Foucault News

A. Colombo, La chair selon Michel Foucault le « retour» de l’expérience et l’élaboration de la subjectivité (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

17 June 2022

A. Colombo, La chair selon Michel Foucault le « retour» de l’expérience et l’élaboration de la subjectivité
(2021) Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques, 105 (3), pp. 353-379.

https://dx.doi.org/10.3917/rspt.1053.0353

Résumé
La définition de la chair comme une « expérience » constitue une des principales contributions conceptuelles des Aveux de la chair, quatrième volume de l’Histoire de la sexualité de Michel Foucault. Mais qu’est-ce que Foucault entend désigner avec le syntagme « expérience de la chair » ? Et quel sont les enjeux que celui-ci mobilise ? Cet article interroge la portée de cette définition en avançant l’hypothèse que celle-ci doit être comprise à la lumière des approches de l’expérience que Foucault développe dans les années 1960 en s’appuyant sur le structuralisme et la littérature. C’est ainsi que l’article dévoile la définition de la chair comme une expérience à la fois objective et subjective dont l’élaboration engage le développement d’une approche de la subjectivité en tant qu’élément agent capable de se transformer lui-même.

Abstract
The definition of flesh as an « experience» constitutes one of the main conceptual contributions of Confessions of the Flesh, the fourth volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality. But what does Foucault intend to designate with the syntagm « experience of the flesh»? And what is at stake in that definition? This article investigates Foucault’s account of Flesh through the approaches to experience that Foucault developped during the 1960’s drawing on structuralism and literature. In doing so, the article unveils an account of Flesh as an experience that is both objective and subjective. Such a perspective on Flesh entails an approach to subjectivity as an “agent” able to transforming itself. © Vrin.

Author Keywords
Christianity; Experience; Flesh; Michel Foucault; Subjectivity

Genealogía, estilos de pensamiento y archivos en Latinoamérica (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 June 2022

Convocatoria completa disponible AQUÍ

Primera Circular

En el 2021 se cumplieron cincuenta años de la publicación del Nietzsche, la genealogía, la historia. Entendida como metodología, la genealogía involucra una apuesta inactual y exigente. Va contrapelo del mandado que impone dejar de lado toda referencia al pasado. Trabaja sobre unas “historias ya escritas” y demanda cierta certeza y organización respecto de los materiales de archivo.

Teniendo en cuenta lo anterior, cabe preguntarse qué configuraciones (algo alocadas) ha asumido y puede asumir su práctica en sociedades, como las latinoamericanas, que desmienten esos presupuestos, acaso porque entraron en la arena de “la Historia” con el brillo de “lo nuevo”, acaso porque el lado “barroco” de las cosas desbarata más franca y directamente que en las sociedades del Norte, la posibilidad de un “orden”.

Movidos por esa inquietud, convocamos a investigadores de los distintos países de la región a participar en una “ronda de conversaciones” vertebradas en torno de las siguientes cuestiones:

¿Qué tipo de historia invoca la genealogía? ¿Qué relación nos propone trazar con el pasado, el presente, la actualidad, la inactualidad? ¿Qé modulaciones, estilos, giros, adopta la investigación genealógica en América Latina? ¿En dónde estriba su “politicidad”?
¿Qué desafíos, limitaciones y posibilidades entraña la organización pasada y presente de nuestras sociedades para la puesta en acto de modos de inteligibilidad (genealogía, historia del pensamiento, arqueología, etc.), y en particular, para el trabajo con acervos documentales? ¿Cómo se juega, en nuestras latitudes, la resbaladiza vinculación entre archivos, Estado, conmemoración y olvido?
¿Con qué otros linajes de investigación histórica o sociohistórica (vrg. los estudios de memoria, el psicoanálisis, el ensayo latinoamericano) se intersecta o bajo que “otros lenguajes” se encauzan “análisis de procedencias” que porten un aire de familia genealógico? ¿Qué tipos de objetos interesan a esta clase de análisis?
¿De qué modo se relaciona con otras prácticas de la crítica vigentes en la región? ¿En qué sentido se ha visto fecundada y/o objetivada por las perspectivas coloniales, decoloniales, feministas, o por otros saberes y disciplinas diversas?
¿Sobre qué objetos se pliega/se desliza la genealogía? ¿Se trata de conductas, ideas, conceptos, memorias, pensamientos, luchas? ¿Cuál es el estatuto que estos objetos tienen en la heterogénea tradición intelectual latinoamericana?

