Michel Foucault
(born 1926 , Poitiers, France; died 1984, Paris, France)

Highly influential structuralist philosopher who has been celebrated as a pioneer of queer theory since his death of an AIDS-related illness. Foucault's lifelong interest was in the way systems of exclusion -- prisons, hospitals, asylums -- produce the figure of the outsider. He theorised that sexuality has never been repressed but is instead endlessly elaborated as a body of work that defines the relations between knowledge and power.