Foucault News

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

Tim Christiaens, The entrepreneur of the self beyond Foucault’s neoliberal homo oeconomicus, European Journal of Social Theory 23(4), 2019, 493-511. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431019857998 Abstract In his lectures on neoliberalism, Michel Foucault argues that neoliberalism produces subjects as ‘entrepreneurs of themselves’. He bases this claim on Gary Becker’s conception of the utility-maximizing agent who solely acts upon cost/benefit-calculations. …

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Arona Moreau, Erratum. Ce n’est pas le néolibéralisme, c’est le capitalisme politique, L’Harmattan. ISBN : 978-2-343-17898-1 • 21 juin 2019 • 288 pages Lire un extrait ERRATUM. La plus grande erreur intellectuelle, critique et analytique commise par la pensée contemporaine reste sans aucun doute l’usage courant voire abusif du mot « néolibéralisme » pour désigner …

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Christiaens, T. Financial Neoliberalism and Exclusion with and beyond Foucault (2019) Theory, Culture and Society, 36 (4), pp. 95-116. DOI: 10.1177/0263276418816364 Abstract In the beginning of the 1970s Michel Foucault dismissed the terminology of ‘exclusion’ for his projected analytics of modern power. This rejection has had major repercussions on the theory of neoliberal subject-formation. Many …

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Joshua S. Hanan, Subjects of Technology: An Auto-Archeology of Attention Deficit Disorder in Neoliberal Time(s) (2019) Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, 19 (2), pp. 105-115. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708618807264 Abstract This essay (re)presents my own experiences living with attention deficit disorder (ADD) as a child and adult to provide a radically historical, contextual, and critical autoethnographic conceptualization of …

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LaMothe, R. Pebbles in the Shoe: Acts of Compassion as Subversion in a Market Society (2019) Pastoral Psychology, 68 (3), pp. 285-301. DOI: 10.1007/s11089-018-0833-1 Abstract This article considers how compassion can be subversive to political-economic orders, whether these orders are found in church or society. Compassion is explained in terms of John Macmurray’s and Alex …

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Son, K.-M. The making of the neoliberal subject: Response to Whyte (2019) Political Theory, 47 (2), pp. 185-193. DOI: 10.1177/0090591718774572 Abstract In her recent essay, Jessica Whyte has challenged the tendency to repurpose Friedrich Hayek’s thought for a progressive and participatory politics. Objecting to such thinkers as Michel Foucault and William Connolly who find inspiration …

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Rowe, E., Lubienski, C., Skourdoumbis, A., Gerrard, J., Hursh, D. Templates, typologies and typifications: neoliberalism as keyword (2019) Discourse, 40 (2), pp. 150-161. DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2019.1569875 Abstract Neoliberalism as a concept, ideology, or theoretical lens has emerged in the last couple of decades as a monolithic presence in education research, and the social sciences more broadly. …

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Foucault, Neoliberalism, and Beyond Edited by Stephen W. Sawyer and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Publication Date: Apr 2019 Few philosophers have garnered as much attention globally as Michel Foucault. But even within this wide reception, the consideration given to his relationship to neoliberalism has been noteworthy. However, the debate over this relationship …

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Ralf Havertz, Right-Wing Populism and Neoliberalism in Germany: The AfD’s Embrace of Ordoliberalism (2019) New Political Economy, 24 (3), pp. 385-403. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484715 Abstract This article analyses the ambiguous relation between right-wing populism and neoliberalism in Germany. It concentrates on the connections between and convergence of right-wing populism and ordoliberalism, a specific type of neoliberalism that …

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Mitchell Dean, What is Economic Theology? A New Governmental-Political Paradigm? (2019) Theory, Culture and Society, 36 (3), pp. 3-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418787622 Abstract Countering claims of its impossibility, this paper argues for economic theology as an intelligible figure of contemporary political rationality and organization, and a distinctive analytical strategy in relation to forms of liberal and neoliberal …

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