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Foucault - The Key Ideas: Foucault and politics

By Paul Oliver

 

In general terms, Foucault appeared to have some reluctance to be a member of an organization such as a political party, which implicitly required him to have a specific ideological view about certain subjects. However, in the early 1950s he was for a short time, a member of the French Communist Party, perhaps influenced by one of his philosophy lecturers, Louis Althusser.


Foucault appears to have become engaged politically, particularly after the 1968 student protests. As a professor at the University of Vincennes, he became immersed in the student protest movement. Subsequently, he was involved in a number of movements designed to draw attention to social issues. He established, for example, the Information Group on Prisons to publicize the conditions under which prisoners were kept in French prisons. Also, in the 1970s he helped to draw attention to the proposed execution in Spain of opponents of the Franco regime. He also publicized the conditions of the so-called ‘boat people’ who were trying to leave Vietnam.

In 1978 he was employed for a short time as a journalist to report on the Islamic revolution in Iran. He generally expressed himself in favour of the revolution, but some people claimed he had not given sufficient attention to the human rights situation in the country.

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