Foucault News

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

Clare O'Farrell

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

Alphin, C., Debrix, F. Biopolitics in the ‘Psychic Realm’: Han, Foucault and neoliberal psychopolitics (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

1 October 2021

Alphin, C., Debrix, F. Biopolitics in the ‘Psychic Realm’: Han, Foucault and neoliberal psychopolitics, Philosophy and Social Criticism, (2021).

DOI: 10.1177/01914537211033011

Abstract
This article explores German Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s notion of psychopolitics and his concept of the neoliberal subject. For Han, mental processes are now the primary target of power. This means that, according to Han, biopower must give way to what he calls psychopower since perspectives that critically seek to understand neoliberalism through a biopolitical lens are no longer adequate to contemporary regimes of neoliberal achievement. This article examines and evaluates Han’s argument that Foucauldian biopolitics is obsolete in today’s neoliberal age because of biopolitics’ primary focus on the body over mental processes. We suggest that, instead of emphasizing the need to move beyond biopolitics, Han’s theorization of psychopolitics could benefit from paying closer attention to some of Foucault’s insights on biopower and from identifying key connections between biopolitics and psychopolitics. By highlighting some important continuities between Foucault’s biopolitics and Han’s psychopolitics (instead of emphasizing the discontinuities between both theorists’ perspectives, as Han tends to privilege), this article seeks to move towards improved theorizations of concepts like achievement, subjectivity, otherness or optimization, concepts that are key to Han’s understanding of contemporary neoliberal practices.

Author Keywords
achievement; Big Data; biopolitics; Byung-Chul Han; Michel Foucault; neoliberalism/liberalism; psychopolitics

Archive: Miguel de Beistegui, The Government of Desire. A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

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30 September 2021

Miguel de Beistegui, The Government of Desire. A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject, University of Chicago Press, 2018

Liberalism, Miguel de Beistegui argues in The Government of Desire, is best described as a technique of government directed towards the self, with desire as its central mechanism. Whether as economic interest, sexual drive, or the basic longing for recognition, desire is accepted as a core component of our modern self-identities, and something we ought to cultivate. But this has not been true in all times and all places. For centuries, as far back as late antiquity and early Christianity, philosophers believed that desire was an impulse that needed to be suppressed in order for the good life, whether personal or collective, ethical or political, to flourish. Though we now take it for granted, desire as a constitutive dimension of human nature and a positive force required a radical transformation, which coincided with the emergence of liberalism.

By critically exploring Foucault’s claim that Western civilization is a civilization of desire, de Beistegui crafts a provocative and original genealogy of this shift in thinking. He shows how the relationship between identity, desire, and government has been harnessed and transformed in the modern world, shaping our relations with others and ourselves, and establishing desire as an essential driving force for the constitution of a new and better social order. But is it? The Government of Desire argues that this is precisely what a contemporary politics of resistance must seek to overcome. By questioning the supposed universality of a politics based on recognition and the economic satisfaction of desire, de Beistegui raises the crucial question of how we can manage to be less governed today, and explores contemporary forms of counter-conduct.

Drawing on a host of thinkers from philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis, and concluding with a call for a sovereign and anarchic form of desire, The Government of Desire is a groundbreaking account of our freedom and unfreedom, of what makes us both governed and ungovernable.

Philosophy today: Special section on Miguel De Beistegui, The Government Of Desire: A Genealogy Of The Liberal Subject (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

30 September 2021

Special section: Miguel De Beistegui, The Government Of Desire: A Genealogy Of The Liberal Subject, Philosophy Today: Volume > 65 > Issue: 4, 2021

Vilde Lid Aavitsland, The “Man of Desire” or the “Man of Labor”?: Comments on Miguel de Beistegui’s The Government of Desire

Kevin Thompson, Comments on Miguel De Beistegui’s The Government of Desire: A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject

Miguel de Beistegui, Desire in and Beyond Liberalism: From Normative to Algorithmic and Neuro-power

Patricio Lepe-Carrión, Territorial Control and Subjectivities at Risk: Counter-Conducts for the Intercultural/Developmentalist/Extractivist Dispositive in Chile (1989–2018) (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 September 2021

Patricio Lepe-Carrión (2021) Territorial Control and Subjectivities at Risk: Counter-Conducts for the Intercultural/Developmentalist/Extractivist Dispositive in Chile (1989–2018), Journal of Intercultural Studies, 42:5, 610-626,

DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2021.1971169

ABSTRACT
This article examines intercultural discourses in the Mapuche context of the Araucanía region of Chile, based on the material and enunciative conditions which sustain their circulation. These conditions shape an environment where, over the last 30 years, developmentalist rhetoric has defined the State’s intercultural project. This has criminalized ways of life that oppose extractivism as a model of development. The systematicity of violence continues to reproduce other types of systematicities, such as practices of resistance which adopt the specific form of ‘territorial control’. This article proposes that such practices, or counter-conducts to ethnodevelopment, are political technologies that produce new subjectivities and ways of life. They involve a strong commitment to the ‘truth’ of collective memory for individuals who are exposed to life-threatening or ‘borderline’ experiences caused by a militarized neoliberal rationale.

KEYWORDS:
Interculturality development ethnodevelopment territorial control subjectivation technologies of the self Mapuche extractivism