Foucault News

Brady, D. The circulatory panopticon: Real names, rail infrastructure and Foucault’s realist turn (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

14 October 2021

Brady, D.
The circulatory panopticon: Real names, rail infrastructure and Foucault’s realist turn
(2021) Political Geography, 90, art. no. 102463

DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102463

Abstract
This article examines the contemporary Chinese rail system as a circulatory panopticon: an apparatus that uses the “natural” movements of the population to render them legible and safe. The panoptic effect of rail space has emerged only recently. The Chinese state’s introduction of the “real-name system” has made a state-legible identity an inextricable part of everyday life, and recent transformations in ticketing and station entry have placed it at the center of mobility practices as well. Synthesizing Foucault’s apparatus of security with Karen Barad’s realist conception of the apparatus, this article examines how the more-than-human elements of the rail system realize a panoptic assemblage out of the movements of passengers. Based on participant observation and interview data, this article examines three key elements of the rail system: the national identity card, the ticket, and the station entrance. Drawing on Barad’s account of diffraction, I analyze how the particular material characteristics of these things both function to realize the circulatory panopticon and also to introduce novel discontinuities and fractures. This paper makes two contributions. First, it argues for a greater attention to the question of reality in Foucault’s thinking: just as the art of government increasingly recognizes and calibrates itself against ‘reality,’ Foucault’s analysis of governmentality becomes increasingly realist. Second, it shows how infrastructure is simultaneously a font of state power and a source of problems for the state—a contradiction deeply relevant in China today. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Author Keywords
China; Citizenship; Infrastructure; Mobility; Panopticon

Meloni, M. The politics of environments before the environment: Biopolitics in the longue durée (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

13 October 2021

Meloni, M.
The politics of environments before the environment: Biopolitics in the longue durée
(2021) Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 88, pp. 334-344.

DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.06.011

Abstract
Our understanding of body–world relations is caught in a curious contradiction. On one side, it is well established that many concepts that describe interaction with the outer world – ‘plasticity’ or ‘metabolism’- or external influences on the body – ‘environment’ or ‘milieu’ – appeared with rise of modern science. On the other side, although premodern science lacked a unifying term for it, an anxious attentiveness to the power of ‘environmental factors’ in shaping physical and moral traits held sway in nearly all medical systems before and alongside modern Europe. In this article, I build on a new historiography on the policing of bodies and environments in medieval times and at the urban scale to problematize Foucault’s claim about biopolitics as a modern phenomenon born in the European eighteenth-century. I look in particular at the collective usage of ancient medicine and manipulation of the milieu based on humoralist notions of corporeal permeability (Hippocrates, Galen, Ibn Sīnā) in the Islamicate and Latin Christendom between the 12th and the 15th century. This longer history has implications also for a richer genealogy of contemporary tropes of plasticity, permeability and environmental determinism beyond usual genealogies that take as a starting point the making of the modern body and EuroAmerican biomedicine. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Author Keywords
Biopolitics; Environment; Foucault; Global history; Humoralism; Public health

Michel Foucault, Binswanger et l’analyse existentielle : Manuscrit inédit (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 October 2021

Michel Foucault, Binswanger et l’analyse existentielle : Manuscrit inédit, Gallimard/ Seuil Hautes Etudes 20 Mai 2021. Edition établie, sous la responsabilité de François Ewald, par Elisabetta Basso

En 1954 paraît en traduction française Le Rêve et l’Existence du psychiatre suisse Ludwig Binswanger, accompagné d’une introduction de Michel Foucault. Le philosophe y annonce un « ouvrage ultérieur » qui « s’efforcera de situer l’analyse existentielle dans le développement de la réflexion contemporaine sur l’homme ». Foucault ne publiera jamais ce livre, mais il en a conservé le manuscrit ici présenté. Il y procède à un examen systématique de la « Daseinsanalyse», la compare aux approches de la psychiatrie, de la psychanalyse et de la phénoménologie, et salue son ambition de comprendre la maladie mentale. Cette démarche l’accompagne dans sa quête de « quelque chose de différent des grilles traditionnelles du regard psychiatrique », d’un « contrepoids » ; pourtant il en souligne déjà les ambiguïtés et les faiblesses, en particulier une dérive vers une spéculation métaphysique qui éloigne de l’« homme concret ».

