Foucault News

Umezurike, U.P.
“Omelora”: Orthodox and Disciplinary Masculinities in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus
(2022) Men and Masculinities, .

DOI: 10.1177/1097184X211063498

Abstract
This paper examines the connections between masculinity and orthodoxy in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus to underscore the intersections of gender, class, religion, and ethnicity. Adichie depicts two contradictory figures of Catholic orthodoxy, namely, Eugene and Father Amadi and the consequences of their performances of masculinity. Where Eugene enacts violence on his family in the name of piety, Father Amadi demonstrates receptivity to human suffering as crucial to piety. I draw on the ideas of Michel Foucault and Raewyn Connell to demonstrate how discipline, control, and male power operate in the domestic sphere and their effects on subjectivities and bodies. Adichie’s portrayal of Eugene articulates a model of disciplinary power undergirded by orthodoxy. Eugene, therefore, dramatizes orthodox masculinity. I argue that Adichie envisions a redefinition of masculinity by presenting Father Amadi as an alternative to Eugene’s enactments of orthodoxy. I conclude that Adichie provides us with an understanding of how people can deploy violence in the name of piety and religion. Indeed, Adichie emphasizes the need to redefine masculinity cognizant of the dignity of all humanity. © The Author(s) 2022.

Author Keywords
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; masculinities; Michel Foucault; Nigerian novels; orthodoxy; Purple Hibiscus

Index Keywords
adult, article, Catholic, controlled study, ethnicity, father, female, Hibiscus, human, human dignity, male, masculinity, nonhuman, religion, violence

Wan, S.H.
A Spectral Spectacle: Dutch Mannerist Portals at Amsterdam’s New Philanthropic Sites, 1581-1645
(2021) Early Modern Low Countries, 5 (2), pp. 332-365.

DOI: 10.51750/EMLC11337

Abstract
After Amsterdam’s late medieval Catholic monasteries were surrendered to the Protestant government in 1578, four of these properties were converted into an orphanage, a mental asylum, and two gender-specific reformatories respectively before the turn of the century. Portals with Dutch Mannerist expressions were installed at the principal entrances as a publicly visible feature of modernisation for the repurposed complexes. This essay is a study of these architectural objects and their socio-political value for the city’s philanthropic campaign that affirmed middle-class power. It argues that the portals, completed with narrative relief panels and didactic inscriptions, were a means for Amsterdam’s authorities to redefine the spectacle of social marginality. Underclass visibility to the general population, once a concrete sight of panhandlers and vagrants occupying the urban landscape, became an abstract image of civic discipline. Such an image enabled sequestered and disappeared lives to reappear, with a spectral quality integral to Foucault’s analysis of modern society’s compulsion to stow away indigent bodies. Considering the seventeenth-century Dutch moral geography of moderating wealth through philanthropy, such a ‘spectral spectacle’ paralleled the Baroque theatricality of Counter-Reformation Rome as a spatial experience that advanced a more secular mode of devotion to the community. © 2021 Utrecht University Library Open Access Journals. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Classical architecture; Disciplinary power; Poor relief; Portals; Public art; Urban spectacle

Mariani, M., Cerdan, C., Peri, I.
Cultural biodiversity unpacked, separating discourse from practice
(2022) Agriculture and Human Values, .

DOI: 10.1007/s10460-021-10286-y

Abstract
In this article, we question to what extent origin-food labels, namely Geographical Indications (GIs) and Slow Food Presidia, may effectively account for cultural biodiversity (CB). Building on Foucault’s discourse theory, we question how the Slow Food movement and GI promoters have developed their own discourse and practice on CB, how these discourses contrast, and how they inform projects. Focusing on the practices to cultivate the microbiological life of three origin labeled cheeses (from France and Italy), we have revealed the gap between these institutional discourses and what happens on the ground. We argue that how actors’ relationships in the marketplace unfold, from public authorities to the collectives of producers to consumers, may threaten the effects that these experiences of alternative food productions may have in the defense of biodiversity, causing, for instance, the loss of diversity of the invisible microbial ecosystems of artisan raw milk cheese. However, we conclude that, despite limitations, the mediatized institutional narrative on CB can amplify the political voice of local actors by fostering community and social relationships between the farmers. © 2022, The Author(s).

Author Keywords
Cheese; Cultural Biodiversity; Food Heritage; Geographical Indications; Slow Food; Starters