Where was the philosopher, historian and writer Michel Foucault born?

Paul-Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic.

Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions.

Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology.

After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, "The History of Madness" (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced "The Birth of the Clinic" (1963) and "The Order of Things" (1966), publications which displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself.

These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology."