Foucault News

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

Clare O'Farrell

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

no comments

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

Etienne Balibar, Sur la catastrophe informatique : une fin de l’historicité ? (2024)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

4 June 2026

Etienne Balibar, Sur la catastrophe informatique : une fin de l’historicité ?, Les temps qui restent, 4 March 2024

La catastrophe digitale en cours fait des humains des inforgs, des organismes configurés et traités par l’informatique. Cela reconfigure les relations de pouvoir, de travail, et de production et circulation du symbolique : ce sont des conséquences anthropologiques. Elles nous font courir le risque de la disparition de l’historicité.
[…]

De mon point de vue, la catastrophe informatique n’est que l’une des trois grandes « catastrophes » auxquelles nous avons affaire […]

Les deux autres catastrophes auxquelles je pense sont la catastrophe environnementale, dont relèvent le dérèglement climatique, la pollution du milieu terrestre, océanique et atmosphérique, l’extinction massive des espèces et l’effondrement de la biodiversité, mais aussi, moins unanimement reconnue bien que je ne la croie pas moins désastreuse, la généralisation de la guerre qui efface les frontières entre « état de paix » et « état de guerre » au niveau géopolitique et au niveau local.
[…]

Ruixun Dai, Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas, and Shaun Rawolle, “Revisiting Foucault’s Panopticon: How Does AI Surveillance Transform Educational Norms? (2025)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

1 June 2026

Ruixun Dai, Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas, and Shaun Rawolle. 2025. “Revisiting Foucault’s Panopticon: How Does AI Surveillance Transform Educational Norms?” British Journal of Sociology of Education 46 (5): 650–68
https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2025.2501118

Abstract
This article applies Foucault’s theories of surveillance, disciplinary power, and normalisation to examine the shifting power dynamics in AI-mediated education. Drawing on qualitative responses from 27 English and Chinese-speaking stakeholders, including students, teachers, administrators and parents with no geographical restrictions, this study investigates how AI surveillance reshapes behaviours and perceptions and identifies emergent norms in education. Thematic analysis revealed four key themes: normalising ubiquitous surveillance and behavioural control, prioritising efficiency over autonomy, reaffirming the importance of human elements in AI-assisted education, and ensuring human-AI collaboration. Machine learning is not neutral but an active agent of algorithmic control, reflecting a post-panoptic power structure. It introduces new forms of disciplinary power, encouraging behaviours aligned with efficiency at the expense of autonomy and privacy. Despite these shifts, the findings underscore the vital role of human engagement, pointing to a future where human agency remains central in regulating and complementing AI in education.

Christophe Bouton, The problem of the transcendental from Kant to Hegel. The young Foucault’s interpretation of the “Phenomenology of Spirit” in his 1949 mémoire (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

31 May 2026

Christophe Bouton, The problem of the transcendental from Kant to Hegel. The young Foucault’s interpretation of the “Phenomenology of Spirit” in his 1949 mémoire. The Southern Journal of Philosophy. First published: 13 March 2026
https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.70043

Abstract
In this paper, I explore the young Foucault’s engagement with phenomenology in his master’s thesis, The Constitution of a Historical Transcendental in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. I begin by outlining the context of this early work (Section 1), followed by a brief summary of the thesis and its overall argumentative structure (Section 2). In Section 3, I analyze Foucault’s critique of Kant, which concerns not only Kant’s ahistorical conception of the transcendental (3.1), but also the lack of critical reflection on the conditions of access to transcendental philosophy (3.2). Finally, I trace the emergence of the theme of the empirico–transcendental doublet in the 1949 thesis, and consider to what extent this notion applies to both Kant and Hegel (3.3).

Rubén Alepuz Cintas, Molecular Biopolitics and Biological Citizenship: Towards a New Configuration of Power over Life (2026)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

28 May 2026

Rubén Alepuz Cintas, Molecular Biopolitics and Biological Citizenship: Towards a New Configuration of Power over Life. (2026). Tábano, 27, 1-19.
https://doi.org/10.46553/tab.2026.5394

Article in Spanish

Abstract
This article analyzes the evolution of the concept of biopolitics from Michel Foucault to Nikolas Rose, with a particular focus on molecular biopolitics and biological citizenship. It examines how contemporary biomedicine transforms power relations by introducing new mechanisms for regulating life, based on indefinite optimization and the management of genetic susceptibility. Drawing on Rose’s work, the role of biosociality and biolegitimacy in shaping a new model of citizenship is explored. It is argued that this form of biological citizenship, far from being passive, involves collective agency, where individuals organize themselves to claim their biomedical rights. Finally, the article reflects on the tensions between negative biopolitics, focused on controlling life, and affirmative biopolitics, which enables new forms of subjectivation and political participation.