Foucault News

Cornish, C.
The paradox of BKSB assessments and functional skills: the experiences of ‘disengaged’ youth on an employability course in a further education college (2021) Journal of Further and Higher Education

DOI: 10.1080/0309877X.2021.1945001

Abstract
Self-governance and responsibilisation are integral to Basic Key Skills Builder (BKSB) assessments and Functional Skills qualifications. However, very little is known of its neoliberalist effects and the governance practices of tutors teaching disengaged youth taking Functional Skills as part of the overall employability certificate. Adopting a case study approach within a large further education (FE) college, qualitative research was conducted over two academic years (2013–2015) with tutors and students enrolled on the Level 1 Achieving Skills Course, an employability course designed as a Raising of Participation Age (RPA) re-engagement provision to engage former NEET and disengaged youth in FE.

Drawing on Foucault’s theory of governmentality for analysis, key empirical findings revealed chaos, controversy and contradictions inasmuch as exposing the problematic ways in which course tutors implemented BKSB assessments and Functional Skills. Evidently, BKSB and Functional Skills operated as powerful, governance mechanisms of management ordering students according to their capabilities whilst simultaneously bringing students face-to-face with their individual shortcomings. The paper concludes that although in principle the participants were positioned in a setting which could ideally offer them a through-way from pre-vocational studies to university or apprenticeships, in actual reality this opportunity was not granted for many participants. This was exacerbated by the fact that this qualification held lowered academic status. It is on this basis that I argue for a revamp and restructure of the educational framework so that it integrates and position pre-vocational courses as the first formal rung of qualifications. © 2021 UCU.

Author Keywords
BKSB; disengaged youth; employability; Functional skills; further education; neoliberalism

Dassonneville, G. Foucault, Sartre et “le malheur de la psychologie”: Une histoire des images, II
(2020) Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 82 (1), pp. 141-172.

DOI: 10.2143/TVF.82.1.3287463

Abstract
In the early 1950s, Foucault continued the project of a critique of the foundations of psychology, begun by Politzer at the turn of the 1930s and extended by Sartre in the 1940s with existential psychoanalysis. It is possible to identify a common ground between Sartrean phenomenology and Foucaultian archaeology and the French philosophical psychology inherited from Bergson. The rise of Hegelianism and Marxism in the two post-war periods and the reception of psychoanalysis determine a point of contact where the young Foucault’s reflections on the contradictions of psychology embrace the anthropological question and preserve the trace of Sartre’s readings. An attentive reading of Foucault’s writings in the 1950s, completed by the study of an unpublished document from that period entitled “Phenomenology and Psychology” (1953-1954), makes it possible to discover Foucault’s attempt to constitute a critical method presented as ‘mythology’ and to articulate it with a history of images formulated by French psycho-philosophy. © 2020 by Tijdschrift voor Filosofie. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Criticism of psychology; Existential psycho-analysis; Expression; Foucault; History of images; Mythology; Sartre
Language of Original Document: French

Muhsin, I., Ma’Mun, S., Nuroniyah, W.
Sexual violence in an Islamic higher education institution of Indonesia: A Maqasid al-shariah and Foucauldian perspective
(2021) Samarah, 5 (1), pp. 127-153.

DOI: 10.22373/sjhk.v5i1.9144

Abstract
Sexual violence was prevalent in many settings, including in religious educational institutions. This article analyzed cases of sexual violence at an Islamic higher education institution in West Java, Indonesia, using the maqasid al-shariah and Foucault’s theory of sexuality as the theoretical frameworks. This mixed-method research used Google form’s surveys, in-depth interviews, and observations as the data collection methods. The data were analyzed using a flow model, which comprised selection, display, analysis or discussion, and conclusion. This study showed that verbal and non-verbal sexual violence was rampant. It occurred between student and student, lecturer and staff, staff and staff, and lecturer and student. Four models of sexual violence were found based on the typology designed by Dzeich and Weiner, who categorized thirteen forms of sexual violence. The maqasid al-shariah analysis outlined that sexual violence was against the fundamental values and objectives of sharia and human rights. Additionally, Foucault’s theory identified patriarchal and cultural hegemony aspects in sexual violence. This study’s intriguing part was the findings that combined in-depth interviews, observations, and surveys, intended to understand the intensity of existing cases. On the other hand, the power of analysis was centered on normative fiqh and sociological aspects. According to the literature reviews, these two approaches had not been administered by previous researchers. © 2021 Samarah. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
patriarchy; Human rights; Maqasid al-shariah; Sexual violence

Krce-Ivančić, M. (2021). The Knowledge of Pessimism. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 17(1), 471–490.

Open access

Abstract
Leaving a well-trodden path of conflating pessimism with a favourite pastime of those who take pleasure in coming up with aporetic riddles, the article gives the knowledge of pessimism the attention it deserves. Pessimism endorses us to confront and express our existence without anxiously paying respect to the imperative of progress. The knowledge of pessimism is here for us to express rather than resolve our existence, thus claiming our freedom of thought. The article first outlines pessimism and its commitments. It then proceeds to propose the understanding of suffering as an underlying condition of our existence that allows the self to confront a discourse by which it has been constituted. Finally, showing that the imperative of progress is embedded in grant application forms, the article demonstrates one of the mechanisms by which the knowledge of pessimism is excluded from the contemporary university.

Keywords:
Anxiety, Existence, Freedom, Pessimism, Progress, Suffering

Author Biography
Matko Krce-Ivančić, Most recent affiliation: Department of Sociology, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
Matko Krce-Ivančić has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. His primary interest is in exploring the relation of subjectivity and politics, where power is understood to be constitutive for our subjectivity. Krce-Ivančić’s article ‘Governing Through Anxiety’, in which anxiety is explored using psychoanalytic theory to extend Foucault’s conceptualisation of neoliberal governmentality, is published in Journal for Cultural Research (2018). His chapter ‘Neoliberal Subjectivity at the Political Frontier’, providing a critique of Laclau’s model of emancipation by emphasising the importance of neoliberal subjectivity, is a part of The Late Foucault. Ethical and Political Questions (ed. by Faustino, M. and Ferraro, G.) that is published by Bloomsbury (2020).

Colombo, A.
Inexpérience des Pères : Les Aveux de la chair de Michel Foucault et la formation de l’expérience de la chair (2021) Revue Théologique de Louvain, 52 (1), pp. 43-64.

DOI: 10.2143/RTL.52.1.3289206

Abstract
This article investigates Michel Foucault’s account of « experi ence of the Flesh » based on Foucault’s posthumous Les Aveux de la chair. the 4,h volume of the History of Sexuality dedicated to studying the Church Fathers. On the one hand, the article argues that through the reading of the Church Fathers, in particular Tcrtullian and Cassian. Foucault develops an approach to the experience of the Flesh understood as a temporal and objec tive schema. On the other hand, the article shows that Foucault modifies the historical diagnosis of the formation of the experience of the Flesh after or while he completes Les Aveux de la chair. This modification is led by the idea that the main element of the aforementioned experience is what he calls « the desiring man ». In doing so. Foucault makes Cassian and Saint Augus- tin the cornerstones of the formation of the experience of the Flesh. The articlc examines this modification in order to shed light on Foucault∗s con ceptualisation of the « experience of the Flesh » and bring to attention the limits that this modification imply to the project of the History of Sexuality. © 2021 Universite Catholique de Louvain. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Michel foucault; The confessions of the flesh. experience of the flesh. church fathers. history of sexuality