Foucault News

Jeanne Favret-Saada, L’impossible famille Rivière. Retour sur un triple meurtre en 1835 (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

2 August 2026

Jeanne Favret-Saada, L’impossible famille Rivière. Retour sur un triple meurtre en 1835, Gallimard 2026.

Le 3 juin 1835, un jeune paysan normand, Pierre Rivière, égorge sa mère, sa sœur et son frère avant de s’enfuir. Arrêté le mois suivant, il rédige, dans l’attente de son jugement, un Mémoire d’une cinquantaine de feuillets pour expliquer son geste. Condamné à mort, puis gracié, c’est-à-dire emprisonné à vie, il se suicide dans sa cellule en 1840.

De cette affaire, il nous reste ce Mémoire très détaillé, redécouvert au début des années 1970 par Michel Foucault qui, entouré d’une petite équipe, en produisit l’édition. Jeanne Favret-Saada avait participé à cette entreprise éditoriale, qui se refusait à toute interprétation savante pour laisser la pleine page au jeune homme.

Dans le présent ouvrage, l’anthropologue revient sur ce qui s’est joué en 1835 – des élites donnant la parole à un « subalterne » que son acte jugeait d’avance –, mais en s’attachant au fond de l’affaire : quelle suite d’événements a conduit Pierre Rivière à ce triple meurtre ?
Contre l’interprétation qui réduit ce Mémoire à un discours psychotique, elle propose qu’on le soumette à une enquête qui conjoigne l’ethnologie et l’histoire. Elle examine ainsi les vingt-deux ans d’une vie familiale impossible, Victoire Rivière ayant refusé d’emblée la plupart des devoirs de l’épouse. Le mariage était alors régi par le Code civil napoléonien, pleinement confirmé par la coutume locale en matière de domination masculine. L’analyse serrée des péripéties rapportées par l’assassin montre alors les raisons de son geste meurtrier.

Daniele Lorenzini (ed.), The Foucauldian Mind (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 August 2026

Daniele Lorenzini (ed.), The Foucauldian Mind, Published July 29, 2026 by Routledge

Description
Michel Foucault is one of the most influential, and controversial, thinkers of the twentieth century. His work has had a transformative effect on the study of the humanities and social sciences. His engagement with topics such as truth, power, and language continues to exert significant influence on a huge range of disciplines, from philosophy, sociology, and anthropology to history, politics, law, literary, religious, and gender studies, and many others. Yet, paradoxically, Foucault’s work is rarely discussed systematically within philosophy in the Anglophone world.

The Foucauldian Mind is an outstanding exploration and assessment of Foucault’s thought, demonstrating its coherence, insight, and continuing relevance to current debates in a multiplicity of fields within philosophy, and beyond. Comprising over 40 chapters authored by an international team of expert contributors, it addresses the following topics and more:

• the formation of Foucault’s thought and his most important writings, from History of Madness and The Order of Things to Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexuality, and his later works on governmentality and the aesthetics of existence;

• Foucault’s theoretical and methodological engagements, including with phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, pragmatism, and feminism;

• Foucault’s contributions to ethics, political philosophy, and law;

• Foucault’s often misunderstood engagements with science, race, and gender;

• the legacy of Foucault’s thought, including for environmental studies, biopolitics, migration studies, and philosophy of disability.

With its comprehensive analysis of Foucault’s work and its original discussion of both traditional and new topics, The Foucauldian Mind is a superb resource for anyone studying Foucault’s thought from a broadly philosophical standpoint.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Abbreviations of Works by Michel Foucault

Introduction: One Hundred Years of Michel Foucault Daniele Lorenzini

Part I: Mapping Foucault’s Thought

A: Before the Collège de France

1. Foucault on Absolute Knowing: Hegel, Transcendentality, and Historicity in the Diploma Thesis
Kevin Thompson

2. Phenomenology and Anthropology in Foucault’s Early Manuscripts
Elisabetta Basso

3. History of Madness: Foucault’s Spatial Archaeology of Experience
David Webb

4. Knowledge, History, Events: Archaeological Issues, between The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge
Philippe Sabot

5. From São Paulo to Tunis: The Critical Role of Ethnology between Philosophical Discourse and the Episteme as General Cultural Function
Orazio Irrera

