Michel Foucault – historian, philosopher,writer – was one of the definitive theorists ofthe second half of the twentieth century. Hiswork in intellectual history radically redefinedthe way we think about the interaction ofdiscourses, practices, institutions, and socialactors in the European societies of modernity.His capacity for philosophical abstractionwhen dealing with complex empirical data, and in particular hiscritique of schematic ways of thinking about historical causalityin favour of multivariate and heterogeneous interactions offorces, made him one of those rare thinkers who genuinely movebeyond prevailing paradigms.

John Frow is Professor of English at the University of Melbourne.Some of his recent work include “Sage Handbook of CulturalAnalysis” (Sage Publications, 2008) co-edited with Tony Bennett,and Genre (Routledge, 2006).