Formato

La “ronda de conversaciones 2022” contará con dos encuentros. El primero tendrá lugar el día 7 de octubre y será realizado bajo la modalidad virtual. El segundo, previsto para el día 14 de octubre, tendrá una modalidad híbrida, presencial y virtual. La actividad presencial se realizará en la sede del CITRA-CONICET-UMET, Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

Esperamos contribuciones que retomen algunos de los interrogantes antes planteados e involucren un ejercicio de reflexividad sobre experiencias de investigación (pasadas o en curso) inspiradas en la genealogía o en estilos de trabajo afines.

Quienes deseen participar, pueden enviar un resumen de hasta 500 palabras hasta el día martes 20 de julio. La aceptación de las propuestas será comunicada el día 12 de agosto. Por su parte, la fecha establecida para la presentación del trabajo completo es el 30 de septiembre.

A partir de las propuestas recibidas y efectivamente aceptadas, definiremos los “ejes” y “cruces” en torno a los cuales girarán las discusiones de los días 7 y 14 de octubre. Las pautas de organización de los encuentros así como los aspectos formales de los escritos serán precisados en una segunda circular.

Organizan

Paula Lucía Aguilar (CONICET-UBA-CCC) / Aldo Avellaneda (IIGHI-CONICET-UNNE) / Ana Grondona (CONICET-UBA-CCC) / Victoria Haidar (CITRA-CONICET-UMET) / Guillermo Vega (UNNE).

Consultas y envíos de resumen: genealogias.rondas@gmail.com

Convocatoria completa disponible AQUÍ

Alexander J. Means & Yuko Ida, Education after empire: A biopolitical analytics of capital, nation, and identity (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 June 2022

Alexander J. Means & Yuko Ida (2022) Education after empire: A biopolitical analytics of capital, nation, and identity, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54:7, 882-891

DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2020.1803836

Abstract
As it emerged in the late twentieth century, Empire promised a new era of global cooperation and stability through a seamless integration of late capitalism and neoliberal technocracy. Premised as an end to history itself, all that was left to accomplish was to tinker at the margins, stimulate corporate enterprise, embrace financialization and technological innovation, and encourage liberal rights and inclusion. As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the narrative fictions sustaining Empire have broadly collapsed at the level of symbolic identification and belief. Empire has entered into a period of global emergency and mutation. Engaging with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work, this paper considers what might emerge when we read education into the circuitry of Empire’s decay. First, we locate Empire within foundational tensions in modernity, using Kantian philosophy and colonialism as examples, to foreground the idea of education as immanent to historical processes of creativity, resistance, and innovation. Second, we highlight dead-end responses, from space colonization to neo-fascism, as representations of how modes of education circulate to stabilize and contain Empire’s crises, specifically in relation to capitalism, nationalism, and identity. Lastly, the paper develops a political ontology of education after Empire.

Keywords: Empire modernity education nation identity

Christian Ruby, Un cours inédit de Michel Foucault : les conditions de l’anthropologie (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 June 2022

Christian Ruby, Un cours inédit de Michel Foucault : les conditions de l’anthropologie, Nonfiction, 07 juin 2022

Les manuscrits inédits d’un cours de Michel Foucault prononcé en 1954 exhument les prémices de sa réflexion sur la possibilité d’une connaissance de l’homme, c’est-à-dire d’une anthropologie.

