Michel Foucault and Theories of Power

This seminar is aimed at understanding Michel Foucault's innovative theories of how political and social power functions and is organized. Foucault reoriented the understanding of power from a centralized, state-centered attribute to a series of practices distributed in different social institutions. We will approach his theorical propositions through his writings on the history of the prison and the history of sexuality, along with his journalistic accounts of the revolutionary movement in Iran.