Which is especially amusing because post-structuralists like Foucault were explicitly historical, so not knowing the history of the thought you're expounding would be considered somewhat dangerous by them.
Indeed. While his connection to Nietzsche is often touted, his masterwork, Discipline and Punish, was essentially a modern elaboration on Bentham's concept of the Panopticon. While I never fully adopted Foucault's own positions, I have always been grateful to him for causing me to go back and study Bentham.