Le manuscrit de Michel Foucault (1926-1984) édité sous le titre La Question anthropologique a été conservé à la BNF depuis la mort de son auteur, sous la forme de feuillets numérotés dans des boîtes en carton. La compilation d’un tel matériau n’a pas été sans poser problème (numérotation flottante de certains textes, absence de titres pour certaines parties, découpages imprécis…) ; l’ample postface d’Arianna Sforzini, intitulée « Situation du cours », en restitue les détails.
[…]

Michel Foucault, La Question anthropologique. Cours, 1954-1955 (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 June 2022

Michel Foucault, La Question anthropologique. Cours, 1954-1955, Paris, Seuil, Gallimard, EHESS, 2022

Qu’est-ce que l’homme ? Michel Foucault, au mitan des années 1950, consacre une partie de son enseignement, dispensé à l’université de Lille et à l’École normale supérieure, à comprendre comment cette interrogation a traversé et transformé la philosophie. Ces leçons sont rassemblées dans un manuscrit, dont nous proposons ici l’édition complète.

Foucault déroule son parcours en une dramaturgie impeccable. Premier acte : montrer pourquoi la philosophie classique (Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz) demeurait sourde à cette question. Son idée infinie de « nature » empêchait que l’homme puisse nouer un rapport immédiat à sa propre vérité.

Deuxième acte : exposer comment, après le renversement kantien, le point de gravitation de la philosophie moderne, de Feuerbach à Dilthey en passant par Hegel et Marx, devient cet homme vrai qui déploie un monde de significations et de pratiques révélant son essence.

Troisième acte : décrire l’éclatement du dispositif anthropologique chez Nietzsche – à travers cette pensée dionysiaque qui, avec la mort de Dieu, proclame l’effacement de l’homme et promet des expériences tragiques de vérité. Pour la première et dernière fois, on trouve sous la plume foucaldienne une présentation longue, précise et percutante de la philosophie de Nietzsche.

Dans ce cours, Foucault lance en même temps des flèches vers son oeuvre à venir. On y discerne déjà l’entreprise critique qui s’épanouit en 1966 dans Les Mots et les Choses : thèse d’une configuration anthropologique de la modernité, annonce d’une mort de l’homme après son invention toute récente, programme d’une archéologie des sciences humaines. Juste avant son départ pour la Suède, Foucault surgit à la verticale de son propre destin philosophique.

Stuart Elden, The Archaeology of Foucault – Polity, December 2022, cover and preorder details

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

14 June 2022

Progressive Geographies

The final book in my series of studies of Foucault, The Archaeology of Foucault, is due for publication with Polity in December 2022.

On 20 May 1961 Foucault defended his two doctoral theses; on 2 December 1970 he gave his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France. Between these significant dates, he published four books, travelled widely and wrote extensively on literature, the visual arts, linguistics and philosophy. He taught both psychology and philosophy, beginning his explorations of the question of sexuality.
Weaving together analyses of published and unpublished material, much of which has only recently become available, this book is a comprehensive study of this crucial period of Foucault’s career. As well as his major texts, it discusses his initial visits to Brazil, Japan and the USA, his time in Tunisia, and his editorial work for Critique and the complete works of Nietzsche and Bataille.
It was in…

View original post 124 more words

Archive: Konoval et al, The cyclical relationship between physiology and discipline: one endurance running coach’s experiences problematizing disciplinary practices (2019)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

14 June 2022

Timothy Konoval, Jim Denison & Joseph Mills (2019) The cyclical relationship between physiology and discipline: one endurance running coach’s experiences problematizing disciplinary practices, Sports Coaching Review, 8:2, 124-148,
DOI: 10.1080/21640629.2018.1487632

ABSTRACT
There have been numerous calls by coaching researchers for Foucauldian-informed coach developers to help coaches change their practices to be less reliant on discipline’s techniques and instruments. In this paper, we explored what it might mean for a Foucauldian-informed coach developer to work collaboratively with a male university endurance running coach as he learned how to problematize the use of discipline. More specifically, we examined some of the barriers, challenges, and opportunities that the coach experienced as he attempted to learn, in collaboration with the first author, how to question the unintended consequences of discipline’s techniques and instruments and rethink the “total effects” of his coaching practices. The results revealed that the coach was able to show a degree of problematization, however, in the field the deep-rooted connection between endurance running, physiology, and discipline made coaching for him in a less disciplinary way a challenge. To conclude, Foucauldian-informed coach developers working in sports where physiology is the predominant sport science could use specific pedagogical strategies that work with and explicitly complicate the strong cyclical relationship between discipline and physiology to help coaches implement practices that are less dominated by, not absent of, physiology.

