 Dear students, in this module we are going to discuss postmodern theorist Michel Foucault. Although it is pronounced as Michel Foucault in French, but most of the people who are English speaking they call that name as Michael Foucault. So Michel Foucault, a prominent postmodern theorist rejected Dan theories or meta narratives that claim to explain the entirety of human experience. Instead, he focused on local specific and historically contextualized realities to understand power relationships and social practices. Foucault's concept of discourse posits that knowledge is produced within the specific historical and social context and it is intertwined with power. So discourse shapes our understanding of the word and influence what is considered the truth at a given time and space. When we talk about postmodern theory, Michel Foucault's biggest contribution is that he analyzed the concepts that were produced within modernization and the beliefs that were particularly critical to him and presented them to us in a way that all the ideologies and perspectives and all the wisdoms that were created were inherent in all of them. To reflect on the same biases, rather to reflect on the same contradictions, he said that all these meta narratives interpret human behavior and process human interaction. Therefore, we need a perspective through which we try to understand the human behavior in its localized historical context. So he said that the discourse, which we call discourse in French, through discourse, we can try to understand the connection or nexus of knowledge and power. Conventionally or traditionally, what was considered that knowledge is power, in Michel Foucault's opinion, knowledge itself is not power, rather, knowledge can use and misuse power. Similarly, power can define what knowledge will be and whose knowledge will be considered important and whose knowledge will not be considered important. So knowledge does not have an inherent ultimate truth, rather, it is relative and varies in time and space that whose knowledge is on truth credibility today and whose knowledge is on truth credibility. Power for Michel Foucault is not simply a top-down process, but is exercised through networks of surveillance and control. It is not merely repressive, but also productive, shaping our identities, desires and behaviors. So in his opinion, power is not simply a top-down process in which only an authority or a force is expressing its power on you. In fact, along with this, power is something that is not only exercised, but unconsciously we feel that without it, our identities can also be changed and our thinking process can also be changed. Not only our thinking process, but our identities, our desires and our behaviors can be changed. So his analysis of power knowledge suggests that knowledge is never a neutral entity, but is always implicated in power relationships. What society is except as knowledge is shaped by the dominant power structures and used to justify certain actions and policies. His concept of biopolitics refers to the way modern states regulate their citizens' bodies and behaviors. Through institutions like schools, hospitals and prisons, states seek to manage and optimize the life itself, controlling not only what people do, but what they can become. Through the concept of biopolitics, Michel Foucault tries to make us realize that modern nation states have a complete control over their citizens and citizens. It means that they can not only control their bodies physically, but also control their behaviors. And by giving them education in a special way, they can make them a useful individual citizen for themselves. So when we see that these discourses are not within media or political discourses, but they are within your education system, your healthcare system and your surveillance and control system. So his historical studies such as the history of madness, prisons and sexuality uncover how categories like madness and criminality are socially constructed and reflect this power dynamic rather than the inherent truths. So his idea of governmentality analyzes how modern societies are individuals and they are rather governed not just by the laws, but through the regulation of individuals and populations, often via subtle mechanisms like norms, statistics and policies. So in a nutshell, while Foucault's theories often underline the pervasive and insidious forms of power, they also open the possibilities for resistance. And power relationships being dynamic allow for the contestation and transformation, enabling the individuals to challenge and reshape different discourses and identities.