Author and text: A critical analysis of Michel Foucault's what is an author

Abstract

Michel Foucault (1926-84) was a philosopher, social scientist and historian of ideas. He died as professor of the History of Systems of thought at the college De France in Paris. He has exerted an enormous influence on many branches of thoughts in the later twentieth century, including what is broadly known as ‘Cultural Studies’. The paper aims to highlight that he has a seminal impact on the New Historicism that was initiated by Stephen Greenblatt, as well as on queer theory. The central theme of most of Foucault’s works is “the methods with which modern civilization creates and controls human subjects through institutions such as hospitals, prisons, education, and knowledge. The corollary to these investigations was Foucault’s examination of power, its execution and distribution” (Habib, 766). His works offer a characterization of the growth of knowledge in the modern western world as manifested in the emergence of disciplines such as linguistics, economies and biology.