Foucault News

Kobylin, I.
The invisible hand of history: Governmentality, the providential machine, and historical materialism
(2021) Logos (Russian Federation), 31 (4), pp. 247-265.

DOI: 10.22394/0869-5377-2021-4-247-263

Abstract
The article is devoted to one aspect of the genealogy of Soviet governmentality. Michel Foucault, who elaborated the original theory of different types of govern-mentality, rejected the idea that socialism could arrive at its own practices of man-agement. From his point of view, real socialism ties into the already existing police and liberal versions of governmentality. The “police-administrative” aspect of politics in socialist countries is well known, but its liberal component is only beginning to be systematically studied. In the theoretical canon, a revolutionary project nevertheless comes close to a liberal one: the Marxist criticism of bourgeois political economy shared the same epistemes with it. Some interpreters assume that this com-monality also extends to concepts of history, that both Marxism and liberalism see economic rationality as a driving force in the historical process. Economic govern-mentality can be interpreted not only as a peculiar, historically determined disposi-tion of power but also as a principle —both ontological and epistemological — that governs history itself.

That interpretation was disputed by the most prominent Marxist philosophers. In particular, Walter Benjamin and Louis Althusser criticized social-democratic “econ-omism” and “progressism” as they rehabilitated the key concepts of sovereign pol-icy. “Intervention,” “state of exception,” “the exception becoming the rule” — all these concepts refer not to regulation by policing practices but precisely to the model of sovereign decision. Any such revival of sovereignty in liberation politics is certainly problematic, especially when both sovereignty and governmentality belong to the same “providential machine” of theological “oikonomia” as recent studies by Giorgio Agam-ben have made clear. The article points out the paradoxes in suspension of the “laws of history” by the sovereign using the example of the debate among Soviet historians (which was studied in depth by Andrey Yurganov) about the true nature of the Russian late medieval state. In conclusion, the author analyzes Antonio Negri’s concept of constituent power as a force that can suspend the operation of the providential machine. © 2021, Gaidar Institute Press. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Economy; Governmentality; Historical materialism; Providential machine; Sovereignty; State of exception

Testini, F.
Genealogical Solutions to the Problem of Critical Distance: Political Theory, Contextualism and the case of Punishment in Transitional Scenarios
(2021) Res Publica

DOI: 10.1007/s11158-021-09515-2

Abstract
In this paper, I argue that one approach to normative political theory, namely contextualism, can benefit from a specific kind of historical inquiry, namely genealogy, because the latter provides a solution to a deep-seated problem for the former. This problem consists in a lack of critical distance and originates from the justificatory role that contextualist approaches attribute to contextual facts. I compare two approaches to genealogical reconstruction, namely the historiographical method pioneered by Foucault and the hybrid method of pragmatic genealogy as practiced by Bernard Williams, arguing that they both ensure an increase in critical distance while preserving contextualism’s distinctiveness. I also show, however, that only the latter provides normative action-guidance and can thus assist the contextualist theorist in the crucial task of discerning how far certain contextual facts deserve their justificatory role. I prove this point by showing how a pragmatic genealogy of the practice of punishment can inform the contextualist’s reflection about the role this practice should play in a transitional scenario, i.e. in the set of circumstances societies go through in the aftermath of large-scale violence and human rights violations. © 2021, The Author(s).

Author Keywords
Contextualism; Genealogy; Methodology; Political theory; Punishment; Transitional justice

Beugnet, M., Delanoë-Brun, E.
Raw becomings: Bodies, discipline and control in Julia Ducornau’s Grave
(2021) French Screen Studies, 21 (3), pp. 204-223.

DOI: 10.1080/26438941.2021.1920705

Abstract
Julia Ducournau’s Grave (2018) takes place within the confines of an isolated veterinary school, where humans and animals coexist as part of a highly codified environment. Against the backdrop of the school’s methodical and ritualised social regulation, disruptive bodily transformations take place, blurring the biological and behavioural categories that traditionally define species-based identities. Grave presents us with two irreconcilable yet complementary concepts of the body: one that is subject to the scientific pursuit of categorising, normalising and disciplining already in evidence in the proto-cinematic project of decomposing movement, and another corporeality based on fluidity and exchange, recalling Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming. Following the stylistic conventions of a French horror cinema that foregrounds the materiality of the image, bodies, in Grave, appear as markers of subjection, adaptation or resistance to strategies of disciplining and normalisation. However, the film’s visual and narrative lines of flight, and its open-ended conclusion, raise the question of a move from one disciplining system to another, more diffuse model of control. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
becoming; Body horror; Deleuze and Guattari; Foucault; French horror; Muybridge

Häberlen, J.C.
Heterochronias: reflections on the temporal exceptionality of revolts
(2021) European Review of History, 28 (4), pp. 531-548.

DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2021.1897530

Abstract
Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of Heterotopias, the article explores how we can understand revolts and revolutions as ‘heterochronian’ moments. Revolts turn spaces of ordinary everyday life, streets and squares, factories and universities, into ‘absolutely different’ spaces, at least for a moment. But these are also times that radically differ from normal times. Revolts, the article suggests, fall outside the normalcy of time. As an empirical example, this article explores the urban revolts of 1980–81 in cities such as Zurich, Amsterdam, and, most famously, West Berlin, discussing how activists themselves interpreted their revolts as temporary disruptions for which the moment mattered, no matter the long-term outcomes.

Author Keywords
radical left; squatting; temporality; urban revolts; West Berlin