Foucault News

Colin Koopman, ‘Two Uses of Michel Foucault in Political Theory: Concepts and Methods in Giorgio Agamben and Ian Hacking’, Constellations (1), 0 Article first published online: 19 MAY 2015

DOI: 10.1111/1467-8675.12153

First paragraph in lieu of abstract

Putting Foucault to Work

It is difficult to locate a single area of intellectual inquiry in the humanities and social sciences where the work of Michel Foucault is not taken seriously today. Foucault’s influence is perhaps most incisive where the humanities and social sciences come into contact with politics as an object, site, or field of inquiry. Foucault’s influence and importance may then be a function, at least in part, of the fact that in so many disciplines today politics and politicization are crucial domains for the work of critical thought. Consider, in this light, the following quick list of Foucauldian neologisms that are pervasive in almost every field of study that purports to address politics today: discipline, biopolitics, governmentality, power-knowledge, subjectivation, genealogy, archaeology, and problematization, to name just a few. These and other Foucauldian terms have been adopted for the purposes of political inquiry in subfields as diverse as political theory, political philosophy, political anthropology, political sociology, cultural history, geography, and much else besides.