Foucault News

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

van Wijk, Berend. “Beyond the Entrepreneur Society: Foucault, Neoliberalism and the Critical Attitude.” Philosophy & Social Criticism, June 2021, doi:10.1177/01914537211017589. Abstract Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics is generally acknowledged as a pioneering study of neoliberalism, presenting it not merely as an economic theory but also as a mode of government. There is much debate, …

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Carlos Palacios, Skeptically Self-governed Citizens: The ‘Volunteer!’ Injunction as a Predicament of Neoliberal Life (2022) Citizenship Studies DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2022.2053837 Abstract The idea that anyone, with the right critical knowledge and a certain amount of spare time and resources, could become a globally responsible citizen has been skeptically questioned at least since the time of Rousseau. …

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Tim Christiaens (2021), “Against the Republican Foucault: How to Establish an Affirmative Biopolitics of Care”, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 83 (4), 683-709. DOI: 10.2143/TVF.83.4.0000000 Open access link Abstract: In The Republic of the Living, Miguel Vatter argues that, at the end of the 1970s, Michel Foucault did not convert to but criticized neoliberalism from a republican …

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Lisa Duggan, Ayn Rand and the Cruel Heart of Neoliberalism, Dissent Magazine, May 20, 2019 Excerpted from Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed by Lisa Duggan, published by the University of California Press. © 2019 by the Regents of the University of California.) […] Neoliberal influence has been culturally deep as well as geographically …

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Smeets, Koen, Neo-Liberalism, Neoclassical Economics, and Foucault: Dominant Schools of Economic Thought in American Anarcho-Liberalism and German Ordoliberalism (April 3, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3684056 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3684056 Abstract This paper examines the influence of American and German neo-liberalism on the dominant school of economics in their respective countries based on an extended version of Foucault’s The Birth of …

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Maher, H. Foucault against the Foucauldians? On the problem of the neoliberal state (2021) Thesis Eleven DOI: 10.1177/07255136211053377 Abstract The survival of neoliberal forms of governance after their apparent repudiation during the Global Financial Crisis is a problem that continues to generate significant scholarly controversy. One of the most influential accounts of the survival of …

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Giorgi Vachnadze, Fighting Bodies: A Genealogy of the Ring, Epoché Philosophy Monthly, Issue #44 September 2021 Open access The following essay will attempt to trace a genealogy for the institution of professional boxing. Applying Michel Foucault’s method of Archeology and Biopolitical critique, the aim will be to demonstrate several things. First, that boxing has not …

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Michael C. Behrent, The True Foucault Dissent Magazine, September 30, 2021 The issues most important to Michel Foucault have moved from the margins to become major preoccupations of political life. But what did Foucault actually teach?, Suddenly, it seems, everyone has a lot to say about Michel Foucault. And much of it isn’t pretty. After …

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Alphin, C., Debrix, F. Biopolitics in the ‘Psychic Realm’: Han, Foucault and neoliberal psychopolitics, Philosophy and Social Criticism, (2021). DOI: 10.1177/01914537211033011 Abstract This article explores German Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s notion of psychopolitics and his concept of the neoliberal subject. For Han, mental processes are now the primary target of power. This means that, according …

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Miguel de Beistegui, The Government of Desire. A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject, University of Chicago Press, 2018 Liberalism, Miguel de Beistegui argues in The Government of Desire, is best described as a technique of government directed towards the self, with desire as its central mechanism. Whether as economic interest, sexual drive, or the basic …

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