KEYWORDS:
Coach learning, problematization, disciplinary power

Rashid, M.A. Altruism or nationalism? Exploring global discourses of medical school regulation (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

13 June 2022

Rashid, M.A.
Altruism or nationalism? Exploring global discourses of medical school regulation
(2022) Medical Education

DOI: 10.1111/medu.14804

Abstract
Background: Although medical school regulation is ubiquitous, the extent to which it should be based on global principles is unclear. In 2010, the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) announced that from 2023, overseas doctors would only be eligible for certification to practise in the United States if they had graduated from a medical school that was accredited by a ‘recognised’ agency. This policy empowered the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) to create a recognition programme for regulatory agencies around the world, despite a lack of empirical evidence to support medical school regulation.

Methods: This study employs critical discourse analysis, drawing on the theoretical perspectives of Michel Foucault and Edward Said, to identify discourses that enabled this ‘globalising’ policy decision to take place. The dataset includes a series of 250 documents gathered around three key events: the Edinburgh declaration by WFME in 1988, the first set of global standards for medical schools by WFME in 2003 and the ECFMG ruling about medical school accreditation in 2010.

Findings: Two discourses, endorsement and modernisation, were dominant throughout this entire period and framed the move to globalise medical school regulation in terms of altruism and improving medical education worldwide. A discourse of resistance was present in the earlier period of this study but faded away as WFME aligned itself with ECFMG after 2010. Two further discourses, protection and control, emerged in the later period of this study and framed the ECFMG ruling in terms of nationalism and protecting American interests.

Discussion: This study proposes a new conceptualisation of the relationship between ECFMG and WFME in light of the apparently contradictory policy motivations of altruism and nationalism. It goes on to consider the implications of this association for the legitimacy of WFME as an organisation that represents all of the world’s medical schools.

Brenner, D., Tazzioli, M. Defending Society, Building the Nation: Rebel Governance as Competing Biopolitics (2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 June 2022

Brenner, D., Tazzioli, M.
Defending Society, Building the Nation: Rebel Governance as Competing Biopolitics
(2022) International Studies Quarterly, 66 (2)

DOI: 10.1093/isq/sqac007

Abstract
Rebel groups govern significant parts of territory worldwide. They often deliver crucial public goods and services to populations under their control. Scholarship on rebel governance commonly explains this with the need for armed groups to generate local and international legitimacy. We argue that this understanding of rebel governance as an instrumental means to power is insufficient. Instead, we propose a novel conceptualization of rebel governance as competing biopolitics. Tracing biopolitical technologies of rebel rule reveals the productive functions of war-time social orders for molding populations into imagined communities in direct opposition to the existing nation state. We develop this perspective by mobilizing Foucault’s work in conjunction with Chatterjee’s postcolonial understanding of governmentality in contexts of postcolonial state- and nation-formation, and empirical research on the Pat Jasan in northern Myanmar. Linked to the Kachin rebellion, this movement has fought against a devastating narcotics crisis with biopolitical interventions that form the Kachin nation body amidst protracted ethnonational conflict. Beyond shedding light on one of the world’s longest running but least-researched civil wars, this offers three distinct contributions to international studies: exploring non-state armed groups as actors of public health, theorizing the sociological underpinnings of rebel governance, and developing the concept of biopolitics beyond the nation state.

Roundtable Workshop: Foucault’s Historical Imaginary (June 2022)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

11 June 2022

Roundtable Workshop: Foucault’s Historical Imaginary

Despite the enormous influence of Michel Foucault’s thought in the contemporary humanities and social sciences, including in history, and the clearly historical nature of his most widely read works, Foucault’s historical method remains relatively under-explored. We invite you to join Alison Downham Moore (Western Sydney University), Stuart Elden (Warwick University) and Mark G. E. Kelly (Western Sydney University) for a discussion of Michel Foucault’s historical method.

DATE: Tuesday 14th June, chaired by Norma Lam-Saw

TIME: 6pm (Sydney)/9am (UK), 2 hours, online