6. Literary Constraint, Historical Determination: A Foucauldian Experiment
Judith Revel

B: Genealogies of Power, Truth, and the Subject

7. The Development of Foucault’s Conception of Power
Mark G. E. Kelly

8. Fragments of Truth: The Beginning of Foucault’s Project of a Genealogy of Truth-Telling
Valentina Moro

9. Narrating the Self: Biography and the Politics of Life in Foucault’s Psychiatric Power
Federico Testa

10. Foucault’s Genealogy of Scientia Sexualis
Daniele Lorenzini and Arnold I. Davidson

C: The Government of Self and Others

11. From Governmentality to Algorithmic Power: Foucault’s Legacy and the Crises of Neoliberalism
Laurence Barry

12. Political Spiritualities
Sajjad Lohi

13. The Late Ancient Christian Inauguration of the Modern Philosophy of the Subject
Niki Kasumi Clements

14. The Unsuspected Power of the Aphrodisia: Subjectivity and Truth, The Use of Pleasure, and The Care of the Self
Sandra Boehringer

15. Rhetoric, Truth, and Philosophy in Foucault
Paul Allen Miller

Part II: Critical Encounters

16. Foucauldian Positivism: Archive, Clinic, Laboratory
Peter Galison

17. Foucault and Structuralism
Stuart Elden

18. Psychoanalysis: “Dispositif” or “Counter-Science”?
Miguel de Beistegui

19. Heidegger, Foucault, and la pensée classique
Taylor Carman

20. The Desire for Peace/The Will to Resist: Hobbes, Foucault, and the Dialectic of Power
Hans Sluga

21. Impure Reason: Foucault and Critical Theory
Martin Saar and Frieder Vogelmann

22. Foucault and Existentialism
Liesbeth Schoonheim

23. Anachro-Subordination: Foucault’s Metaphors and Feminism’s Foucault
Penelope Deutscher

Part III: Critical Engagements

A: Theoretical Engagements
24. Foucault’s Methods: Archaeology, Genealogy, Empiricity
Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson and Colin Koopman

25. Foucault and the Philosophy of Art
Arianna Sforzini

26. Foucault’s Philosophy of Language
Tuomo Tiisala

27. Late Foucault in the Early Foucault
James I. Porter

28. The (Middle) Eastern Foucault: Genealogy and Its Counter-Geographies
Ege Selin Islekel

B: Ethical and Political Engagements

29. Foucault, Testimonial Injustice, and Power/Knowledge
Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Solmu Anttila, and Merel Talbi

30. Foucault and the Ambivalences of Race
Sabeen Ahmed

31. Foucault and Latin America: Colonial Formations of Biopolitics and Pastoral Power
Don Thomas Deere

32. Religion and Revolutionary Subjectivity: Gerrard Winstanley, the Diggers, and Some Notes on a Foucauldian Philosophy of Religions Daniel Louis Wyche

33. Foucault’s Journey to Ethics
Piergiorgio Donatelli

34. Does Critique Have a Future?
David M. Halperin

Part IV: Foucault’s Legacies

35. Foucault and Feminism: A (Not Quite) Love Story
Dianna Taylor

36. Foucault: The Premier Disabled Philosopher of Disability (My Love Letter to Foucault)
Shelley Lynn Tremain

37. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975): A Reader’s Companion for 2026
Bernard E. Harcourt

38. Foucault, Normativity, and the Genealogy of Law
Ben Golder

39. Situating the Biopolitics/Necropolitics Debate: A Discussion on Foucault’s Legacy
André Duarte and Maria Rita de Assis César

40. Life’s Entanglement with Power: Michel Foucault, Biopolitics, and Eco-Governmentality
Nicolae Morar

41. Geography’s Foucault
Stephen Legg

42. Foucault and Critiques of Neoliberalism
Johanna Oksala

43. Migrations with Foucault: Biopolitical Hold, Infamous Subjects, and the Deadlocks of Critique
Martina Tazzioli

44. Queer-Minded
Lynne Huffer

Index

Sarah Wieners, Eva Bulgrin; Susanne Maria Weber, Re-imagining mentoring programs from privilege to equality – intervening in academic gaze orders (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

29 July 2026

Sarah Wieners, Eva Bulgrin; Susanne Maria Weber, “Re-imagining mentoring programs from privilege to equality – intervening in academic gaze orders”. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 5 June 2026
https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-01-2025-0047

