Michel Foucault (1926–84) was a French historian, philosopher and theorist who critically analyzed social institutions - medicine, psychiatry and the designation of 'madness', sexuality and prisons - and attempted to show a hidden discourse of power behind them. As an activist, Foucault was radicalised after the 1968 Paris student riots and founded an organisation called the Prisoners Information Group - Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons (or GIP) - which saw prisoners as an oppressed component of the proletariat to be liberated.