Foucault News

Marcelo Hoffman, seminar on Militant Acts: The Role of Investigations in Radical Political Struggles (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

20 April 2021

The Foucault Circle NL/BE invites you to join
Professor Marcelo Hoffman for a talk on his latest book
Date: April 26 2021
Time: 16:00 – 18:00 Central European Time
Location: Online (Zoom link shared upon registration)
Registration via this form on Google forms

Marcelo Hoffman, Militant Acts: The Role of Investigations in Radical Political Struggles In this book, Foucault’s work on investigations in the early seventies is highlighted.

Professor Hoffman is also the author of Foucault and Power: The Influence of Political Engagement on Theories of Power (Bloomsbury, 2014).

The event will take place on Zoom and will be moderated by Dr. Guilel Treiber (RIPPLE, KU Leuven). The event will be in English.

You are kindly asked to register via the following Google Forms link: https://forms.gle/pranjwSdkRLMtjGu6. For any question or inquiry please use our mail: foucaultcirclenlbe@gmail.com

Brendon Murphy, Against wellbeing: The problem of resources, metrics and care of the self (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 April 2021

Murphy, Brendon. “Against wellbeing: The problem of resources, metrics and care of the self.” Alternative Law Journal (2021). Published 8 April 2021

10.1177/1037969X211007580

Abstract
This article critically engages with the concept and practice of ‘wellbeing’. Over the last decade, managerial practices have broadly introduced ‘wellbeing’ policies into the workplace, including the legal workplace. While these practices, in principle, can offer important forms of support for staff under professional stress, they can also be counterproductive, and have the effect of escalating stress and isolation. Drawing on Foucault, this article turns wellbeing on its head and identifies the dark side of what has become a widely practised form of control. It concludes by advocating for employee dialogue and genuine care rather than responsibilising employees for systemic failings.

Keywords
Foucault, wellbeing, social theory, criminal justice, industrial relations

Byung-Chul Han, The Tiredness Virus (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 April 2021

Byung-Chul Han, The Tiredness Virus. The Nation, April 12, 2021
Covid-19 has driven us into a collective fatigue.

Covid-19 is a mirror that reflects back to us the crises in our society. It renders more visible the pathological symptoms that already existed before the pandemic. One of these symptoms is tiredness. We all somehow feel very tired. This is a fundamental tiredness that accompanies us everywhere and all the time, like our own shadows. During the pandemic we have felt even more tired. The idleness imposed on us during lockdown has made us tired. Some people claim that we might rediscover the beauty of leisure, that life might decelerate. In fact, time during the pandemic is ruled not by leisure and deceleration but by tiredness and depression.

Why do we feel so tired? Today, tiredness seems to be a global phenomenon. Ten years ago, I published a book, The Burnout Society, in which I described tiredness as an illness afflicting the neoliberal achievement society. The tiredness experienced during the pandemic has forced me to think about the subject again.
[…]

The neoliberal achievement society makes exploitation possible even without domination. The disciplinary society with its commandments and prohibitions, as analyzed by Michel Foucault in his Discipline and Punish, does not describe today’s achievement society. The achievement society exploits freedom itself. Self-exploitation is more efficient than exploitation by others because it goes hand in hand with a feeling of freedom.
[…]

Byung-Chul Han is a Korean-born German philosopher. His most recent book, Capitalism and the Death Drive, is published by Polity. A professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin, Han’s books include The Burnout Society, The Expulsion of the Other, and The Disappearance of Rituals. The Guardian has described him as “a wunderkind of a newly resurgent and unprecedentedly readable German philosophy,” and El País has called him “the most widely read living German philosopher in the world.”

Michel Foucault and the Social Contract, Chris Watkin with Stuart Elden and Mark Kelly – video of Monash discussion, 13 April 2021

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 April 2021

Progressive Geographies

Michel Foucault and the Social Contract, Chris Watkin with Stuart Elden and Mark Kelly – video of Monash discussion, 13 April 2021. Youtube video above, also available as a podcast.

My talk was entitled ‘The Yoke of Law and the Lustre of Glory’; Mark’s ‘Social Contract as Norm’.

Internationally renowned Foucault scholars Stuart Elden (Warwick University, UK) and Mark Kelly (Western Sydney University, Australia) discuss Michel Foucault’s relationship to the modern social contract idea. Followed by questions and discussion.
The seminar took place on 13 April 2021, and was hosted by Christopher Watkin (Monash University, Australia), as part of the Australian Research Council funded Future Fellowship project “Rewriting the Social Contract: Technology, Ecology, Extremism”.
To find out more about the Social Contract Research Network, please visit https://www.monash.edu/arts/languages…
Subscribe to the Social Contract Research Podcast at https://anchor.fm/social-contract-res…
Abstracts:
Stuart Elden (Warwick University), ‘The Yoke of Law and the…

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Falch, L.A., A career open to the talents—Nurses’ doing and focus during the history (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 April 2021

Falch, L.A.
A career open to the talents—Nurses’ doing and focus during the history
(2021) Nursing Philosophy, 22 (1).

DOI: 10.1111/nup.12336

Abstract
Based on a historical and a contemporary fieldwork at a Danish hospital, this article offers a genealogical and philosophical exploration of the development of nurses’ doing and focus within a hospital setting from the 1800 s to the present day. This exploration finds that nurses’ doing has changed during history, which is reflected in their focus. Thus, nurses’ focus has developed from, what the Danish philosopher Uffe Juul Jensen refers to as a situation-oriented, to a disease-oriented practice, and while new values are established, the conception of care as a core value in nursing seems to have receded. This article also argues that today’s nurses are doing what doctors did in the 19th century. The French philosopher Michel Foucault discusses how things repeat themselves in new ways and new contexts. The nursing profession has become ‘a career open to the talents’ where nurses with the appropriate skills and talents are able to build a career, within which they provide status, position and legitimacy. The conclusion of the article discusses the significance of this development for patients and the nursing profession. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Author Keywords
genealogy; ideas in nursing; nursing practice; nursing profession; philosophy; values in nursing

D. Lemus-Delgado, China and the battle to win the scientific narrative about the origin of COVID-19 (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

17 April 2021

D. Lemus-Delgado,
China and the battle to win the scientific narrative about the origin of COVID-19
(2020) Journal of Science Communication, 19 (5), pp. 1-16.