Abstract
Purpose
This conceptual article discusses academic mentoring programs from a Foucauldian power-knowledge analysis. How is mentoring entangled in the rationalities of the privileging and de-privileging gaze in academia? How does this power/knowledge imply organizational marginalizations and exclusions for Blacks and People of Color (BiPoc) female academics? The article proposes to discuss privileging and de-privileging as a discursive practice creating visibilities and invisibilities. It identifies the need to transform institutional gaze orders and explores how epistemic interventions may support such transformations. By understanding and designing mentoring programs as innovation labs, universities can be supported in shifting the gaze toward an ontology and epistemology of institutional solidarity and care.
Design/methodology/approach

From a Foucauldian perspective, the discursive “gaze” constitutes the other, producing differentiated and “othering” subject positions that privilege some while marginalizing others. This analytical lens enables an examination of the rationalities underlying institutional practices – particularly those that enact exclusion. From a Foucauldian perspective, we see innovation labs as discursive interventions into and potential openings of institutional gaze orders.

Findings
This article adopts a power/knowledge-critical, epistemic perspective and proposes a transformative design approach to mentoring programs for female academics. It conceptualizes knowledge orders as contested terrains that both constrain and enable shifts in subject positions through discursive practices. From this perspective, the often invisible, exclusionary mechanisms embedded in mentoring programs for women scholars are brought to light. Moreover, this approach advocates for discursive interventions into institutional gaze orders. By actively confronting discursive gaze orders of privilege and exclusion and engaging various stakeholders in mentoring programs, mentoring can become a starting point for re-imagining gaze orders – opening space for discursive innovation and institutional transformation.

Originality/value
Little research exists on the exclusionary practices of mentoring programs despite the declining proportions of female academics with international, migration or BiPoC backgrounds. Moreover, studies suggest little attention to institutional change in mentoring programs and criticize insufficient focus on intersectional perspective on gender equality. Our approach contributes to a broader understanding of how institutional mentoring programs and practices can be re-imagined as vehicles for epistemic transformation.

Keywords:
Mentoring, Higher education, Gender, Race, Power/knowledge, Gaze orders, Critical whiteness

Pascal Engel, Foucault et les normes du savoir (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 July 2026

Pascal Engel, Foucault et les normes du savoir, Eliott éditions, 2024

L’œuvre de Michel Foucault est une réflexion sur les normes. C’est de ses conceptions des normes du savoir que traite principalement ce livre, et de son projet d’une généalogie et d’une histoire de la vérité. Foucault renverse les positions classiques : au lieu de parler de vérité, il parle des procédures de véridiction et des techniques de vérité, au lieu de parler de justification des connaissances, il traite de la volonté de savoir et propose une éthique de la vérité.

Mais jusqu’à quel point traite-t-il vraiment de vérité et de savoir ? Ne réduit-il pas à de simples effets ces notions, qui disparaissent sous les pratiques, les institutions et les formes sociales ? Et si elles perdent toute objectivité et toute visée universelle, comment peuvent-elles servir à l’entreprise de libération que visait Foucault ?

Pascal Engel est l’auteur de Va savoir ! De la connaissance en général (2007) ; Les vices du savoir. Essai d’éthique intellectuelle (2019) ; Manuel de survie rationaliste (2020) et de Les lois de l’esprit. Julien Benda ou la raison (nouvelle édition, 2023).

A review translated into English:
Does Truth Have a History? by Thomas Boccon-Gibod, 5 May 2026 [20 mars 2025], translated by Arianne Dorval, with the support of Cairn.info, Books and Ideas, Collège de France

In his latest book, Foucault et les normes du savoir (Foucault and the norms of knowledge), Pascal Engel offers a critique of Foucault’s conception of truth and of its uses by some of his successors. [1] In doing so, he follows in the footsteps of Jacques Bouveresse, [2] who, in Nietzsche contre Foucault (2016), sought to demonstrate that Foucault was less consistent than Nietzsche in his approach to the notion of truth and therefore less respectful of it. [3] The criticisms formulated by Bouveresse were precisely those that led Engel to distance himself from Foucault, after having long been his fervent disciple. [4] Thus, although this goal is not explicitly stated, Foucault et les normes du savoir can be read both as a retrospective look at Engel’s own philosophical journey and as a testimony to how that journey was shaped by his conception of the proper relationship to truth. While Engels’ critiques are sharp, his tone is measured and free of acrimony, opening up space for dispassionate discussions.
[…]

Heather Dundas, Michel Foucault in Death Valley: A Boom interview with Simeon Wade (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

