Foucault News

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

A new global psychiatric power? Intro (2020), Psypolitics blog by Federico Soldani – 6th Nov 2020 More than one year ago I presented the talk “Are we witnessing the emergence of a new global psychiatric power?” at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, in the summer of 2019. The overdue transcript, with this introduction and brief comments, subdivided in thirteen parts will …

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COVID-19: Narrative economics, public policy and mental health, Annie Tubadji, Don Webber, Frederic Boy VOX CEPR Policy Portal, 10 June 2020 The general public’s mental health can be affected by different public policy responses to a pandemic threat. Italy, the UK and Sweden implemented distinct approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic: early lockdown, delayed lockdown, and …

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Eric Schliesser, On Foucault on 10 January 1979 On the Art of Governing and the Origin of Liberalism, Digressions and Impressions blog, 26 May 2020 […] Foucault subtly draws a contrast between [I] (a) the ancient and traditional conception of governing and (b) a modern one; the modern one involves political sovereignty. He presents this …

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Robert D. Smith, What Type of Governmentality is This? Or, how do we govern unknowns, Somatosphere, Science, Medicine, and Anthropology, May 26, 2020. This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic In Le Temps, a French newspaper, anthropologist Julie Billaud wrote that the governance of COVID-19 represents “a move towards a biopolitical mode …

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Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it Ethan Zuckerman, MIT Technology Review June 3, 2020 After years of police body cams and bystander cellphone video, it’s clear that evidentiary images on their own don’t bring about change. What’s missing is power. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers was captured …

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Anton Oleinik, The politics behind how governments control coronavirus data The Conversation (Canada), June 5, 2020 COVID-19 has affected almost every country around the globe. The World Health Organization has confirmed cases in 216 countries and territories, a total that represents more than 85 per cent of 251 entities recognized by the United Nations. Yet …

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Gerasimos Kakoliris, A Foucauldian enquiry in the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic management (Critique in Times of Coronavirus) Critical Legal Thinking— Law and the Political — • 11 May 2020 Is the substantially global management of the coronavirus pandemic a novelty or would it be possible to trace its origin in an earlier order of …

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