Foucault News

Brendon Murphy & Benedict Sheehy, Language games and corporate psychopaths (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

29 June 2026

Brendon Murphy & Benedict Sheehy (2026). Chapter 7: Language games and corporate psychopaths. In Research Handbook on Corporate Psychopaths,
pp. 102–117 . Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035326525.00013

Abstract
This chapter explores psychopathic discourse in political and managerial communication, focusing on how language is used to manipulate, distract, and assert control through framing, labelling, and undermining veracity. It examines the strategic deployment of rhetorical tactics that promote egocentrism, create division, and disregard truth, especially in environments amplified by social media. The concept of “bullshit”, as distinguished from lies and obscurity, is central to this analysis—highlighting how performative and vague language can erode trust and distort reality. “Buzzword bingo”, a satirical game targeting managerial jargon, serves as an entry point into this discussion, revealing how repetitive, empty phrases signal a broader discursive pathology. Such tactics not only threaten democratic processes by distorting public discourse but also undermine organisational effectiveness by masking critical information and reducing employee confidence. The chapter concludes with insights from Foucauldian discourse analysis and explores how identifying and resisting such manipulative language can restore clarity and accountability.

Changyuan Chen, The figures of the cogito: Foucault, Derrida and the possibility of transcendental phenomenology (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 June 2026

Changyuan Chen, The figures of the cogito: Foucault, Derrida and the possibility of transcendental phenomenology. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, First published: 05 June 2026
https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.70049

Abstract
This article examines the early Foucault as a reader of Husserl, a frequently overlooked dimension of his thought that nonetheless paved the way for the Foucault we recognize today. Drawing on his recently published manuscripts on phenomenology, it reconstructs the distinctive interpretation of phenomenology that the young Foucault was developing. Influenced by Heidegger and Fink, he sought to understand the transcendental cogito along a non-Cartesian path, thereby opening up phenomenology to ontological possibilities. Viewed through a Hegelian lens, he refused to confine phenomenology to mere descriptive analysis; instead, by tracing the interplay between the transcendental and the historical, he articulated a speculative orientation that characterized phenomenology as a “rationalism of being”. The article concludes by revisiting the cogito debate between Derrida and Foucault, revealing an unexpected proximity between the two philosophers.

Rachael S. Burke, Chrissie Keepa, Silence in the Shadows: Reflections on Student Participation in Research on Te Reo Māori and Te Tiriti Commitments in Aotearoa New Zealand (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

22 June 2026

Rachael S. Burke, Chrissie Keepa, Silence in the Shadows: Reflections on Student Participation in Research on Te Reo Māori and Te Tiriti Commitments in Aotearoa New Zealand, Kōtuitui New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 2026, 21, e70033.
https://doi.org/10.1002/kot2.70033

Abstract
This article offers a critical and reflexive analysis of a research process conducted at a tertiary institute in Aotearoa New Zealand, with a particular focus on how participation and non-participation shape understandings of teaching, learning, and te reo Māori development in initial teacher education. Drawing on data generated through the original study, the article re-examines the research process itself as a site of inquiry. Undertaken by staff at Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology, the original research sought to interrogate the pedagogical strategies used to support student learning of te reo Māori and their preparedness to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to question whose knowledges and voices are legitimised in classroom spaces. However, an unexpected pattern of participation, where 83% of students did not respond, became a central analytical focus for this article. Rather than treating this as a methodological failure, the article interprets non-participation as a meaningful outcome that reflects the complex interplay of institutional, cultural, and relational dynamics. Drawing on Foucault’s theory of power and knowledge, this reflection looks at how power operates as a network of relations shaping what is heard, who speaks, and what is silenced. The research process became a site of critical inquiry, prompting teaching staff to reconsider assumptions about language, identity, and student engagement while also highlighting the conditions under which student voice is enabled or constrained. This article contributes to ongoing conversations about decolonising tertiary education, highlighting the ethical and pedagogical importance of attending to silence, power, and participation in both teaching and research practices.

