Foucault News

News and resources on French thinker Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

Han-yu Huang Risk, Fear and Immunity: Reinventing the Political in the Age of Biopolitics, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 37.1 March 2011: 43-71 Abstract As an update of his continual concern for contemporary risk society since the 1980s, Ulrich Beck’s latest work World at Risk (2009) alerts us to the deterritorializing effects of global risk …

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Sabot, Philippe. “Michel Foucault in the 1950s: Beyond Psychology towards Radical Ontology.” Theory, Culture & Society, (May 2022). https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221092312. Abstract This paper is based on the archives of Michel Foucault collected (since 2013) at the Manuscripts Department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. Our investigation focuses in particular on a complete manuscript, until …

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Jim Denison & Joseph P. Mills (2014) Planning for distance running: coaching with Foucault, Sports Coaching Review, 3:1, 1-16, DOI: 10.1080/21640629.2014.953005 Abstract Coaching and sport scholars working from a Foucauldian perspective (e.g. Barker-Ruchti & Tinning, 2010; Denison, 2007; Heikkala, 1993; Johns & Johns, 2000) have demonstrated how overly controlling and disciplining training practices can objectify …

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Romanowski, M.H., Alkhateeb, H. Problematizing Accreditation for Teacher Education (2022) Higher Education Policy DOI: 10.1057/s41307-022-00264-2 Abstract This essay aims to problematize US accreditation of teacher education. Foucault’s notion of problematization is used as a theoretical framework to explain how accreditation emerged in the past as a solution to perceived educational problems and how and why …

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Denison, Jim. “Social Theory for Coaches: A Foucauldian Reading of One Athlete’s Poor Performance.” International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching 2, no. 4 (December 2007): 369–83. https://doi.org/10.1260/174795407783359777. Abstract This paper explores my “sense making” when a male cross-country runner was coaching performed below expectation. My initial understanding of his poor performance was to blame …

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Meloni, M. An unproblematized truth: Foucault, biopolitics, and the making of a sociological canon (2022) Social Theory and Health DOI: 10.1057/s41285-022-00177-5 Abstract Foucault’s argument that a major break occurred in the nature of power in the European Eighteenth century—an unprecedented socialization of medicine and concern for the health of bodies and populations, the birth of …

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Originally posted on Progressive Geographies:
I had a good two-week visit to Paris, where I worked at both the Mitterand and Richelieu sites of the Bibliothèque nationale, the Collège de France and the École normale supérieure. It was something of a transitional trip, doing a little with some loose ends on the Foucault work, an article, the Mitra-Varuna editing,…

Patrão, A. Foucault’s Relation With Architecture: The Interest of His Disinterest (2022) Architecture and Culture DOI: 10.1080/20507828.2022.2046395 Abstract For over half a century, the works of Michel Foucault have famously exerted tremendous influence upon practicing architects and theoreticians alike. But what of the role architecture played for the French philosopher, who rarely addressed architecture exclusively …

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Karmakar, G., Sarkar, J. Virus and Visible Reality: Biopolitics, Crime, and Disability in Peter May’s Lockdown (2021) NALANS: Journal of Narrative and Language Studies, 9 (18), pp. 306-323. Abstract This paper examines Peter May’s crime novel Lockdown (2020) to explain how a bioengineered virus cripples London and results in a crime, the denouement of which …

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Ambrosio, J. Problematizing truth-telling in a post-truth world: Foucault, parrhesia, and the psycho-social subject (2022) Educational Philosophy and Theory DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2022.2034619 Abstract The study examines how truth-tellers and truth-telling can be cultivated in the context of post-truth politics in the U.S. Following Foucault, it is not concerned with examining the problem of truth, with the …

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