Foucault News

Michel Foucault, le Covid-19 et le «combat immense et multiple des savoirs» (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

31 May 2021

Jean Zaganiaris, Michel Foucault, le Covid-19 et le «combat immense et multiple des savoirs», iPhilo, 20/05/2021

COMMENTAIRE : La pandémie est l’objet de vives disputes sur ce qui serait médicalement vrai et ce qui relèverait de fakenews. Le philosophe et historien de la littérature Jean Zaganiaris a exhumé pour l’occasion un texte de Michel Foucault dont il révèle toute l’actualité. Sans verser dans le scepticisme, l’auteur de Il faut défendre la société invite à ne pas considérer la fabrique conflictuelle des savoirs comme une lutte entre le jour et la nuit.

[…]
«La généalogie des savoirs […] a à déjouer ce qui au XVIIIe (et d’ailleurs au XIXe et au XXe siècle encore) a été décrit comme étant la lutte de la connaissance contre l’ignorance, de la raison contre les chimères, de l’expérience contre les préjugés, des raisonnements contre l’erreur, etc. Tout cela, qui a été décrit et symbolisé comme la marche du jour dissipant la nuit, c’est ce dont il faut, je crois, se débarrasser : [il faut, en revanche,] percevoir au cours du XVIIIe siècle, au lieu de ce rapport entre jour et nuit, entre connaissance et ignorance, quelque chose de très différent : un immense et multiple combat, non pas donc entre connaissance et ignorance, mais un immense et multiple combat des savoirs les uns contre les autres – des savoirs s’opposant entre eux par leur morphologie propre, par leurs détenteurs ennemis les uns des autres, et par leurs effets de pouvoir intrinsèques».

Michel Foucault, Il faut défendre la société, Cours au collège de France, 1976

[…]

Docteur en Science politique de l’Université de Picardie, enseignant-chercheur à l’Ecole de gouvernance et d’économie de Rabat de 2010 à 2019, Jean Zaganiaris est professeur de philosophie au lycée Descartes de Rabat et appartient à la formation doctorale «Genre, culture, société» de l’Université Hassan II. Il a notamment publié Un printemps de désirs, Représentations des genres dans la littérature et le cinéma marocains à l’heure des Printemps arabes (éd. La Croisée des Chemins, 2014) et Parlez-moi de Littérature, pour un autre regard sur le champ littéraire marocain (éd. Marsam, 2017).

Vanessa Codaccioni, La société de vigilance. Auto-surveillance, délation et haines sécuritaires (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

30 May 2021

Vanessa Codaccioni, La société de vigilance. Auto-surveillance, délation et haines sécuritaires, Editions textuel, 2021

Injonctions sécuritaires et obéissance citoyenne
Partout dans le monde, les populations sont incitées à se mobiliser pour assurer leur propre sécurité et celle de leur pays. Partout, les appels à la vigilance et à la responsabilité individuelle se multiplient, tandis que les États s’appuient de plus en plus sur les citoyennes et les citoyens pour surveiller, réprimer et punir. Au travail, sur internet, dans la rue, à l’école, au sein de la famille.
Prolongeant ses travaux sur la répression, Vanessa Codaccioni retrace l’avènement de ce phénomène. Elle montre comment de nombreux dispositifs tendent à utiliser les populations à des fins sécuritaires, à impulser des comportements policiers, espions ou guerriers en leur sein et à institutionnaliser la surveillance mutuelle et la délation. Ces injonctions sécuritaires visent à obtenir l’obéissance citoyenne et à légitimer la répression.

Weiss, R. Stoicism and its telos: insights from Michel Foucault (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

29 May 2021

Weiss, R.
Stoicism and its telos: insights from Michel Foucault
(2020) Metaphilosophy, 51 (2-3), pp. 335-354.

DOI: 10.1111/meta.12419

Abstract
This essay concerns the disputed nature of the telos in Stoicism and argues that Michel Foucault’s description of the Stoic telos plausibly constitutes an accurate characterization, despite the frequent criticism it has received and the fact that it apparently neglects the important role of nature or physics in Stoicism. To advance this claim, the essay draws upon a neglected set of observations made by Foucault in The Hermeneutics of the Subject, in which the telos is characterized in terms of the elimination of stultitia, or “indecision.” Once we analyze indecision and its causes from the perspective of physics, we can see that indecision is incompatible with the Stoic telos as standardly described, for example as “life in accord with nature.” It can be concluded that the Foucault’s view is not only plausible but is in fact supported by Stoic physics. The essay concludes with a discussion of some possible objections. © 2020 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Author Keywords
care of the self; consistency; Epictetus; final end; Michel Foucault; Seneca; Stoicism; telos

Foucault quote: On writing books

Clare O'Farrell

3 comments

28 May 2021

‘I don’t write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me’.

Michel Foucault (1994) [1971] ‘Entretien avec Michel Foucault’. In Dits et Ecrits vol II (of 4 volume version). Paris: Gallimard, pp. 157-74. (This passage trans. Clare O’Farrell).

Archive: Interview with Gary Gutting (2016?)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

28 May 2021

The best books on Foucault recommended by Gary Gutting, Interview by Charles J. Styles. Fivebooks.
Editor: There is no date on this interview

Could you start by saying a bit about who Michel Foucault was?

Well, at the beginning of my Very Short Introduction, I pose this question and give Foucault’s own answer from his The Archaeology of Knowledge: “Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.” I think, in fact, that for an intellectual like Foucault, the most important story of his life is the story of the books he wrote.

