Johanna Oksala explores the conceptual tools that Foucault gave us for constructing new forms of thinking as well as for smashing old certainties. She offers a lucid account of him as a thinker whose persistent aim was to challenge the self-evidence and necessity of our current experiences, practices, and institutions by showing their historical development and, therefore, contingency.

Extracts are taken from the whole range of Foucault's writings--his books, essays, lectures, and interviews--including the major works History of Madness, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality.