Abstract

This Introduction to the Special Issue of Theory, Culture & Society on Michel Foucault draws out from the papers included the possibilities for new critiques of the present and new directions for the future, both for research in the social sciences and for imagining alternative ways of being. It highlights the innovative aspects of all the papers, and thus demonstrates that, in spite of the shortcomings in Foucault’s work which are picked out in the papers, his explorations of power, subjectivity and what it means to be and to think continue to be relevant as a starting point for a range of reflections about our own times.