25 July 2026

Heather Dundas, Michel Foucault in Death Valley: A Boom interview with Simeon Wade, Boom California, September 10, 2017

[…]
One early follower of Foucault’s thinking was Simeon Wade, assistant professor of history at Claremont Graduate School. A native of Texas, Wade moved to California in 1972 after earning his Ph.D. in the intellectual history of Western civilization from Harvard in 1970. In 1975, Foucault was invited to California to teach a seminar at the University of California, Berkeley. Following a lecture, Wade and his partner, musician Michael Stoneman, invited Foucault to accompany them on a road trip to Death Valley. After some persuasion, Foucault agreed. The memorable trip occurred two weeks later. This interview was conducted by Heather Dundas on 27 May 2017, and has been edited for length, clarity, and historical accuracy.
[…]

Critical Theory Working Group, Wokeness Must be Defended. Podcast (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

24 July 2026

Critical Theory Working Group, Wokeness Must be Defended. Podcast on Patreon, 4 April 2026

JE, Cam and Re interrogate Foucault’s mid 1970s lectures at the Collège de France, Society Must be Defended. They discuss Foucault’s method, his genealogy from Race Wars to Racism and modern conspiratorial thinking among other things.

Mats Inauen, Reading Michel Foucault Today: In Conversation with Philipp Sarasin (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 July 2026

Mats Inauen, Reading Michel Foucault Today: In Conversation with Philipp Sarasin, The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics and Art, 21 July 2026.

Philipp Sarasin is emeritus professor of modern history at the University of Zurich and one of the foremost scholars of Michel Foucault in the German-speaking world. Among his many publications are Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie (Darwin and Foucault. Genealogy and History in the Age of Biology), and Michel Foucault zur Einführung (An Introduction to Michel Foucault), the influential standard introduction to Foucault’s thought in German. His most recent book is the widely read 1977. Eine kurze Geschichte der Gegenwart (1977. A Brief History of the Present), in which he traces the cultural, political, and technological upheavals that have shaped the recent past. This interview is centred around the enduring political actuality of Foucault’s thought and what his analytical tools can still offer us in making sense of the present.

This interview was conducted on 22 May 2026.

Read more

Crispin Sartwell, Is French Theory to Blame for Woke? (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

23 July 2026

Editor: The latest round in the iterative saga of critiques of “woke” and North American culture wars.

It started with a post on X by Brivael Le Pogam on 15 May 2026 which has of the current date attracted 55.5 million views (by no doubt a mixture of humans and bots) and 4.1k replies. The post was subsequently translated into English here.

Crispin Sartwell replies in a short piece Is French Theory to Blame for Woke? ‘Naw, it was more American “linguistic constructivism.”’ (Splice Today, 18 May 2026)

“It’s anachronistic and arbitrary, but a post on X by Brivael Le Pogam apologizing on behalf of “the French” for “French theory” (he mentions the work of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze) has set off a flap. Le Pogam blames French Theory (FT) for woke, the particular brand of leftism that, I agree, vitiated American academia from 2015-2025 or so.
[…]

But I don’t agree with him in blaming FT for “an entire generation [that] knows how to suspect and no longer knows how to admire. An entire generation [that] sees power everywhere and beauty nowhere.” Le Pogam’s thesis is that wokeism arises from the combination of French theory with American puritanism. The puritanism would help explain the “church lady” or “he said a bad word” quality of woke, because the role of Michel Foucault, about the least puritanical person who ever lived, definitely cannot.”
[…]

Serge Audier, Le Néolibéralisme, Foucault et nous (2015, 2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 July 2026

Serge Audier, Le Néolibéralisme, Foucault et nous, Le Bord de l’eau, Carignan-de-Bordeaux, 2026

Le cours de Michel Foucault au Collège de France sur la « naissance de la biopolitique » s’est imposé comme une référence fondamentale pour toute réflexion sur le néolibéralisme dans ses différentes dimensions – théorique, historique, sociologique, etc.

Beaucoup y ont vu une approche révolutionnaire : au lieu de réduire le néolibéralisme à une doctrine économique prônant le « laisser-faire », Foucault aurait compris qu’il s’agit d’une nouvelle conception de l’être humain et de la société, fondée sur l’entreprenariat et la concurrence généralisée. Cette interprétation a fait florès dans le monde entier : des governmental studies à Wendy Brown, Foucault a été applaudi comme le prophète de notre temps.

L’objet de ce livre est de revenir sur ce bilan, et d’examiner comment Foucault a souvent été érigé en figure d’autorité pour dénoncer le néolibéralisme. Il met à l’épreuve cette interprétation sous deux angles. D’abord à travers une reconstitution du parcours de Foucault dans le contexte politique et intellectuel de la fin des années 1970 (antitotalitarisme, « retour du libéralisme », etc.), il montre pourquoi sa position de l’époque risque de susciter aujourd’hui des lectures anachroniques. Ensuite, il montre que la réalité de la contre-révolution néolibérale – du Chili de Pinochet à nos jours – n’est pas entièrement déchiffrable à l’aune du paradigme foucaldien. Il y a certes encore beaucoup à apprendre de ses analyses mais à condition d’en faire un usage critique : évitant les pièges du réquisitoire et de l’hagiographie, le livre démontre que Foucault n’était ni un contempteur absolu du néolibéralisme, ni un soutien caché. Et que ses hésitations sont symptomatiques d’une crise de la gauche dont nous ne sommes jamais vraiment sortis.

En cette année du centenaire de Foucault, le meilleur hommage à rendre à ce déstabilisateur de certitudes n’est-il pas de penser avec et contre lui ? Il y va de la compréhension des mutations du capitalisme et du renouveau de la gauche face à la révolution conservatrice.

Serge Audier est professeur de philosophie à l’université Nice-Côte d’Azur. Il a notamment publié La Pensée anti-68 (La Découverte, 2008), Néolibéralisme(s). Une archéologie intellectuelle (Grasset, 2012), Aux origines du néolibéralisme. Le Colloque Walter Lippmann (Le Bord de l’eau, 2012), L’Invention du néolibéralisme, 2 vol. (Le Bord de l’eau, 2022 et 2023) et une trilogie sur la pensée écologique, dont La Cité écologique. Pour un éco-républicanisme (La Découverte, 2020).

Maxime Toscan Du Plantier, Le Monde Diplomatique, juin 2026

Dans cette réédition augmentée d’un ouvrage de 2015, Serge Audier revient sur les cours au Collège de France donnés par Michel Foucault en 1979 et publiés sous le titre Naissance de la biopolitique. Une « vulgate » d’origine anglo-saxonne voit dans ces cours une analyse définitive et une critique absolue du néolibéralisme. La lecture minutieuse et érudite d’Audier, qui vise à les réinscrire dans leur contexte intellectuel et politique, est bien différente. Influencé par la présentation « par-delà la gauche et la droite » qu’en proposaient les « nouveaux économistes », Foucault aurait vu dans le néolibéralisme américain un outil lui permettant de développer ses analyses sur la crise des « sociétés disciplinaires » ainsi que ses réflexions antisocialistes et antibureaucratiques. Alors qu’il s’est rapproché de la « deuxième gauche », Foucault se montre incapable de rendre compte de la dimension idéologique et réactionnaire du néolibéralisme des années 1980 — dans lequel nous vivons toujours — incarné par Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher et l’alliance de la dictature d’Augusto Pinochet avec les « Chicago boys ».

Eli B. Lichtenstein, Partisan Genealogy. Foucault’s Critique of Penal Power (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

17 July 2026

Eli B. Lichtenstein, Partisan Genealogy. Foucault’s Critique of Penal Power, SUNY Press, November 2026

Description
Presents a partisan model of genealogy by reinterpreting Foucault in the context of anti-prison struggles and his engagement with Marxism.

Michel Foucault has exerted enormous influence on our understanding of power and penal systems, above all with his work Discipline and Punish. However, the latter is often read as a pessimistic text that resigns us to accepting the unshakeable hold of power and the futility of resistance. Eli B. Lichtenstein challenges such pessimism by reconstructing the radical critique of penal power that Foucault developed prior to the publication of Discipline and Punish. He argues that in the early 1970s, Foucault employed a distinct genealogical method designed to further struggles against penal systems, and that he expanded critiques of repression and the prison to encompass broader social structures. This book also reconsiders Foucault’s much-debated relationship to Marxism. It argues that Foucault extensively engaged Marxist theory in order to more adequately theorize the links between capitalism and other modes of domination. Through its major reinterpretation of Foucault’s political thought, Partisan Genealogy offers a timely examination of the capitalist foundations of penal power and explains how genealogy crafts tools for use in the urgent struggles of the present.

Eli B. Lichtenstein is a philosopher and writer based in London.

With thanks to Progressive Geographies for this news