C’est en réalité à une double déprise que nous assistons : d’abord à l’égard de la psychiatrie, puis, à l’égard de l’analyse existentielle elle-même, qui le conduit bientôt à la perspective radicalement nouvelle de l’Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. La marque de ce travail ne disparaîtra pas pour autant. En 1984, Michel Foucault présente de cette manière son Histoire de la sexualité : « Étudier ainsi, dans leur histoire, des formes d’expérience est un thème qui m’est venu d’un projet plus ancien : celui de faire usage des méthodes de l’analyse existentielle dans le champ de la psychiatrie et dans le domaine de la maladie mentale. »

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) est l’un des plus grand philosophes du XXe siècle. Son œuvre est traduite dans le monde entier.

Elisabetta Basso est spécialiste de la philosophie et de l’histoire de la psychiatrie du XXe siècle, elle est notamment l’auteure de Michel Foucault e la Daseinsanalyse (Milan, Mimesis, 2007). Elle a codirigé le volume collectif Foucault à Münsterlingen (Éd. de l’EHESS) et contribué à l’édition du cours de Michel Foucault Théories et institutions pénales (” Hautes Études “, Seuil/Gallimard/Éd. de l’EHESS, 2015).

Fajardo, C. Mystified alienation: A discussion between Marx, Foucault and Federici (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 October 2021

Fajardo, C.
Mystified alienation: A discussion between Marx, Foucault and Federici (2021) TripleC, 19 (2), pp. 287-300.

DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v19i2.1277
Open access

Abstract
This article explores Karl Marx’s critique of alienation. Specifically, I will argue that the concept of alienation is essential to understand not only how capitalism reproduces itself, but also to find alternatives to a regime of capital valorisation that has become mystified. In order to develop the analytical scope of this critique, I propose to discuss it together with the Foucauldian concept of disciplinary power and with the concept of patriarchal violence that appears in Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch. These two approaches provide a basis for the statement that the Marxist critique of alienation can be complemented and radicalised with the post-structuralist position, and with the feminist critique of capitalism. © 2021, Unified Theory of Information Research Group. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Alienation; Capitalism; Disciplinary power; Karl Marx; Michel Foucault; Patriarchal violence; Silvia Federici

“Michel Foucault psychologue ?” par Philippe Sabot et Elisabetta Basso Maison Européenne des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, 25 novembre 2021, Lille.

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

11 October 2021

“Michel Foucault psychologue ?” par Philippe Sabot et Elisabetta Basso Maison Européenne des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, 25 novembre 2021, Lille, France

“Michel Foucault psychologue ?” par Philippe Sabot et Elisabetta Basso Maison Européenne des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, 25 novembre 2021, Lille.
“Michel Foucault psychologue ?” par Philippe Sabot et Elisabetta Basso
Maison Européenne des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, le jeudi 25 novembre à 18:00

De 1952 à 1955, Michel Foucault est assistant de psychologie à la Faculté des Lettres de Lille. C’est là qu’il rédige un ouvrage sur Ludwig Binswanger (1881-1966) fondateur de l’analyse existentielle. Resté à l’état de manuscrit, il est publié par les soins d’Elisabetta Basso. On prend la mesure de l’intérêt porté par Foucault à la psychiatrie et à la psychologie et de leur importance dans sa formation. Si sa recherche bifurque à partir de 1961 (Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique), on ne saurait négliger la portée de ses travaux antérieurs, parmi lesquels une longue introduction à Le rêve et l’existence de Binswanger (1954). Croisant Freud et Heidegger, Binswanger étudiait l’homme « en situation dans la psychiatrie ». Son projet n’était pas tant d’inventer une nouvelle pratique que de rompre avec « toutes les formes de positivisme psychologique ». Tel était aussi le projet de Michel Foucault à cette époque. Ne pourrait-il pas être réactualisé à l’heure où la psychiatrie est en danger de disparaître ?.

Gratuit. Entrée libre sans réservation
Michel Foucault fut assistant de psychologie à la Faculté de Lille. Il a écrit un livre sur Binswanger, fondateur de l’analyse existentielle et voulait rompre avec «le positivisme psychologique ».

