Foucault News

Joynt, C., Rosskama, J.
Toward a trans method, or reciprocity as a way of life
(2021) Feminist Media Histories, 7 (1), pp. 11-20.

DOI: 10.1525/fmh.2021.7.1.11

Abstract
It is reductive yet accurate to assert that Chase Joynt and Jules Rosskam first met because they are both trans people who make documentary films. While the alignment of these affinities does not necessarily prefigure a friendship – in fact, many would argue and experience the opposite – they have found kinship in their shared approach to positions as institutionally embedded academics who are also publicly exhibiting artists. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s “Friendship as a Way of Life”(1997) and the cross-disciplinary, conversational theory making of Lisa Duggan and José Munõz, James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, and Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman, they use dialogue to extend the intimate interdisciplinary legacies and potentials of thinkers collaboratively discussing social issues. Together, they ask what might be possible in envisioning, theorizing, and enacting a trans cinematic method-a praxis for artists and scholars alike to be in meaningful, mutually supportive, world-sustaining relationships.

Author Keywords
Collaboration; Dialogue; Filmmakers; Reciprocity; Transgender

van der Drift, M. Management and rights amidst plural worlds
(2021) Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 35 (1), pp. 93-115.

DOI: 10.5325/jspecphil.35.1.0093

Abstract
Sylvia Wynter discusses Eurocentric thought as a closed cognitive order. In this article, Mijke van der Drift interrogates this cognitive closure as a style of thought that is intertwined with institutions. By inverting the attention Foucault gives to the subjects under scrutiny, van der Drift shows that the focus on those that maintain the institution, the managerial class, reveals how power and knowledge confgure this contraction of perception. Van der Drift argues that institutions are central to this process because it offers alignment of purpose and understanding by means of rights and discipline. Consequently, this alignment leads to an indifference to other ways of worlding that Philomena Essed and Isabel Hoving describe as “smug ignorance.” Van der Drift argues that this fnds root in the institution, rather than being a harmful side effect that needs to be addressed. To contrast institutional alignment, the author sketches a pluralist ethics that offers an alternative mode of relationality and collective organization. © 2021 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

Author Keywords
Colonialism; Ethics; Institution; Managerial control; Plural ontology

Davis, D.S., Buffa, D., Rasolondrainy, T., Creswell, E., Anyanwu, C., Ibirogba, A., Randolph, C., Ouarghidi, A., Phelps, L.N., Lahiniriko, F., Chrisostome, Z.M., Manahira, G., Douglass, K.
The aerial panopticon and the ethics of archaeological remote sensing in sacred cultural spaces
(2021) Archaeological Prospection

DOI: 10.1002/arp.1819

Abstract
Remote sensing technology has become a standard tool for archaeological prospecting. Yet the ethical guidelines associated with the use of these technologies are not well established and are even less-often discussed in published literature. With a nearly unobstructed view of large geographic spaces, aerial and spaceborne remote sensing technology creates an asymmetrical power dynamic between observers and the observed. Here, we explore the power dynamics involved with aerial and spaceborne remote sensing, using Foucault’s notion of power and the panopticon. In many other areas of archaeological practice, such power imbalances have been actively confronted by collaborative approaches and community engagement, but remote sensing archaeology has been largely absent from such interventions. We discuss how aerial and spaceborne imagery is perceived by local communities in southwest Madagascar and advocate for a more collaborative approach to remote sensing archaeology that includes local stakeholders and researchers in all levels of data acquisition, analysis, and dissemination. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Author Keywords
community archaeology; ethics; Madagascar; remote sensing; surveillance

Innico, S.
Enacting Statehood in Places of Exception: The Structural Effect of Statehood on Greek Migration Management
(2021) Ethnopolitics

DOI: 10.1080/17449057.2021.1907932

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to outline an analytic perspective on the notion of statehood, state authorities’ performance in situations of exceptionality, and to present some insights from ethnographic research in the context of migration in contemporary Greece. Following Timothy Mitchell’s thesis on the ‘effect of state’, taking into account Giorgio Agamben’s and Michel Foucault’s theories regarding the ‘state of exception’ and ‘exceptionalised institutions’, as well as Erving Goffman’s ‘dramaturgical perspective’ on the studies of social interactions, it is argued that 1. the ongoing cases of illegal and unsanctioned practices carried out by police and army officers in the Greek migration context should be interpreted, first and foremost, as mere practices of statehood enactment; 2. the ‘state of exception’ is not merely a useful spatialised device used by state authorities for mobility-control purposes, but rather an essential trait of statehood enactment itself. In order to reconcile the internal ambiguities inherent in the convoluted ensemble of perceived notions about what ‘a state’ is and how ‘a state’ does what it is supposed to do, it will be argued that, statehood enactment, by its very definition and constitution, frequently requires recurring to an ‘institutionalised state of exception’. From a broader viewpoint, these arguments question some supposedly non-problematic assumptions about the (concrete or abstract) nature of the state, while at the same time proposing an examination of the epistemological status of migranthood.

Roberts, J., Sanderson, P., Seidl, D., Krivokapic, A.
The UK Corporate Governance Code Principle of ‘Comply or Explain’: Understanding Code Compliance as ‘Subjection’ (2020) Abacus

DOI: 10.1111/abac.12208

Abstract
The focus of this paper is on UK Code compliance and the contests and confusions that have surrounded its principle of ‘comply or explain’. In contrast to many agency theory-informed studies, the paper suggests that visible compliance with the Code cannot itself be taken as a reliable proxy for board effectiveness. Instead, drawing upon Foucault’s account of governance as subjection, we argue that, as a form of board accountability, visible compliance can only support the Code’s primary objective of establishing norms which shape the conduct of directors within boards. The contests and confusions as to the meaning of comply or explain are then explored in terms of the challenge regulators have faced, throughout the subsequent life of the Code, in respecting the freedom of action of directors, whilst nevertheless seeking to influence how this is exercised. The paper first explores three key moments in the evolution of the UK Code: the initial Cadbury committee two-page ‘Code of Best Practice’ in 1992, the more prescriptive 2003 post-Enron changes to the UK Combined Code following the Higgs review, and the retreat from such prescription in the 2010 changes to the Code. This is complemented by drawing on qualitative empirical research to describe three very different ‘subject positions’—refusal, cynical distance, and willing embrace—which directors have come to adopt in response to the Code. The paper concludes by pointing to the very different consequences for actual board effectiveness implied by these contrasting, but largely invisible, responses to the Code. © 2020 Accounting Foundation, The University of Sydney

Author Keywords
Board effectiveness; Compliance; Comply or explain; Corporate governance; Foucault; Subjection