There is a sort of myth of History that philosophers have.... History for philosophers is some sort of great, vast continuity in which the freedom of individuals and economic or social determinations come and get entangled. When someone lays a finger on one of those great themes--continuity, the effective exercise of human liberty, how individual liberty is articulated with social determinations--when someone touches one of these three myths, these good people start crying out that History is being raped or murdered.
Michel FoucaultOne thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge.
Michel FoucaultIt is meaningless to speak in the name of - or against - Reason, Truth, or Knowledge.
Michel Foucault[Knowledge is governed not by] a theory of knowledge, but by a theory of discursive practice.
Michel FoucaultA real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation [...] He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribed in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.
Michel Foucault