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

Capocchi, A., Orlandini, P., Pierotti, M., Amelio, S.
The nature, roles, uses, and impacts of accounting systems in the Real Liceo of Lucca in the nineteenth century
(2022) Accounting History Review

DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2021.2025113

Abstract
This study aims to advance the literature by examining how accounting systems were used in the management of the Real Liceo in Lucca during the nineteenth century. It considers rare documents, statutes, and accounting books concerning the administration of the Real Liceo from 1819 to 1848. Focused on the importance of academic and educational organisation at the individual and societal levels, in line with Foucault’s works and theories, this research critically analyses the social and technical practice of accounting within the context of the Real Liceo, especially the nature, roles, uses, and impacts of accounting information in allocating resources and evaluating accountability. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
accountability; accounting; control; Education; governance; Tuscany

Dombrowsky, T.
Independent Thinking in Nursing: An Archaeology of Knowledge Perspective
(2022) The Journal of nursing education, 61 (1), pp. 12-18.

DOI: 10.3928/01484834-20211201-01

Abstract
BACKGROUND: The topic of thinking was not widely discussed in nursing literature until the 1960s. At that time, the nursing process entered nursing literature, and later, in the 1980s, critical thinking began to be examined. Critical thinking had been talked about in fields other than nursing since at least the time of educational philosopher John Dewey.
METHOD: Using Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge as a model, this article explores how and why thinking became an object of nursing discourse.
RESULTS: Modern nursing discourse emphasizes independent thinking in contrast to the discussion of comportment, attitudes, and observation found in the early nursing literature.
CONCLUSION: The emergence of thinking discourse in nursing was a response to changes in health care that began in the period after World War II and although this discourse ostensibly serves to liberate nurses’ thinking, it can actually serve to regulate the thinking of students and nurses. [J Nurs Educ. 2022;61(1):12-18.].

Index Keywords
archeology, human, nursing student, thinking; Archaeology, Humans, Students, Nursing, Thinking

McCormick, W.
Polarities of the Human and Divine: Aquinas and Schmitt on Political Theology
(2022) American Journal of Political Science, 66 (1), pp. 93-105.

DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12608

Abstract
The investigations of Carl Schmitt yielded an influential but partial recovery of the term “political theology.” In this article, I consider Schmitt’s tendentious reduction of political theology to a justifying or legitimizing function. I then turn to Aquinas to demonstrate that Christian political theology also offers robust criticism of political life. After laying out three such standards for criticism, I account for why Christian political theology exhibits this deep ambivalence toward political life. The traditions of political theology, I argue, can be understood as attempts to harmonize polar tensions with those traditions. Whereas thinkers like Schmitt and Foucault emphasize one set of polarities against another, Aquinas effects a genuine synthesis. This synthesis should be the task of political theology. I close with notes toward the renewal of political theology. © 2021, Midwest Political Science Association