ABSTRACT
Michel Foucault (1926-84) was a French philosopher, social and intellectual historian, and cultural critic. He was born in Poitiers, the son of uppermiddle-class parents. He went to Paris after World War II and was admitted to the esteemed École normale supérieure in 1946, where he received degrees in philosophy (1948), psychology (1949), and his agrégation in philosophy (1952). Like many other French intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s, Foucault became a member of the French Communist Party in 1950, but he left the Party in 1953 after reading NIETZSCHE.
