Close to both Deleuze and Derrida – he famously commented that ‘perhaps one day, this century will be known as Deleuzian’, while he was the latter’s professor – Michel Foucault, nevertheless, departs from both in a number of important ways. Perhaps the most significant of these, especially for our purposes, is that rather than ground his analysis in a specific, albeit heterogeneous, ontological notion of difference/différance, Foucault disrupts and undermines claims to ahistoric universality by offering a historical approach – whether as ‘archaeology’ or ‘genealogy’ – that examines past discourses to bring to light the ‘hidden’ structures generating them (as in archaeology) or the changing socio-historical practices and distributions of power relations subtending them (as in genealogy). The methodology may be different, and indeed changes throughout Foucault's writings, but the key point is that he shares Deleuze's and Derrida's interest in exposing and undermining any claim to universality, essentialism, ahistoricism and substantial identity.

While he died relatively young in 1984, it is customary to note that he left behind a diverse corpus that is usually split between the ‘archaeological’ period of the 1960s, the ‘genealogical ‘ writings of the 1970s and the ‘technologies of the self ‘ musings of the 1980s. There is much debate regarding the difference and relationship between these three periods, including whether they are, in fact, distinct. For example, one dominant reading holds that Foucault moved from archaeology to genealogy due to the failure of the former to adequately account for history and, indeed, the role that non-discursive practices play in generating and supporting dominant discourses. It should be noted, however, that Foucault suggested in the 1975–76 lecture course Society Must Be Defended that the two methodologies are complementary: ‘Archaeology is the method specific to the analysis of local discursivities, and genealogy is the tactic which, once it has described these discursivities, brings into play the desubjugated knowledges that have been released from them.’ The relationship between Foucaultian genealogy and his later work on the technologies of the self is a further issue that complicates the reception of his work.