DOI: 10.22323/2.19050206

Abstract
The emergence of COVID-19 represented a critical problem for the legitimacy and prestige of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese authorities had to fight not only to contain the spread of the virus but also to create a favorable public opinion about how they managed the crisis. Based on Foucault’s approach to the “Regime of Truth”, this article analyzes the narrative surrounding the origin of the virus and how science was employed to lend it legitimacy. The article concludes by reviewing how the idea of science as a truth knowledge is used to construct a particular viewpoint, one focused on legitimizing the outbreak containment measures taken by the Chinese government. © 2020

Author Keywords
Public perception of science and technology; Representations of science and technology; Science and media

S.A. Chambers, Subject positions and seriality in The Good Wife (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 April 2021

Chambers, S.A.
Subject positions and seriality in the good wife, In
Hudelet, Ariane, and Anne Crémieux, eds. Exploring Seriality on Screen: Audiovisual Narratives in Film and Television. Routledge, 2020., pp. 233-258.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003044772-17

Abstract
This chapter explores the cultural politics of the US network drama The Good Wife (2009-2016). By reading the idea of “the good wife” through Michel Foucault’s understanding of subject positions, the chapter considers the extent to which the initial setup and development of the series make possible a subtle exploration of norms, subjectivity, and agency, ultimately staging a powerful subversion of certain dominant norms of gender and sexuality. Anchoring this analysis is the central role of the unique and intentional seriality of the show, manifest in both the fundamental idea of “the good wife” as subject position and in a variety of explicit techniques used by the showrunners. © 2021 Taylor & Francis.

Makarychev, A., Romashko, T. Precarious Sovereignty in a Post-liberal Europe: The COVID-19 Emergency in Estonia and Finland (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 April 2021

Makarychev, A., Romashko, T.
Precarious Sovereignty in a Post-liberal Europe: The COVID-19 Emergency in Estonia and Finland
(2021) Chinese Political Science Review, 6 (1), pp. 63-85.

DOI: 10.1007/s41111-020-00165-y

Abstract
The paper addresses a puzzle resulting from the current global state of alert: the coronavirus pandemic brought us back to the world of the allegedly sovereign nation states with borders and national governments in charge, yet in fact, this retrieved sovereignty looks very vulnerable and precarious. We explain this controversy through a triad of concepts—sovereignty, governmentality, and post-liberalism—that we apply to an analysis of a corona-imposed state of emergency in Estonia and Finland. Based on comparative case study research, we posit that sovereignty is precarious in post-liberalism due to its large dependence on the technologies of responsibilization and agency. From a biopolitical perspective, a major point in the anti-crisis management is to convince people to sacrifice personal liberties for the sake of public safety. These issues of governmentality will be dealt with based on critical discourse analysis and media analysis in Estonia and Finland. © 2020, Fudan University.

Author Keywords
Agamben; Coronavirus; Estonia; Finland; Foucault; Governmentality; Precarious sovereignty; Responsibilization; Smooth governance

Merve Emre, The Repressive Politics of Emotional Intelligence. (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

14 April 2021

The Repressive Politics of Emotional Intelligence.
By Merve Emre, The New Yorker, April 12, 2021

Daniel Goleman’s pop-psychology blockbuster, now twenty-five years old, turned self-control into a corporate management tool.
[…]
It is a vision of personal freedom achieved, paradoxically, through constant self-regulation. “Emotional Intelligence” imagines a world constituted of little more than a series of civil interactions between employer and employee, husband and wife, friend and neighbor. People are linked by nothing more than, as Foucault summarized, the “instinct, sentiment, and sympathy” that underwrite their mutual success and their shared “repugnance for the misfortune of individuals” who cannot get a grip on their inner lives.
[…]

The Will to Synthesis: Nietzsche, Carnap and the Continental-Analytic Gap (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

13 April 2021

Moreira, F.G.A.
The Will to Synthesis: Nietzsche, Carnap and the Continental-Analytic Gap
(2020) Nietzsche-Studien, 49 (1), pp. 150-170.

DOI: 10.1515/nietzstu-2020-0007

Abstract
This essay presupposes that Friedrich Nietzsche and Rudolf Carnap champion contrasting reactions to the fact that, throughout history, persons have been engaged in metaphysical disputes. Nietzsche embraces a libertarian reaction that is in agreement with his anti-democratic aristocratic political views, whereas Carnap endorses an egalitarian reaction aligned with his democratic and socialist political views. After characterizing these reactions, the essay argues for two claims. The first claim is that the stated contrasting reactions are to be considered, not only by the few scholars who are interested both in Nietzsche’s and Carnap’s writings, but by a far larger group that includes those who have addressed the continental-analytic gap; those who are concerned with the development of contemporary philosophy; and/or those who are interested in the writings of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, David Lewis and/or Peter van Inwagen. The second claim is that we have to entertain a synthesis of Nietzsche’s libertarian and Carnap’s egalitarian reaction in order to overcome the continental-analytic gap. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2020.

Author Keywords
Carnap; Continental-analytic gap; Metaphysical disputes; Synthesis