Michel Foucault died in 1984, but his 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”.

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.

The decades since he died have witnessed the rise of a gladiatorial institution – social media – in which the desires and vulnerabilities of the self are played out. So we should ask: are we putting our “selves” at peril online? Can a genuinely Foucauldian perspective contribute to a better understanding of our situation?

Fictions with a truth value

Foucault did not claim objective correctness for his ideas. He called them “fictions” with a “truth-value”.

“I don’t write a book so that it will be the final word,” he said; “I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.”

By his own account, Foucault’s influence endures because his work (and his entangled biography) serves some function in the bigger picture...

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