Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher and all-around intellectual whose work has perhaps been more often cited than understood.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Michel Foucault: The discursive practices of the farm, which led to the development of chicken wire, the fenced barnyard, and the institution of the chicken coop, also constructed the authority which both invented the idea of the chicken and exerted power upon that chicken to compel it to cross the road.
à la Rob 
Whee. This joke made it to the web page of the Discipline and Punish Summer Reading Group at Haverford College. I couldn’t be prouder.
Some guy also swiped it on Facebook.