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Kaspar Villadsen, Foucault’s Technologies. Another Way of Cutting Reality, Oxford University Press, 2024

The aims of this book:

1. To shed new light on a neglected theme in one of the most influential contemporary thinkers by exploring Foucault’s thinking on technology. Foucault’s Technologies argues that Foucault’s thinking, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, is fundamentally technological.

2. To re-situate Foucault among his key sources of inspiration: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Althusser, and Deleuze, focussing on how his technological thinking developed in dialogue with these inspirational figures.

3. To present Foucault’s technological thought with an emphasis on how researchers and students can use it to pursue their own research.

Description

Michel Foucault is rarely viewed as a philosopher of technology, yet academics and students routinely refer to his terms ‘technologies of power’, ‘governmental technologies’, and ‘technologies of the self’. This book is a response to the contradiction between the paucity of research into Foucault’s technological thought and the abundance of technological vocabulary and metaphors in his own writings as well as in the commentary literature; it provides the most extensive examination of the role of technology in Foucault’s work so far.

Villadsen argues that technology serves neither as an object of Foucault’s analysis nor as a convenient metaphor for making arguments, but as rather integral to his thinking and writing. As the book’s title, Foucault’s Technologies indicates, it explores not Foucault and modern technology understood as technical devices like television, smartphones, or industrial machines, but rather Foucault’s approach to the theme of technology and his use of technological terms. The book provides an extensive exploration of Foucault’s technological thought, arguing that he offers a distinct framework that confronts commonsensical understanding and other scientific approaches to technology. The reader will travel a route paved with discussions of how Foucault’s work intersects with that of other key thinkers, particularly Heidegger, Althusser, Nietzsche, and Deleuze.

While presenting efforts in intellectual history, the book ultimately focusses on the analytical implications for ‘users’, showing how researchers can benefit from Foucault’s technological approach. As such, the book offers an analytical framework effective for the study of problems in present-day welfare states and the emergent world of data-capitalism.

Kaspar Villadsen specializes in Michel Foucault’s authorship, modern technology, and organization studies. Villadsen received his PhD in Sociology from Copenhagen University in 2004, and took a position as Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in 2005. Villadsen became an Associate Professor at CBS in 2008 and a Professor in 2015. He has been a visiting Professor at City University of New York, UC-Berkeley, Oslo University, and Amherst College. Villadsen has published around 65 international journal articles, writing at the intersections of sociology, philosophy, and intellectual history.