ABSTRACT
In retrospect, Michel Foucault (1926–1984) may well be seen as the most important Western theorist at the interface between modern and postmodern sensibilities. Viewed from a critically humanist standpoint, Foucault has been particularly important in prying open the relationship between knowledge and power; he lays open the underpinnings of representational domination in Western modernism and provides a powerful critique of Western modes of knowing. Though his work does less to expose a range of alternative cultural perspectives, Foucault’s relation to perspectival and broader cultural diversity brims with possibilities. Particularly in his midperiod and later works, Foucault explores the creative role of diverse or subversive subjectivities at the eccentric margins and historical recesses of Western imagination. From a critically humanist perspective, it is productive to ask how power and culture relate to each other in Foucault’s work—what implications they can have for articulating a critical study of power with the appreciation of cross-cultural subjectivity and resistance.