That story begins—after some initial existentialist stutters that didn’t turn into his true voice—with his great History of Madness, which was followed by a difficult and under-appreciated study of the origin of modern medicine (The Birth of the Clinic). Next, he made his name with The Order of Things, a remarkably ambitious and erudite effort both to rewrite the intellectual history of the West from the 18th to the 20th century and to provide a new way (“archaeology”) to write the history of thought. (The Archaeology of Knowledge, which I just quoted, was a difficult meta-commentary on this new method.) Of these earlier works, the book on madness is the one that I think will best reward most readers coming to Foucault. It’s much more readable than The Order of Things, and far more relevant to Foucault’s later and most influential work on the relation of knowledge and power. The abridged version (translated as Madness and Civilization, with the cuts approved by Foucault) will do well enough if you don’t have the time or patience for the complete text, which runs over 700 pages. This group of books comprises what is often called Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ period, devoted to unearthing the deep structures of past epistemes (roughly: conceptual frameworks).

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BBC Radio 4 Analysis. Podcast on Foucault (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

27 May 2021

BBC Radio 4 Analysis. Podcast on Foucault. ‘What the Foucault?’ Shahidha Bari explores the influence of Michel Foucault in Britain. (2021)

Released On: 24 May 2021, Available for over a year

Last December Liz Truss made a speech. The Minister for Women and Equalities spoke about her memories of being at school in Leeds. She was taught about sexism and racism, she said, but not enough time was spent on being taught how to read and write. “These ideas,” said Truss, “have their roots in post-modernist philosophy – pioneered by Foucault – that put societal power structures and labels ahead of individuals and their endeavours.”

So do Foucault’s ideas pose a real danger to social and cultural life in Britain? Or is he a “bogeyman” deployed by some politicians to divide and distract us from real issues?

In this edition of Analysis, writer and academic Shahidha Bari tries to make sense of Foucault’s influence in the UK – and asks whether his ideas really do have an effect on Britain today.

Producer: Ant Adeane
Editor: Jasper Corbett

Contributors:

Agnes Poirier, journalist and author of Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris, 1940-50

Michael Drolet, Senior Research Fellow in the History of Political Thought, Worcester College, University of Oxford

Lisa Downing, Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Birmingham

Richard Whatmore, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the Institute of Intellectual History

Matthew Goodwin, Professor of Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent

Clare Chambers, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge

Charlotte Riley, Lecturer in Twentieth-Century British History at the University of Southampton

Review: How a California acid trip made Michel Foucault a neoliberal (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

26 May 2021

Review: How a California acid trip made Michel Foucault a neoliberal
by Jonathan Russell Clark, Los Angeles Times. 24 May 2021

Review of The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution By Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora, Verso, 2021

In 1978 and 1979, the French philosopher Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures on neoliberalism, the set of economic doctrines focused on free market enterprise, limited government and individual autonomy. Foucault wasn’t interested in the nitty-gritty of actual governing. “I have not studied and do not want to study,” he announced in the first lecture, “the development of real governmental practice.” Rather, he was interested in “the art of government.”

A book based on these lectures, “The Birth of Biopolitics,” wouldn’t be published in English until 2008, smack dab in the middle of a historic financial crisis clearly caused by neoliberalism. It was, for his legacy, unfortunate timing. Foucault’s dalliance with the dominant ideology challenged his saintly academic reputation, and numerous articles attempted to defend him against his own late-life transformation. But the consequences were clear, whatever small part he played: Not long after his lectures, Thatcher and Reagan unleashed neoliberalism on the world, and we are still picking through the rubble today.

[…]

Press release from the Centre Michel Foucault on Guy Sorman’s account of Foucault in Tunisia (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

25 May 2021

Editor: This press release along with many other items relating to Foucault’s stay in Tunisia from 1966 to 1968 can be found in the select bibliography I posted yesterday.

Press release on the Centre Michel Foucault site in Paris

PDF in French

Translations into other languages

English
Italian
Portuguese
Spanish
German

Geoff Shullenberger, How We Forgot Foucault by (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

25 May 2021

Geoff Shullenberger, How We Forgot Foucault, American Affairs, Vol V no.2, Summer 2021

Late last year, British trade minister Liz Truss caused a stir with a speech that pinned the failures of the British education system on “postmodernist philosophy,” which, she said, “puts societal power structures and labels ahead of individuals and their endeavours.” Due to the influence of such views, she went on, students learn about racism and sexism rather than being taught to read and write, and are instilled with a relativistic denial of objective truth. The progenitor of this baleful worldview, Truss told her audience, was the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

Truss’s rant seemed to embarrass the UK’s Conservative government, which removed the transcript from its website. But it’s unclear why it was seen as so scandalous: it was merely a variant of a story told time and again in recent decades by conservatives and centrist liberals alike across the anglophone world. According to this narrative, a cluster of ideas originating in continental Europe, especially France, has invaded educational institutions and undermined the values of Western culture and the pursuit of objective scientific truth. Under the sway of this “postmodern” worldview, we are told, students learn to fault the West for the sins of racism, sexism, and colonialism, and to embrace both moral and epistemological relativism.

[…]

Michel Foucault in Tunisia: A select bibliography (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

2 comments

24 May 2021

Michel Foucault in Tunisia: A select bibliography

Editor: In light of a number of stories that have been circulating in the media and more broadly online in recent weeks, I have put together a select bibliography relating to Foucault’s time in Tunisia from 1966 to 1968, with a view to making accurate information widely available.

The link to the bibliography can also be found on the Bibliographies page on Foucault News.

I wish to thank all the researchers who have helped in compiling this bibliography.