcript on the Societies of Control was eerily prescient

Our cultural touchstones series looks at influential works.

The Conversation

When a bishop called on Trump to ‘have mercy’, she was following the old Christian tradition of parrhesia

When Bishop Mariann Budde closed her sermon at the National Prayer Service at Washington National Cathedral on January 21 she called on Donald Trump, who was sitting in front of her, “to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now”.

The Conversation

‘A dark masterpiece’: Foucault’s Discipline and Punish at 50

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the French publication of Michel Foucault’s dark masterpiece, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

The Conversation

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The Conversation

‘The intellectual dark web just won the election!’: meet the coalition of Joe Rogan, RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk

Every US election throws up a cast of figures adjacent to the campaign who endorse one candidate or another. Kamala Harris had a long line of celebrity backers, from Beyoncé to Bruce Springsteen.

The Guardian - UK

A twisted tale of strange sisters: Hervé Guibert’s photographs of his reclusive great-aunts in 1970s Paris

The late French writer and artist convinced his eccentric relatives to star in a gothic photo novel which is finally being published in English following renewed interest in his work

The Conversation

40 years after his death Michel Foucault’s philosophy still speaks to a world saturated with social media

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”.

The Conversation

Left is Not Woke: a philosopher's plea for universalism and 'progress' is a frustrating polemic

Some years ago I was surprised to come across a person whose politics I knew to be conservative at a Greens fundraiser. When I asked him why he was there, he said he supported any gay candidate, irrespective of party.

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The Guardian - UK

The Identity Trap by Yascha Mounk review – ‘PC gone mad’ revisited

A befuddled takedown of progressive thought

The Conversation

Friday essay: Stan Grant on how tyrants use the language of germ warfare – and COVID has enabled them

It is 2019. There is a virus lurking in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is warning that if it is not contained, it could infect the entire country. It could turn the country upside down. Tear at the social fabric. The CCP’s dream of harmony cannot withstand this. So…

The Guardian - UK

The Best Minds review – rich examination of madness and the way the west deals with it

Jonathan Rosen’s heart-rending, thoughtful memoir sheds light on his childhood friend’s schizophrenia and attributes his shocking decline to America’s politicised mental health system

Newslaundry

Surveillance in India: Gujarat backs it, Punjab hates it, some don’t even know there’s a right to privacy

What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘surveillance’? CCTV cameras? For beginners, that’s one way to say: “You are being watched.” Always.

The Guardian - UK

On the Adamant review – Berlin winner offers art and soul aboard a floating Parisian day-care centre

Nicolas Philibert’s warm and sympathetic documentary about a boat for mental-health patients on the Seine is a worthy winner of the Berlin film festival’s Golden Bear

The Conversation

Writing is a 'questionable business', but what to make of John Hughes, one of the most prolific plagiarists in literary history?

In June of last year, the Guardian revealed that John Hughes’ Miles Franklin-longlisted novel The Dogs contained material lifted from The Unwomanly Face of War, a book by Nobel Prize-winning Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich. When approached about this, Hughes apologised for the transgression, describing the plagiarism as unintentional.

Salon

Florida is now a laboratory for fascism

There is a very specific reason why Gov. Ron DeSantis targeted African-American history for erasure

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