Foucault News

Update from organisers. Unfortunately this event is now full and there are no more places.

Neoliberalism and Biopolitics Working Group | Foucault and Marx: A Disjunctive Synthesis?
Lecture | December 9 | 5-7 p.m. | 370 Dwinelle Hall

Speaker/Performer: Etienne Balibar, Anniversary Chair of Contemporary European Philosophy at Kingston University London and Visiting Professor at Columbia University

Sponsor: The Program in Critical Theory

Étienne Balibar’s lecture revolves around connections and disjunctions between Michel Foucault and Karl Marx, using Foucault’s 1972 Collège de France lectures on La société punitive as an alternative lens for the question of “reproduction” and its relationship to class struggles. Using these thinkers as a starting point for a new confrontation, he also reconsiders the idea of “communism” today.

Etienne Balibar was born in 1942. He graduated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne in Paris, later took his PhD from the University of Nijmegen. After teaching in Algeria and France, he is currently Anniversary Chair of Contemporary European Philosophy at Kingston University London and Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York. His books include Reading Capital (with Louis Althusser) (Verso, 1965), Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities (Verso, 1991, with Immanuel Wallerstein), Masses, Classes, Ideas (Routledge, 1994), The Philosophy of Marx (Verso, 1995), Spinoza and Politics (Verso, 1998), We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton, 2004), Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness (Verso, 2013).

Response by Judith Butler, Professor of Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley

On December 10, The Program in Critical Theory presents a seminar with Professor Balibar on the new configurations of the “debt economy.” In preparation for the seminar, participants are asked to read Professor’s Balibar article, “Politics of the Debt.”

The Neoliberalism and Biopolitics Working Group and Conference is supported by the University of California Humanities Research Institute, organized by UC Berkeley graduate students William Callison (Political Science) and Zachary Manfredi (Rhetoric), and supervised by The Program in Critical Theory faculty Martin Jay (History) and Wendy Brown (Political Science).

Event Contact: info.cir@berkeley.edu