New Foucault blog at University of Zurich (2013)

A new blog titled Foucaultblog has recently been established at the University of Zurich. Contributions are in German, French and English.

Update September 2025. This blog has been retitled the G+C blog which is the blogging platform of the open access Genealogy + Critique journal. The link to the original blog is from the Wayback Machine

Editorial

The thought and intellectual praxis of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) are a reference of unbroken fascination for a vast number of scholarly, artistic, and political projects. Even now, almost thirty years after his death, new interviews with and lectures by the French philosopher and historian are being published; even now, his work remains neither categorized nor “grasped”; even now, we find that it remains full of surprises; and even now, his texts, therefore, invite new and renewed readings and his thought invites further thought.

Often, however, “Foucault” appears not merely as an unavoidable but also as an almost overpowering reference, bolstered by a doxa that believes it knows its maître à penser and tends to deform Foucault’s though, which is both flexible and sustained by its own contemporaneity, into a type of doctrine. To be sure, Foucault is far from being “dead”, yet at the same time a certain historicization—that is, a careful look at Foucault’s past present—may provide a means of escaping the dogmatic constriction of his reception.

This foucaultblog lends itself to both: unabashed fascination and cool historicization. It aspires to achieve this twofold objective by reflecting in a short, concise manner on the breadth and diversity of references to Foucault, as well as on research about Foucault—and thereby invite further critical thought. The foucaultblog is intended as an open forum for anyone who has not finished with Foucault.

We, the publishers of the foucaultblog, are historians and cultural researchers from Zurich, Munich, Vienna, and Paris involved in various projects with and about Foucault, without always agreeing on Foucault. This candidness should also shape the foucaultblog. We welcome any texts that contribute to such a debate.

Zurich, 1 April 2013.

With thanks to Margaret Kettle for this link