ABSTRACT
The work of Michel Foucault is a philosophical contribution to the theory of truth. However, his work stands at an oblique angle to the mainstream philosophical universe in its attempt to effect a series of radical decentrings. The intellectual origins of his thought are primarily locatable, therefore, in the rereadings of Western philosophy and the criticisms of its anthropocentrism which were carried out in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger. Foucault’s work can also be seen as a contribution to the theory of culture in social theory. The notion of power enters Foucault’s work as an answer to the riddle of how and why discursive formations change. The autonomy accorded to culture due to the internal coherence of discursive formations is vitiated with the shift of accent to the ‘power relation’ as the most important axis. The most famous study of this period is Discipline and Punish.