Maison Européenne des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société
2 rue des Canonniers
59800 Lille
Lille-Centre Nord

Neither angels nor heroes: nurse speeches during the COVID-19 pandemic from a Foucauldian perspective (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

10 October 2021

Mendes M, Bordignon JS, Menegat RP, Schneider DG, Vargas MAO, Santos EKAD, Cunha PRD. Neither angels nor heroes: nurse speeches during the COVID-19 pandemic from a Foucauldian perspective. Rev Bras Enferm. 2021 Sep 29;75(suppl 1):e20201329. English, Portuguese. doi: 10.1590/0034-7167-2020-1329. PMID: 34614072.
Open access Link to PDF in English

Abstract
Objective: to analyze the processes of meaning production, based on the speeches of nursing professionals, about how they feel about the titles of “angels and heroes” given by society during the pandemic of COVID-19.

Methods: a qualitative, documentary research. Data was collected in October and November 2020 and analyzed from the perspective of the Discourse Analysis proposed by Michel Foucault.

Results: they were organized into two thematic categories: “Angels and heroes? The (not) heroic reality of nursing during the pandemic” and “The search for recognition of the professional work of nursing: between what is said and what is not said”.

Final considerations: the nurses’ speeches enunciate the search for decent conditions for the execution of care, fair wages, and recognition of the professional work by society.

MeSH terms
COVID-19* Humans Pandemics* Qualitative Research SARS-CoV-2

Steven Ogden, Political Theology as Transformative Opposition (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

9 October 2021

Steven Ogden, Political Theology as Transformative Opposition, Political Theology network, October 7, 2021

The idea of opposition then is not about establishing a negative position for its own sake. Instead, to embody opposition here is to draw a line, and this line constitutes a limit-experience. It as if to say, ‘enough is enough.’ So, this opposition is an ending and a beginning.

This article explores the role political theology has in relation to strongman politics. Using insights from the work of Michel Foucault, I argue that theology has a role to play in embodying opposition to political violence. In particular, I explore the multivalent nature of opposition. Overall, political theology has a critical role in problematizing political violence. It also has a prophetic role in fostering counter-discourses and counter-practices of resistance. These nuances are interrelated.

Resistance takes many forms. In this article, however, I focus on the idea of opposition as representing a particular nuance of resistance. The idea of opposition then is not about establishing a negative position for its own sake. Instead, to embody opposition here is to draw a line, and this line constitutes a limit-experience. It as if to say, ‘enough is enough.’ So, this opposition is an ending and a beginning. As such, this oppositional gesture is inherently transformative. In other words, opposition acts as limit to violence and, in so doing, it prefigures transformative possibilities.

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Michel Foucault, Speaking the Truth about Oneself. Lectures at Victoria University, Toronto, 1982 (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

8 October 2021

Michel Foucault, Speaking the Truth about Oneself Lectures at Victoria University, Toronto, 1982, Chicago University Press (2021)

Edited by Henri-Paul Fruchaud and Daniele Lorenzini
English Edition Established by Daniel Louis Wyche

A collection of Foucault’s lectures that trace the historical formation and contemporary significance of the hermeneutics of the self.

Just before the summer of 1982, French philosopher Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures at Victoria University in Toronto. In these lectures, which were part of his project of writing a genealogy of the modern subject, he is concerned with the care and cultivation of the self, a theme that becomes central to the second, third, and fourth volumes of his History of Sexuality. Throughout his career, Foucault had always been interested in the question of how constellations of knowledge and power produce and shape subjects, and in the last phase of his life, he became especially interested not only in how subjects are formed by these forces, but in how they ethically constitute themselves.

In this lecture series and accompanying seminar, Foucault focuses on antiquity, starting with classical Greece, the early Roman Empire, and concluding with Christian monasticism in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Foucault traces the development of a new kind of verbal practice—“speaking the truth about oneself”—in which the subject increasingly comes to be defined by its inner thoughts and desires. He deemed this new form of “hermeneutical” subjectivity important not just for historical reasons but also due to its enduring significance in modern society. Is another form of the self possible today?

