This essay will discuss Foucault’s and Bauldrillard’s...

This essay will discuss Foucault’s and Bauldrillard’s views on today’s society. Foucault sees the current state of the society as a system of domination, while Baudrillard says that the society we knew has collapsed in to a world of images produced by the mass media. Both of them focus on the cultural dimension of the progression of the society and sees society as having moved on from modernity. Though both have different views when it comes to Power, Foucault focuses on the changing nature of power and the historical circumstances which assist the rise of specific discourses while Bauldrillard on the other hand says that power is a mere product of images, signs, and simulacra generated by the mass media which makes it not real.†¦show more content†¦For example, medical discourse dismisses other ways of treating people like holistic medicines. Forms of knowledge are linked to discourses, knowledge simple refers to the particular construction or version of a phenomenon that has received the stamp truth (Burr,2003). Though knowledge is not a direct perception of reality because different cultures have different perception of how the world is, this makes the idea of ‘truth ‘problematic. All knowledge comes observing from one perspective or another. Discourse, knowledge and practices are then related to power. Power is influenced by particular world views which generate certain ways of acting and marginalise others. For example, sexuality in the Victorian era was monitored, classified and regulated and eventually sexuality was seen as taboo by some and society became obsessed with policing it, then parents obsessed with preventing child masturbation but as years have passed society’s view on sexuality shifted and now see sexuality as something important to our identity and there are professionals who provide help for those who need it which suggests that Power isn’t always about repression but it also produc es opportunities. Foucault studied the forms of power that have dominated us through the years; the monarchical power, disciplinary power and bio power. He suggest that society has no ordered development, no