MICHEL FOUCAULT – [REF] seeks throughout his work to make sense of how our contemporary society is structured differently from the society that preceded us. He has been particularly influential precisely because he tends to overturn accepted wisdom, illustrating the dangers inherent in those Enlightenment reforms that were designed to correct the barbarity of previous periods (the elimination of dungeons, the modernization of medicine, the creation of the public university, etc.). As Foucault illustrates, each process of modernization entails disturbing effects with regard to the power of the individual and the control of government. Indeed, his most influential work, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, paints a picture of contemporary society that sometimes resembles George Orwell’s 1984. He explores the ways that government has claimed ever greater control over and enforcement of ever more private aspects of our lives. – [REF]
The History of the Prison – [REF]
