Foucault News

Anthropology News website. 2019. “How to Spark Joy by Tidying Up Your Thesis.” May 20, 2019.
DOI: 10.1111/AN.1174
Open access

Before we can begin revising your thesis, you must make the decision that you want to revise it. Once you make that step, this process will only need to happen one time, because then you will be working on a well-organized paper, and you will want to keep it well organized. But you should not jump in and just start tidying. Instead, take some time to imagine the life you will have after your thesis is done.
[..]
Then, go through the list one by one and ask yourself if each theorist sparks joy. For example, if Foucault no longer sparks joy for you, take a moment to thank him for his service in helping to get your thinking to the point where it is now, and then let him go.
[…]

Isaev, I., Kornev, A., Lipen, S., Zenin, S.
The “machine of power” and aspects of political balance
(2020) Quaestio Rossica, 8 (3), pp. 979-992.

DOI: 10.15826/qr.2020.3.507

Abstract
This article explores the historical pattern of the evolution of power technologies. The methodological basis relies on the philosophical movements of the twentieth century (phenomenology, structuralism, etc.) and works by P. Bourdieu, C. Lefort, N. Luhmann, D. Naisbitt, P. Sloterdijk, M. Foucault, O. Spann, F. G. Jünger, N. Elias, and a number of other authors. The creation of technologies for managing society and complex power mechanisms (“power machines”) are a general pattern of social development. The notion of dynamic power balance acts as a mandatory attribute of the management of society and focuses political activity on the constant consideration of numerous phenomena, circumstances, and interests. The state, as the main instrument of political management, seeks to constantly strengthen its power both within and without, and to spread it ever more to new spheres of social relations and territories. But over time, first in the sphere of international law, universal principles are recognised that establish the limits of power and assume the impossibility of strengthening the power of any one state (the idea of political balance of sovereign national states). In domestic politics, the increasing degree of agreement and gradually developing mechanisms of consensus contribute to the reduction of the role played by direct violence and the emergence of a system of institutions that were perceived as legitimate. Previous spontaneous processes and collisions of opposing forces are translated into technical, organisational, normative language – and political dynamics – into static social structures. Chaos and uncertainty are replaced by ideas about the desired ideal and order. The new “power machine” also receives a new justification that is no longer transcendent, but rather rational and technological. Constantly improving and becoming more complex, the “power machine” becomes ever more effective. The “technical” regularities of the organisation and functioning of political power, which determine the new social role of the “power machine”, come to the fore. The state, which is organised into a mechanism with supreme political power and absolute authority, has a decisive influence on the development of society. The transition from a dynastic to a bureaucratic state depersonalises the “power machine”. The figure of a monarch with absolute power dissolves in the hierarchy of numerous officials vested with power. The organisation of power to a large extent separates carriers or subjects of power from their decisions. There is no visible mechanism of power and subordination and the opposite interests of the ruling and the governed. Further, in the twentieth-century industrial revolutions, the “power machine” is forced to adapt to new social realities, i. e. to “network” relations where communication and connections between people and their groups become fundamental. This leads to the creation of new management structures with a plurality of centres. © 2020 Ural Federal University. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Apparatus of power; Machine of power; Power; Sovereignty; State; Technology of power

Ogáyar, S.R. De cuerpos subjetivados e imágenes artistizadas: La lógica biopolítica de la historia del arte (2020) Boletin de Arte, (41), pp. 219-226.

DOI: 10.24310/BoLArte.2020.v41i.8007

Resumen
En su escrito Sobre las ruinas del museo, Douglas Crimp planteó la necesidad de abrir un capítulo olvidado por parte de la crítica hacia las entrañas de la modernidad. Foucault había diseccionado buena parte de los saberes e instituciones del nuevo teatro epistemológico, pero una disciplina evitó su operación quirúrgica: la historia del arte. Concebida como una histórica secuencia de paradigmas interrelacionados o como un saber científico y puramente taxonómico, la historia del arte funciona como el artefacto discursivo que produce y legitima una nueva verdad para las imágenes. Por ello, el texto aboga por la necesidad de repensar la disciplina como hermana contemporánea de dispositivos disciplinarios como la criminalidad, la enfermedad o la sexualidad, con el fin de integrarla en el nuevo régimen somatopolítico de las imágenes y en el epicentro de las nuevas técnicas de poder.

Palabras clave:
Historia del arte, disciplina, epistemología, biopolítica, imagen

Subjetive bodies and artistic images: The biopolitical logic of art history

Abstract
In his essay On the ruins of the museum, Douglas Crimp proposed the need for critics to open a forgotten chapter about the entrails of modernity. Foucault had dissected much of the knowledge and institutions of the new epistemological theatre, but one discipline had avoided his surgical procedure: art history. Conceived as a historical sequence of interrelated paradigms or as a scientific and purely taxonomic knowledge, art history functions as the discursive artifact that produces and legitimizes a new truth for images. Therefore, the text presents the synthesis of a series of hypotheses that encourage us to rethink the discipline as a modern kinswoman of disciplinary devices such as crime, mental disease or sexuality in order to integrate it into the new somatic-political regime of images and the epicenter of the new power techniques. © 2020 Universidad de Malaga, Departamento de Historia del Arte. All rights reserved.

Author Keywords
Art History; Biopolitics; Discipline; Epistemology; Image