Foucault News

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

Laes, E., Bombaerts, G. Political Mediation in Nuclear Waste Management: a Foucauldian Perspective (2021) Philosophy and Technology DOI: 10.1007/s13347-021-00455-6 Open access Abstract This paper aims to open up high-level waste management practices to a political philosophical questioning, beyond the enclosure implied by the normative ethics approaches that prevail in the literature. Building on previous insights …

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Kobylin, I. The invisible hand of history: Governmentality, the providential machine, and historical materialism (2021) Logos (Russian Federation), 31 (4), pp. 247-265. DOI: 10.22394/0869-5377-2021-4-247-263 Abstract The article is devoted to one aspect of the genealogy of Soviet governmentality. Michel Foucault, who elaborated the original theory of different types of govern-mentality, rejected the idea that socialism …

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Kwok, H., Singh, P., Heimans, S. The regime of ‘post-truth’: COVID-19 and the politics of knowledge (2021) Discourse DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2021.1965544 Abstract The emergence of ‘post-truth’ is often associated with the rise of conspiracy theories and the lack of trust in scientific knowledge. This article attempts to theorise the complex division of labour in this regime …

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Testini, F. Genealogical Solutions to the Problem of Critical Distance: Political Theory, Contextualism and the case of Punishment in Transitional Scenarios (2021) Res Publica DOI: 10.1007/s11158-021-09515-2 Abstract In this paper, I argue that one approach to normative political theory, namely contextualism, can benefit from a specific kind of historical inquiry, namely genealogy, because the latter …

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Beugnet, M., Delanoë-Brun, E. Raw becomings: Bodies, discipline and control in Julia Ducornau’s Grave (2021) French Screen Studies, 21 (3), pp. 204-223. DOI: 10.1080/26438941.2021.1920705 Abstract Julia Ducournau’s Grave (2018) takes place within the confines of an isolated veterinary school, where humans and animals coexist as part of a highly codified environment. Against the backdrop of …

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O’Callaghan, A.K. ‘The medical gaze’: Foucault, anthropology and contemporary psychiatry in Ireland (2021) Irish Journal of Medical Science DOI: 10.1007/s11845-021-02725-w Open access Abstract Michel Foucault developed the concept of ‘the medical gaze’, describing how doctors fit a patient’s story into a ‘biomedical paradigm, filtering out what is deemed as irrelevant material’ (Misselbrook, 2013). Doctors are …

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Häberlen, J.C. Heterochronias: reflections on the temporal exceptionality of revolts (2021) European Review of History, 28 (4), pp. 531-548. DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2021.1897530 Abstract Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of Heterotopias, the article explores how we can understand revolts and revolutions as ‘heterochronian’ moments. Revolts turn spaces of ordinary everyday life, streets and squares, factories and universities, …

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Brady, D. The circulatory panopticon: Real names, rail infrastructure and Foucault’s realist turn (2021) Political Geography, 90, art. no. 102463 DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102463 Abstract This article examines the contemporary Chinese rail system as a circulatory panopticon: an apparatus that uses the “natural” movements of the population to render them legible and safe. The panoptic effect of …

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Meloni, M. The politics of environments before the environment: Biopolitics in the longue durée (2021) Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 88, pp. 334-344. DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.06.011 Abstract Our understanding of body–world relations is caught in a curious contradiction. On one side, it is well established that many concepts that describe interaction with the outer …

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Fajardo, C. Mystified alienation: A discussion between Marx, Foucault and Federici (2021) TripleC, 19 (2), pp. 287-300. DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i2.1277 Open access Abstract This article explores Karl Marx’s critique of alienation. Specifically, I will argue that the concept of alienation is essential to understand not only how capitalism reproduces itself, but also to find alternatives to …

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