KEY THINKERS - MICHEL FOUCAULT

Interview with Professor Stephen Shapiro, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies

Michel Foucault was a French historian and social theorist, whose ideas impact the way we view institutions such as schools and prisons today. English Literature student Alexander Freer and PPE student Danny Smith interview Professor Stephen Shapiro on Foucault's major theories as part of a series looking at the key thinkers for the social sciences.

This interview provides an introduction to the revolutionary work of Michel Foucault (1926–1984), French historian and social theorist. Professor Stephen Shapiro talks about Foucault's major ideas about society, power and the individual, giving examples from history, literary studies and gender theory. Foucault's insights are located in discussions about the army, the classroom and the prison, and he discusses how ideas about marginal groups and practices impact on normal conversations, our bodies and how we live in society.

Further reading

• Michel Foucault trans. Alan Sheridan (1991), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin.
• Michel Foucault trans. Paul Rabinow (1991), The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault's Thought. London: Penguin, 1991.

Professor Stephen Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. He was educated at Williams College and Yale University. He has published many books on the American novel, and his most recent publications include How to Read Marx's Capital (London: Pluto, 2008) and, with Anne Schwan, How to Read Foucault's Discipline and Punish (forthcoming London: Pluto 2011).

This podcast was produced by Alexander Freer and Danny Smith as part of a series of interviews offering an introduction to the most important theorists used in the humanities and social science disciplines today. Alexander Freer is a third-year undergraduate English student specialising in Romantic Poetry and editor of Reinvention: A Journal of Undergraduate Research. Danny Smith is a third-year undergraduate PPE student specialising in Modern Germen philosophy.

Photo credit: Louis Monier, 17-05-2001