Tamara J. Young, Rochelle Einboden, Power, Resistance, and Family Absence During Resuscitation: A Foucauldian Analysis (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 June 2026

Tamara J. Young, Rochelle Einboden 2026. Power, Resistance, and Family Absence During Resuscitation: A Foucauldian Analysis. Nursing Inquiry 32: e70111.
https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.70111

ABSTRACT
Although family presence during resuscitation demonstrates benefits such as facilitating the grieving process through fostering a sense of closeness, providing reassurance that all efforts were made, and offering an opportunity for a final farewell, its integration for adult patients in healthcare facilities remains contested. Drawing on a Foucauldian lens, this paper explores the complex network of power relations that sustain resistance towards family presence during resuscitation. What counts as truth, and what knowledge is rendered admissible in this discussion, is an effect of the discursive power relations that envelop and organize this practice. Offering a perspective that moves beyond the dominant discourse of benefit–risk analysis, this paper explores the underlying structures that frame the context of family presence during resuscitation. Examination points to the tenacity of power that sustains medical and organizational authority amidst the proliferation of rhetoric of patient- and family-centered care. Knowledge mobilization to support practice advancement requires more than reiterating or disseminating evidence; it necessitates examination of the power relations that marginalize nursing knowledge, the identification of points of resistance, and the exploration of opportunities for nursing to act as a catalyst for meaningful change.

Dimitrios Lais, Foucault’s Ethics of Genealogy. Antiquity, (Neo) Governmentality, and Globalisation (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 June 2026

Dimitrios Lais, Foucault’s Ethics of Genealogy. Antiquity, (Neo) Governmentality, and Globalisation, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026

About this book
This book offers a bold reinterpretation of Michel Foucault’s late work, reconstructing him as an ethical philosopher whose account of antiquity provides crucial resources for understanding contemporary forms of power. Bringing Foucault into original dialogue with Habermas, Beck, and Giddens, the book develops a genealogical reading that bridges Foucault’s analyses of self‑formation, governmentality, and modernity. It shows how key democratic and globalisation‑related theories—often assumed to stand apart from neoliberal modes of rule—can themselves reproduce subtle forms of governmentality.Through a sustained engagement with ancient ethical practices, cognitive ethics, reflexive modernisation, and global third‑way politics, the book demonstrates how Foucault’s late thought offers both a critique of modern Western societies and a heuristic framework for creative self‑care in the present.

Dimitrios Lais is an Associate Fellow at the Morrell Centre for Legal and Political Philosophy, University of York, UK

Gutting, Gary and Johanna Oksala, “Michel Foucault”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2026 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.) (2003, 2026)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

16 June 2026

Gutting, Gary and Johanna Oksala, “Michel Foucault”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2026 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.)

First published Wed Apr 2, 2003; substantive revision Tue Apr 21, 2026

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French historian and philosopher, associated with the structuralist and post-structuralist movements. He has had strong influence not only in philosophy but also in a wide range of humanistic and social scientific disciplines.
[…]

1. Biographical Sketch

Foucault was born in Poitiers, France, on October 15, 1926. As a student he was brilliant but psychologically tormented. He became academically established during the 1960s, holding a series of positions at French universities, before his election in 1969 to the prestigious Collège de France, where he was Professor of the History of Systems of Thought until his death. From the 1970s on, Foucault was very active politically. He was a founder of the Groupe d’information sur les prisons and often protested on behalf of marginalized groups. He frequently lectured outside France, particularly in the United States, and in 1983 had agreed to teach annually at the University of California at Berkeley. An early victim of AIDS, Foucault died in Paris on June 25, 1984. In addition to works published during his lifetime, his lectures at the Collège de France, published posthumously, contain important elucidations and extensions of his ideas.

Diana Obeid, Prison Narratives in the Arab World. Writing as Resistance in Egypt and Syria (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

13 June 2026

Diana Obeid, Prison Narratives in the Arab World. Writing as Resistance in Egypt and Syria, Bloomsbury, 2026

Description
The book examines how imprisoned Arab authors challenge regimes that seek to reduce them to “docile bodies” or worse-subject them to haywana, the process of animalization that strips prisoners of their humanity. Through clandestine writing, fragmented memory, and testimonial prose, these writers reclaim agency, redefine political subjectivity, and subvert hegemonic narratives.

Political Prison Discourse in the Arab World looks at the prison as more than a site of incarceration but a battlefield of meaning, memory, and identity. This study explores the political, cultural, and literary force of Arab prison writing, arguing that prose written from or about prison under authoritarian regimes constitutes a powerful form of resistance against state-sponsored silencing and dehumanization.

Ananta Kumar Giri and Saji Varghese (eds), COVID-19 and the Challenges of Trauma and Transformations. Ethics, Politics and Spirituality and Alternative Planetary Futures (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

10 June 2026

Ananta Kumar Giri and Saji Varghese (eds), COVID-19 and the Challenges of Trauma and Transformations. Ethics, Politics and Spirituality and Alternative Planetary Futures, Anthem Press, 2025

This book unveils the challenges of living beyond Covid-19 navigating trauma, solidarity, and transformative futures.

The novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 emerged in the city of Wuhan in December 2019 and has then spread across all over the world. Its spread has created trauma, death and destruction on its trail. It has also brought to fore many other related issues such as endemic poverty, racism, structural inequality, aggression and authoritarianism. Societies and nations have responded to these with lock downs which many a time have been done, as in the case of India, in a haste without taking into consideration the plight of the migrant labourers. In the case of the USA, lock down in places such as New York State began much later. In the USA, there have been varieties of responses to the virus as well as the lockdown and as well as ways to open up economies and societies.

Living with and beyond COVID-19 raises these issues of trauma – trauma of the virus and the accompanying illness and disease as well as traumas such as authoritarianism, racism and poverty. But trauma is not just natural. It is constructed, and constructed trauma has the potential to make us aware of our common suffering, fight against both the natural virus and the social virus, and create responsibility and solidarity. Living with COVID-19 and beyond also raises questions of appropriate ethics, politics and spirituality. It invites us to understand the multiple strands of our present condition and understand the critical ontology and genealogy of our viral present. It also challenges us to cultivate pathways of alternative planetary futures. It is not just enough to speak about post-COVID futures. Post-COVID futures without transformation of our contemporary economic, political and social conditions would not necessarily be better compared to our present situation.

Jade G Roque and Marcos C Alvarez, Breaking the pendulum with Michel Foucault: Modern punishment beyond docile bodies (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

9 June 2026

Jade G Roque and Marcos C Alvarez, Breaking the pendulum with Michel Foucault: Modern punishment beyond docile bodies, Punishment and Society, Published online 4 May 2026
https://doi.org/10.1177/146247452614465

Abstract
Contemporary penal change is often explained as an institutionally mediated outcome of political, cultural, and social transformations that vacillate between affinity for retributive and rehabilitative penal measures. The retributive approach to punishment is typically associated with symbolic gestures and conflict, whereas the rehabilitative approach is linked to austerity and a drive to create docile bodies that are less inclined to resist. Although widespread in the field, this explanatory framework has recently been critiqued as a “pendular perspective,” a perpetual rebounding between poles that ignores the persistent presence of symbolic charge and conflict within modern punishment—traits especially visible both in the penal measures that target marginalized populations globally and in the Global South’s institutional penal landscape.

Drawing on Michel Foucault’s work from the early 1970s, this article conceptualizes punishment as a discursive act and presents it as a means of transcending the so-called pendular perspective on penal change. It argues that modern punishment—including in its rehabilitative forms—remains symbolically charged and capable of fostering conflict because it enacts a comprehensive moral horizon for subjectivation. This horizon includes not only docile bodies, but also oppositional and consensus-challenging positions such as delinquency, insurrection, resistance, and counter-conduct. Despite the presuppositions of the pendular perspective, penal change thus arises from a historically contingent need to alter an arrangement of conflictual subjective positions, the latter having undergone no core changes since the dawn of modernity in Western societies.

Damián Tuset Varela, Artificial Intelligence Law through the Lens of Michel Foucault: Biopower, Surveillance, and the Reconfiguration of Legal Normativity (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

7 June 2026

Damián Tuset Varela (2024). Artificial Intelligence Law through the Lens of Michel Foucault: Biopower, Surveillance, and the Reconfiguration of Legal Normativity. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 12, 189-201.
https://www.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2024.1212012

Abstract
This paper examines the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on legal systems through the theoretical lens of Michel Foucault. It explores how AI, as a contemporary technological apparatus, reinforces structures of surveillance and control, aligning with Foucault’s concepts of biopower and technologies of the self. The study argues that AI poses significant challenges to traditional legal categories of responsibility and morality, necessitating a reevaluation of legal frameworks. By analyzing case studies such as predictive policing in the United States and China’s social credit system, this paper demonstrates how AI functions as a form of biopower, extending state and corporate influence over individuals. The central hypothesis is that AI has the potential to deconstruct traditional notions of legal accountability and moral responsibility, urging a revaluation of the axiological aspects of existing law. The paper concludes by proposing legal adaptations, such as algorithmic impact assessments and enhanced transparency measures, to mitigate the risks of AI-driven control and safeguard individual autonomy.

Keywords
Artificial Intelligence, Michel Foucault, Biopower, Surveillance, Technologies of the Self, Legal Accountability, Privacy, Autonomy, Predictive Policing, Social Credit System