Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control - and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole.

Addresses speech as a conduct which has become subject to political debate and regulation. The text invesigates hate speech regulation, anti-pornography arguments and controversies about gay self-declaration in the military.

Here, one of France's greatest intellectuals explores the evolving social, economic and political forces that have shaped our attitudes to sex. Foucault describes how we are in the process of making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure.

Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, this book questions the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. It considers gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality.