Foucault News

Steven Ogden, Political Theology as Transformative Opposition (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

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

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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

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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

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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.

Bruno, F., & Rodríguez, P. M. The Dividual: Digital Practices and Biotechnologies (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

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6 October 2021

Bruno, Fernanda, and Pablo Manolo Rodríguez. “The Dividual: Digital Practices and Biotechnologies.” Theory, Culture & Society, (September 2021).

https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764211029356.

Abstract
This article revisits the concept of the dividual, taking as a starting point Deleuze’s diagnosis about the relevance that dividual practices have gained with the advent of biotechnology and digital culture. Although we agree with this diagnosis, we highlight the intersections between the dividual and the individual both in Modernity and in the present time. The contemporary dividual is in tension with the modern individual, but not as a substitution, division or duplication of the individual. Rather, we state a complex dividual-individual composition, focusing on biotechnologies, digital culture and financial capitalism. Following a Foucauldian approach, we understand this composition as a result of technologies of power and the result of certain modes of subjectivation. In dialogue with Simondon’s theory of individuation, we suggest that the dividual takes part in a new mode of subjectivation which can be named a ‘dividuation’ in the context of technologically mediated experiences.

Keywords
algorithms, biomedicine, digital culture, dividual, mode of subjectivation

Positive Psychology Applied to the Workplace: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

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5 October 2021

McDonald, M., Thi Nguyen, L., Bubna-Litic, D., Nguyen, T.-N., Taylor, G.
Positive Psychology Applied to the Workplace: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
(2021) Journal of Humanistic Psychology

DOI: 10.1177/00221678211029400

Abstract
An ever-expanding literature now exists critiquing the theory and philosophy of positive psychology, however, research has yet to provide a critical analysis of its practical application. The current study extends on these critiques by exploring how positive psychology is applied to the workplace by investigating practitioner-based sources including interviews with workplace coaches who use positive psychological interventions and applied published texts. The study draws on Michel Foucault’s concepts of power/knowledge and discourse as a theoretical and methodological framework. Three dominant discourses were identified which illustrate the ways in which positive psychology is applied to the workplace. These include the promotion of its scientific credentials, employing a strength-based approach and using goal-setting and behavioral reinforcement interventions. When applied to the workplace, these discourses psychologize workplace problems, resulting in potentially negative outcomes for employees. However, interviews with some of the workplace coaches indicate they practice a degree of reflexivity, providing a salutary lesson for the science of positive psychology.

Author Keywords
applied positive psychology; discourse; Foucault; humanistic psychology; power/knowledge; workplace

Wimberly, C. The birth of the post-truth era a genealogy of corporate public relations, propaganda, and Trump (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

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4 October 2021

Wimberly, C.
The birth of the post-truth era a genealogy of corporate public relations, propaganda, and Trump
(2021) Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 35 (2), pp. 130-146.

DOI: 10.5325/jspecphil.35.2.0130
Open access

Abstract
In the early twentieth century, the most numerous and well-funded institutions in the United States—corporations—used public relations to make widespread and fundamental changes in the way they constitute and regulate their relations of knowledge with the public. Today, we can see this change reflected in a variety of areas such as journalism, political outreach, social media, and in the claims that we live in “post-truth” society. This article traces practices of corporate truth-telling and knowledge production across three periods I call the personal, the legal, and public relations, which are roughly coincident with the antebellum period, the Gilded Age, and the twentieth century, respectively. In sum, what can be found in corporate propaganda and now broadly across society, is that relations of knowledge have come to be refigured primarily as relations of power, subordinating traditional epistemological concerns like justification and belief in favor of government and control.

Author Keywords
Governmentality; Michel foucault; Power; Produser; Social media

The Archaeology of Foucault update 10: cycling in Wales, work on The Order of Things, Nietzsche and a short trip to Paris

Clare O'Farrell

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3 October 2021

Progressive Geographies

In the last part of the summer I was able to make some good progress on this manuscript. In late August and early September I had two-week writing and cycling break in Wales. The weather was good until the last day, and I got to do quite a lot of cycling, of which the highlight was Rhayader to Aberystwyth and back on the mountain road. I also did a lot of work on this book manuscript.

Much of the work was with the chapter on The Order of Things. I now have a fairly complete discussion of the book, the 1965 Brazil course where Foucault lectured on his manuscript in progress, and on some of the responses to the book particularly from Sartre and the relation Foucault had to structuralism. I also have short parts on some related material – the TV discussions with Badiou and others; the…

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Michael C. Behrent, The True Foucault (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

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3 October 2021

Michael C. Behrent, The True Foucault Dissent Magazine, September 30, 2021
The issues most important to Michel Foucault have moved from the margins to become major preoccupations of political life. But what did Foucault actually teach?,

Suddenly, it seems, everyone has a lot to say about Michel Foucault. And much of it isn’t pretty. After enjoying a decades-long run as an all-purpose reference point in the humanities and social sciences, the French philosopher has come in for a reevaluation by both the right and the left.

The right, of course, has long blamed Foucault for licensing an array of left-wing pathologies. Some conservatives have even made Foucault a catchall scapegoat for ills ranging from slacker nihilism to woke totalitarianism. But a strange new respect is emerging for Foucault in some precincts on the right. Conservatives have flirted with the notion that Foucault’s hostility to confessional politics could make him a useful shield against “social justice warriors.” This presumption was strengthened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Foucault’s critique of “biopolitics”—his term for the political significance assumed by public-health and medical issues in modern times—provided a handy weapon for attacking liberal fealty to scientific expertise.

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Newman, S. Power, Freedom and Obedience in Foucault and La Boétie: Voluntary Servitude as the Problem of Government (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

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2 October 2021

Newman, S.
Power, Freedom and Obedience in Foucault and La Boétie: Voluntary Servitude as the Problem of Government Theory, Culture and Society, (2021).

DOI: 10.1177/02632764211024333
Open access

Abstract
I investigate the contemporary problem of obedience through an exploration of Michel Foucault and Étienne de La Boétie, showing how the former drew on the latter’s concept of voluntary servitude as a way of thinking through the paradoxical relationship between power, freedom and subjectivity. My argument is that Foucault’s theory of government as the ‘conduct of conduct’ may be understood as a reflection on the question of voluntary servitude. My aim here is twofold. First, it is to show that obedience is an ethical and political problem just as relevant today as it was in La Boétie’s time. Secondly, it is to suggest that voluntary servitude should be interpreted in an emancipatory way, as a problematic that reveals the ontological primacy of freedom and the fragility and instability of power. ‘Voluntary inservitude’ is something that can be expressed in acts of civil disobedience, and alternate modes of ethical conduct and association. © The Author(s) 2021.

Author Keywords
Foucault; freedom; government; La Boétie; voluntary servitude