Tampoe-Hautin, V. Empire Seen from Within. Cinema Objects, Spaces and Edifices in the Limelight in Colonial India and Ceylon (1899-1950) (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

8 October 2021

Tampoe-Hautin, V.
Empire Seen from Within. Cinema Objects, Spaces and Edifices in the Limelight in Colonial India and Ceylon (1899-1950) Cahiers Victoriens and Edouardiens, 2021

DOI: 10.4000/CVE.9040
Open access

Abstract
While research on material culture has focused abundantly on objects of everyday life as a way of observing societies and understanding our past, only in recent times has it concerned itself with the study of those related to cinema, one of the ‘more readily consumable forms of entertainment’ (MacKenzie 2), which came out of the late 19th century workshops of the geniuses of the day, Edison, Urban or Lumière. And yet, nowhere is it more relevant to include conventional cinema hardware in scientific research given that in the first instance, cinema as an art, but also an industry with a massive following, came accompanied by a vast array of optical, audio and mechanical devices. Further, it was the Victorians and the Edwardians who bequeathed us the first objects, edifices and spaces of cinema, adding to the iconic and material wealth characteristic of the age. The scope widens further for research when one contemplates the way technical innovations in Europe, first in photography, then in picture animation as well as in printing and reproducing fixed or moving images, contributed eminently to the promotion of Empire within Empire, in what Michel Foucault qualified as a fin de siècle ‘frénésie neuve des images’ (Exhibition catalogue of Gérard Fromanger’s ‘Le desir est partout’, 1975, Leutrat).

I will venture down this less beaten track in what will also be a reverse perspective. I will consider the way the inhabitants, both indigenous and expatriate, of the British colonies in the Indian Ocean (in particular Sri Lanka and India) engaged with cinema objects but also its sites and edifices (auditoriums and studios) which, from their architecture to their interior, also paid tribute to the splendour of Empire. How did objects, equipment and sites manage to secure bioscope a massive and captive market in every nook and cranny of the British Empire and either enhance or bear on the perception of Empire amongst the colonized? I will linger on those cross-cultural encounters of the most serendipitous kind between objects, ideas and individuals converging to bring reels on wheels to the edge of Empire: a WW1 British Army tent, a projector, a rifle and a gramophone hoisted onto a bullock cart, travelling through the jungles of colonial Ceylon, reminiscent of Leonard Woolf’s uncelebrated novels… Finally, although beyond the scope of this volume, the question has at least to be raised of the restoration of these devices, capable of producing images whose rich nuances remain to date unequalled by digital technology. The well-established film industry in South Asia with its high rate of cinema attendance, largely, though not exclusively in view of the gigantic Indian film industry, justifies that these issues be addressed and resolved urgently, both at the level of research as well as relevant authorities.

Author Keywords
British Empire; Ceylon; Cinema heritage; Colonial documentary; Empire Films; Film archives; Film conservation; India; Mobile cinema; Non-film archives

Giorgi Vachnadze, Fighting Bodies: A Genealogy of the Ring (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

7 October 2021

Giorgi Vachnadze, Fighting Bodies: A Genealogy of the Ring, Epoché Philosophy Monthly, Issue #44 September 2021
Open access

The following essay will attempt to trace a genealogy for the institution of professional boxing. Applying Michel Foucault’s method of Archeology and Biopolitical critique, the aim will be to demonstrate several things. First, that boxing has not been constituted as a proper object of connaisance and therefore exhibits the same elusive features as other Foucaultian hybrid-formations like madness and the psychiatric ward. Instead, there is a proliferation of discourses such that each constitutes pugilism in their own way with only a partial convergence of definitions, techniques, maneuvers, strikes, guards, postures, and other discursive and non-discursive formations and social practices. The various techniques of the self will be analyzed at length as a field of possible “moves” within the war-game of boxing; more specifically, a space where various methods of governance crisscross and overlap. A distinction, similar to the one made by Hannah Arendt, between domination (violence in Arendt’s case) and power will show to hold in combat sports as well as in political discourse surrounding it. A testament to the heterogeneous nature of the quasi-object-institution of boxing, will be its own internal ambivalence, as expressed through the writings of the selected 18th and 19th century English fighters. Boxing is at the same time declared to be useful and harmful for the social body, both violent and refined, transgressive and reforming. The training of boxers will play an important role in identifying the disciplinary mechanisms at play, while multiple forms of political propaganda and economic marketing campaigns, both pertaining to the present as well as the 18th century, will prove as evidence for the historical emergence of boxing, including the current state of the sport, as a type of governmentality. Boxing will show to be a sophisticated technique of administering bodies, of making live and letting die. It will be seen that the pugilistic institution, as well as combat sports in general, turn out to be a Neoliberal hub of economic governance. A complete genealogy will not be offered. Instead, the essay will concentrate on 18th century English boxing as a predecessor to combat sports as we witness its rising popularity today. The boxing institution will be used as a case example of the emergence and on-going activity in (neo)liberal governance.