By Aleksey Bashtavenko

Academic Composition

https://www.youtube.com/@Alekseybashtavenko

Michel Foucault, a towering figure in twentieth-century thought, is often cited—sometimes worshipped—by postmodernist and leftist academics who seek to dismantle traditional power structures. His writings on discourse, power, and social institutions underpin much of contemporary critical theory, from queer studies to postcolonialism. Yet, there is a deep irony at play: the very institutions and ideological movements that claim to be the heirs of Foucault’s thought may in fact represent the realization of his most dystopian fears. Nowhere is this more evident than in the culture of ideological conformity and surveillance that has taken root in academia under the banner of “wokeness.” If Foucault were alive today, he would likely find himself alienated—if not outright marginalized—by the very academic apparatus that celebrates his name.

Foucault’s central insight was that power does not merely operate through laws and decrees; rather, it permeates the fabric of everyday life through institutions, knowledge systems, and norms. He argued that power is most effective when it is least visible—when it becomes internalized, habitual, and self-regulating. In Discipline and Punish, he famously used the metaphor of the panopticon—a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham in which inmates could be watched at any time, but never knew exactly when they were being observed. This model, Foucault claimed, had become the dominant form of social control in modern liberal societies. The genius of the panopticon was that it no longer required force; the mere possibility of surveillance was enough to produce obedience.

This insight was radical not because it applied to obviously authoritarian regimes, but because it applied just as well to ostensibly free societies—especially those with advanced bureaucracies and rationalized norms. For Foucault, the modern school, the hospital, the workplace, and yes, the university, were all spaces of normalization and discipline. They didn’t imprison bodies—they shaped souls. They defined what was healthy, what was sane, what was moral, and most importantly, what was acceptable. The disciplinary society, in his view, was one in which individuals policed themselves to align with institutional expectations.

Fast-forward to the twenty-first century, and one finds an uncanny realization of Foucault’s theory—not in Orwellian states, but in the liberal academic institutions that once prided themselves on intellectual freedom and pluralism. Today’s universities often operate under a regime of moral surveillance, where ideological conformity is not only expected but demanded. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices serve as de facto commissariats of acceptable thought. Speech codes, bias response teams, and mandatory trainings on microaggressions and unconscious bias all reinforce a culture where deviation from the prevailing orthodoxy is treated as a form of harm. Professors and students alike learn to self-monitor, to avoid controversial opinions, and to speak in the approved dialect of social justice. This is not oppression in the classical sense—it is something subtler, more insidious, and far more Foucauldian.

Consider the plight of a faculty member who dares to question affirmative action, gender ideology, or the moral framing of climate change. Such a person may not be arrested or censored in a legal sense, but they risk reputational ruin, ostracism, and professional marginalization. The mechanisms are informal but effective: online mobbing, anonymous complaints, hostile departmental climates, and withdrawal of institutional support. These are the instruments of what Foucault would have called “bio-power”—the diffuse, disciplinary power that regulates life itself through subtle mechanisms of control.

Ironically, many of the academics who enforce these norms do so while quoting Foucault, invoking his skepticism of “hegemonic discourses” and his disdain for traditional hierarchies. But they miss the deeper point. Foucault was not simply against conservative power; he was against all regimes of truth that claimed universal moral authority. He saw in every moral code a potential tool of domination. His view of power was not Manichean—he did not divide the world into liberators and oppressors. Instead, he understood that every institution, every truth claim, and every “liberation” movement could become a new form of control.

This is why it is so ironic that Foucault has become the intellectual mascot of academic movements that demand conformity in the name of progress. His entire oeuvre is a warning against such moral totalism. He would have abhorred the idea that universities now require ideological litmus tests for hiring and promotion, or that students are encouraged to report each other for nonconforming speech. He would have seen these developments not as progress, but as the emergence of a new disciplinary order—one that enforces virtue with all the zeal of the systems it replaced.

Moreover, Foucault’s own life and temperament would likely place him at odds with the puritanical tone of contemporary campus culture. He was a radical individualist, a sexual libertine, and a fierce critic of state-imposed morality. He distrusted both right-wing nationalism and left-wing moralism. He was uninterested in constructing grand narratives of justice or utopia. Instead, he sought to create spaces of resistance, ambiguity, and what he called “counter-conduct”—forms of living and thinking that resist normalization. He would not have fit easily into today’s academic environment, which often demands not just conformity of thought, but conformity of sensibility.

In short, the modern university—especially in its elite, progressive incarnation—has become a textbook example of the panopticon: a place where surveillance is social, discipline is moral, and power is exercised through internalized codes of speech and behavior. It is not a place where disagreement is criminal, but where it is pathologized—treated as a sign of ignorance, bigotry, or psychological defect. And this is precisely the kind of power that Foucault warned us about: not the power that kills, but the power that normalizes; not the power that says “do this,” but the power that says “be this.”

Therefore, while Foucault remains a saint in the academic canon of critical theory, he is also its most biting heretic. His legacy is a paradox: he gave the tools to critique power, and those tools have been turned into instruments of power themselves. To truly honor Foucault would not be to cite him in service of institutional orthodoxy, but to use his thought to question it—relentlessly, skeptically, and without apology.