The October issue of Law Cultiure and the Humanities contains a number of articles and a book review which relate to Foucault’s work. You can find the abstracts and pdfs (subscription only) on the journal site. The articles in question are:
Jonathan Simon, ‘Beyond the Panopticon: Mass Imprisonment and the Humanities’, Law, Culture and the Humanities, October 2010 6: 327-340.
Abstract
In the 1970s and the 1980s, the role of the prison in modern society was seared into the imagination of the humanities by Michel Foucault’s treatment of the prison in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison; his genealogy of the modern “soul.” At a time when the social sciences had little to say about the nature of imprisonment as a specific historical practice (rather than a problem of social organization), the humanities helped define the prison as a contemporary problem. During this era, ironically, a new model of imprisonment was arising, one based on the mass imprisonment of whole demographic categories of the population rather than the disciplinary investment of the deviant individual. The scale of imprisonment has arisen by more than five fold. Unfortunately the humanities and cultural studies have been slow to reckon with the nature of mass imprisonment. While a new wave of social science scholarship, partially inspired by the earlier work of the humanities, is engaging the topic, the absence of the humanities, especially their critical and normative edge, is significant.
Keally McBride, ‘Incarceration and Imprisonment’,
Law, Culture and the Humanities, October 2010 6: 341-353.
Abstract
Incarceration is best understood as an extreme environment which complicates our notions of human freedom. Incarceration helps us think about freedom because it demands consideration of the relationship between body and soul, providing yet another testing ground for the longstanding metaphysical and philosophical question of what makes humans truly free. It also is a remarkable test case for how much of human experience is socially determined and how much individuals can create their own reality because prisons try to substitute external administration for self-discipline entirely. How can we account for resistance to these forms of administration?
Ben Golder, ‘Foucault and the Unfinished Human of Rights’, Law, Culture and the Humanities, October 2010 6: 354-374.
Abstract
This article argues that in his late work Foucault does not submit to the ”moral superiority” of humanism and introduce a liberal humanist subject. Rather, Foucault’s late investigations of subjectivity constitute a continuation and not a radical departure from his earlier positions on the subject. This helps us in interpreting Foucault’s late supposed ”embrace” of, or return to -human rights; which is here re-interpreted as a critical anti-humanist engagement with human rights, conducted in the name of an unfinished humanity.
Manas Ray, ‘Book Review: Foucault’s Law By Ben Golder and Peter Fitzpatrick, London: Routledge-Cavendish, 2009. 160 pp. $35.95 (Paper). ISBN 0415424542
Law, Culture and the Humanities October 2010 6: 465-469.
Foucault News 