The Latest Breaking News from Michel Foucault

The most life-changing books can seem like they have always been there. What they say may seem obvious, once we’ve read them. But that’s only because they’ve reshaped how we look at things.

The newly formed “Diocese of the Southern Cross” has broken away from the Anglican Church of Australia to form a denomination committed to a highly conservative position on sexuality and marriage equality.

In the late 18th century, British philosopher Jeremy Bentham visited his younger brother, Samuel, in Russia, who arranged unskilled factory workers in a circle so that he could supervise them. Inspired by this principle, Bentham developed "the panopticon", an inspection tower surrounded by cells. Its uniqueness was that it enabled…

How did the intimate lives of major philosophers shape their ideas? Did their closest relationships with families, spouses, life partners and secret lovers influence their philosophies?

Politics is filled with words that mean different things in different mouths, but "neoliberalism" is an especially tangled case.

Interrogating the mechanics of power in security, territory and population, French philosopher Michel Foucault coined the term “governmentality” to explain how governments try to produce citizens who obediently follow policies and practices through which subjects are governed. In the modern day, it translates to the state legitimising its power through…