Foucault News

Paul Rabinow (1944 – 2021)

Clare O'Farrell

12 April 2021

Portrait of Paul M. Rabinow by Saâd A. Tazi, during his Blaise Pascal professorship at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm, Paris.

Christopher Ying, UC Berkeley professor emeritus Paul Rabinow dies at age 76, The Daily Californian, April 11, 2021

Paul Rabinow, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of anthropology and world-renowned anthropologist, died April 6 at the age of 76 in his Berkeley home.

Rabinow spent about 41 years at UC Berkeley between 1978 to 2019, serving as the director of anthropology for the Contemporary Research Collaboratory and as the former director of human practices for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center.
[…]

Rabinow is most well-known for his commentary on the works of French philosopher Michel Foucault, with whom he worked while Foucault was in Berkeley in the early 1980s.

Dennis, M. Technologies of self-cultivation how to improve Stoic self-care apps (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

12 April 2021

Dennis, M.
Technologies of self-cultivation how to improve Stoic self-care apps
(2020) Human Affairs, 30 (4), pp. 549-558.

DOI: 10.1515/humaff-2020-0048

Abstract
Self-care apps are booming. Early iterations of this technology focused on tracking health and fitness routines, but recently some developers have turned their attention to the cultivation of character, basing their conceptual resources on the Hellenistic tradition (Stoic Meditations™, Stoa™, Stoic Mental Health Tracker™). Those familiar with the final writings of Michel Foucault will notice an intriguing coincidence between the development of these products and his claims that the Hellenistic tradition of self-cultivation has much to offer contemporary life. In this article, I explore Foucault’s cryptic remarks on this topic, and argue that today’s self-care developers can improve future products by paying attention to the Hellenistic exercises of self-cultivation he identifies as especially important.

Author Keywords
app-based technology; Foucault; Hellenistic philosophy; self-care

Nasir, M.A. Virtue after Foucault: On refuge and integration in Western Europe (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

11 April 2021

Nasir, M.A.
Virtue after Foucault: On refuge and integration in Western Europe
(2020) European Journal of Political Theory

DOI: 10.1177/1474885120964794

Abstract
I suggest that virtue ethics can learn from Foucault’s critical observations on biopolitics and governmentality, which identify how a good cannot be disassociated from power and freedom. I chart a way through which virtue ethics internalizes this critical point. I argue that this helps address concerns that both virtue ethics and the critical scholarship inspired by Foucault otherwise ignore. I apply virtue ethics to the contexts of refugee arrival, asylum procedure, and immigrant integration in Western Europe; I then see how Foucault’s critical thought provides a counterpoint to virtue ethics; I finally analyze how incorporating that critique allows virtue ethics to make sense of both the context and the stakes involved. © The Author(s) 2020.

Author Keywords
Asylum; biopolitics; Foucault; integration; MacIntyre; refugee; virtue; virtue ethics

Foucault Studies: Special Issue. Foucault’s History of Sexuality Vol. 4, Confessions of the Flesh (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

10 April 2021

Foucault Studies, Number 29, 9 April 2021
Special Issue: Foucault’s History of Sexuality Vol. 4, Confessions of the Flesh

Editorial
Sverre Raffnsøe, Alain Beaulieu, Barbara Cruikshank, Bregham Dalgliesh, Knut Ove Eliassen, Varena Erlenbusch, Alex Feldman, Marius Gudmand-Høyer, Thomas Götselius, Robert Harvey, Robin Holt, Leonard Richard Lawlor, Daniele Lorenzini, Edward McGushin, Hernan Camilo Pulido Martinez, Giovanni Mascaretti, Johanna Oksala, Clare O’Farrell, Rodrigo Castro Orellana, Eva Bendix Petersen, Alan Rosenberg, Annika Skoglund, Dianna Taylor, Martina Tazzioli

Special Issue: Foucault’s History of Sexuality Vol. 4, Confessions of the Flesh

Confessions of the Flesh – Guest Editors’ Introduction
Agustín Colombo, Edward McGushin
1-5

Foucault’s Concept of Confession
Philippe Büttgen
6-21

Foucault’s Queer Virgins: An Unfinished History in Fragments
Lynne Huffer
22-37

Fascinating Flesh: Revealing the Catholic Foucault
James Bernauer
38-47

Foucault’s Keystone: Confessions of the Flesh
How the Fourth and Final Volume of The History of Sexuality Completes Foucault’s Critique of Modern Western Societies
Bernard E. Harcourt
48-70

What Is a Desiring Man?
Agustín Colombo
71-90

Archive: Jeffrey T. Nealon, Plant Theory: Biopower and Vegetable Life (2015)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

10 April 2021

Jeffrey T. Nealon, Plant Theory: Biopower and Vegetable Life, Stanford University Press, 2015

In our age of ecological disaster, this book joins the growing philosophical literature on vegetable life to ask how our present debates about biopower and animal studies change if we take plants as a linchpin for thinking about biopolitics. Logically enough, the book uses animal studies as a way into the subject, but it does so in unexpected ways. Upending critical approaches of biopolitical regimes, it argues that it is plants rather than animals that are the forgotten and abjected forms of life under humanist biopower. Indeed, biopolitical theory has consistently sidestepped the issue of vegetable life, and more recently, has been outright hostile to it. Provocatively, Jeffrey T. Nealon wonders whether animal studies, which has taken the “inventor” of biopower himself to task for speciesism, has not misread Foucault, thereby managing to extend humanist biopower rather than to curb its reach. Nealon is interested in how and why this is the case. Plant Theory turns to several other thinkers of the high theory generation in an effort to imagine new futures for the ongoing biopolitical debate.

Tudor, R. Facing adversity together: the biopolitics of the community-focussed recovery policies in post-earthquake Canterbury, New Zealand (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

9 April 2021

Tudor, R.
Facing adversity together: the biopolitics of the community-focussed recovery policies in post-earthquake Canterbury, New Zealand
(2020) Critical Policy Studies

DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2020.1842221

Abstract
Community building was a feature of the recovery policies implemented to respond to the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand. This strategy aimed for survivors to manage the disruption of the events by activating and enhancing their community networks. Drawing on Foucault’s and Esposito’s theorizing of biopolitics, community, and immunity, this article provides a close reading of the policies and tools implemented to manage the post-earthquake context. I outline the unacknowledged effects of two intertwined forms of governance. First, populational governance through which communities were guided to take care of themselves within a recovery framework, which prized resilience. Second, therapeutic governance in which vulnerable individuals and groups were offered specialized, therapeutic assistance. I argue, whilst operating at different levels, both forms of governance functioned to re-value the desires, motivations, and actions of survivors in terms of their capacity to contribute to post-earthquake life in Canterbury. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
biopolitics; community; Disaster; exclusion; policy

Kohrs, K. The language of luxury fashion advertising: technology of the self and spectacle (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

8 April 2021

Kohrs, K.
The language of luxury fashion advertising: technology of the self and spectacle
(2020) Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management

DOI: 10.1108/JFMM-02-2020-0029

Abstract
Purpose: Ubiquitous Internet access and social media make visual consumption possibly the most vital characteristic of the experience economy. A cumulative, integrative framework for the analysis of visual artefacts has thus been called for as existing analytical tools and theoretical frameworks (such as semiotics, discourse analysis, content analysis, iconography, rhetoric and so on) each provide in isolation only a restricted perspective. To advance best practice towards shaping brand perception and consumer engagement, this paper provides a crucial analytical tool to uncover the unique and specific characteristics of identitary luxury fashion brand discourse by introducing and applying such an integrative framework.

Design/methodology/approach: A rigorous grounded theory approach was applied to a corpus of primary data, print advertising in Vogue (UK and US) and Vanity Fair (UK). Outcomes were distilled to first principles of meaning-making and aggregated in a framework which also integrates long-existing classics from diverse fields of knowledge to present a broad cumulative perspective for the analysis of visual discursive practice. This paper demonstrates the methodological rigour and validity of the framework, that is, its practical adequacy and explanatory power in uncovering the identitary brand discourse of luxury fashion.

Findings: An application of the integrative framework breaks new ground in uncovering the discreet identitary characteristics of the discursive practice of the luxury brands under investigation, Chanel and Gucci, which can be encapsulated as gendered technology of the confident self (Foucault) and spectacle (Debord), respectively.

Research limitations/implications: To advance theory that illuminates understanding and shaping of brand perception and consumer engagement with luxury fashion brands, the proposed framework is the first to integrate insight from a rigorous analysis of primary data with long-existing classics from salient fields of knowledge. It, thus, provides a broader, more inclusive perspective that elucidates the multifaceted layers of meaning of luxury fashion discourse in a new and comprehensive way which existing approaches with focus on an isolated dimension such as semiotics or nonverbal behaviour and so on would not have been able to reveal.

Practical implications: The inclusive, practicable theoretical framework provides a parsimonious and practical tool that can be applied by non-experts across disciplines to unlock meaning in fashion discourse as a route to shaping brand image and engaging consumers.

Originality/value: The paper provides a new perspective on the communication practice of luxury fashion advertising as the new integrative framework illuminates layers of meaning crucial to understanding the intricacies of identitary brand discourse and to shaping brand perception and engaging consumers. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Author Keywords
Advertising; Experiential marketing; Luxury fashion; Theoretical framework; Visual communication; Visual discourse

Anthias, P., Hoffmann, K. The making of ethnic territories: Governmentality and counter-conducts (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

7 April 2021

Anthias, P., Hoffmann, K.
The making of ethnic territories: Governmentality and counter-conducts
(2021) Geoforum, 119, pp. 218-226.

DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.06.027

Abstract
“Ethnic territories” were a central political technology of colonial rule, which also shaped strategies of anti-colonial resistance in diverse contexts. Today, in former colonies, the making of ethnic territories remains a key site of both governmentality and political struggle.

This Special Issue brings together six ethnographic case studies (from Argentina, Bolivia, Cambodia, DR Congo, Paraguay and Peru) to explore how discourses of ethnicity and territory are combined and deployed in various technologies of government and resistance – from colonial native policies, to land titling programs, to struggles for territorial self-rule and recognition. In this Introduction, we set out an analytical approach to understanding the contemporary nexus between ethnicity, territory and governmentality in postcolonial states. Rather than being the result of “top-down” governmental projects, or forms of resistance “from below”, we explore how “ethnic territories” are created by diverse subjects engaged in situated struggles over categories, recognition and boundaries. Our approach draws on Foucault’s concepts of “governmentality” and “counter-conducts” in order to capture how struggles may simultaneously contest and reproduce dominant ethno-territorial regimes of truth, and how subjects may consciously refuse the “conduct of conduct” of governmentality. We extend this analysis by drawing inspiration from postcolonial and decolonial scholarship to highlight how subaltern actors engage with, appropriate, problematise or refuse governmental interventions in pursuit of their own political projects and visions for self-determination, which may exceed the scope of governmental knowledges. At the same time, we seek to problematise accounts that essentialise ethnic territories as bounded sites of ontological difference and indigenous resistance. Building on recent work by indigenous scholars, we propose an approach that takes seriously subaltern agency and the endurance of alternative ways of being and knowing, while keeping the persistent constraining effects of the colonial nexus between ethnicity, territory and governmentality firmly in view. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Author Keywords
Colonialism; Counter-conduct; Decoloniality; Ethnicity; Governmentality; Indigeneity; Territory

Disciplinary Power and Impression Management in the Trials of the Stansted 15 (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

6 April 2021

Hayes, G., Cammiss, S., Doherty, B.
Disciplinary Power and Impression Management in the Trials of the Stansted 15
(2020) Sociology

DOI: 10.1177/0038038520954318

Abstract
We bring Foucauldian and Goffmanian frameworks into dialogue to show how repressive and disciplinary power operate in the criminal trials of social movement activists. We do so through an ethnographic account of the trials on terrorism-related charges of a group of anti-deportation direct action protesters known as the Stansted 15, complemented by interviews with defendants. We argue that the prosecution of these activists on terrorism-related charges creates conditions of constraint which effectively serve to collapse the space for political and normative challenge, and obliges them to develop impression management strategies internalising and reproducing the court’s expressive regime. We see these trials therefore as a normalising procedure whose goal is not the repressive application of custodial sentences, but rather a disciplinary disarming of radical critique so that leniency can be applied. At stake here, therefore, is the production through trial of the ideal disciplined liberal political subject. © The Author(s) 2020.

Author Keywords
deportation; direct action; disciplinary power; Foucault; Goffman; impression management; protest trial

Archive: I’m Not Like Everybody Else. Biopolitics, Neoliberalism, and American Popular Music (2018)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

5 April 2021

Jeffrey T. Nealon, I’m Not Like Everybody Else. Biopolitics, Neoliberalism, and American Popular Music, University of Nebraska Press, 2018

About the Book
Despite the presence of the Flaming Lips in a commercial for a copier and Iggy Pop’s music in luxury cruise advertisements, Jeffrey T. Nealon argues that popular music has not exactly been co-opted in the American capitalist present. Contemporary neoliberal capitalism has, in fact, found a central organizing use for the values of twentieth-century popular music: being authentic, being your own person, and being free. In short, not being like everybody else.

Through a consideration of the shift in dominant modes of power in the American twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from what Michel Foucault calls a dominant “disciplinary” mode of power to a “biopolitical” mode, Nealon argues that the modes of musical “resistance” need to be completely rethought and that a commitment to musical authenticity or meaning—saying “no” to the mainstream—is no longer primarily where we might look for music to function against the grain.

Rather, it is in the technological revolutions that allow biopolitical subjects to deploy music within an everyday set of practices (MP3 listening on smartphones and iPods, streaming and downloading on the internet, the background music that plays nearly everywhere) that one might find a kind of ambient or ubiquitous answer to the “attention capitalism” that has come to organize neoliberalism in the American present. In short, Nealon stages the final confrontation between “keepin’ it real” and “sellin’ out.”

Jeffrey T. Nealon is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of several books, including Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and Its Intensifications since 1984 and Post-Postmodernism: or, The Cultural Logic of Just-in-Time Capitalism.