Foucault News

Palma Carvajal, J.F. Advocacy NGOs and the neoliberal manufacture of the street voice (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

24 February 2021

Palma Carvajal, J.F. Advocacy NGOs and the neoliberal manufacture of the street voice (2021) Journal of Education Policy.

DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2021.1875266

Abstract
In the previous decades there has been an unprecedented proliferation of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working in different policy fields. In hand with this process of ‘NGOisation’, there has been a growing academic debate regarding the role of NGOs in terms of their influence promoting or resisting the expansion of neoliberalism. For some, NGOs are organisations that have become domesticated by neoliberalism, aiding the spread of its influence around the world; while for others, there are still some NGOs that remain critical and attempt to challenge neoliberalism. Engaging with this debate, this article critically explores the role of two advocacy NGOs involved in processes of education policymaking during the recent education reforms carried out in Chile. Drawing on Foucault’s theoretical work on governmentality, the research investigates the extent to which these NGOs contest Chilean neoliberalism or conversely, as subjects of governmentality, serve to protect and extend its hegemony. Finally, the article argues that NGOs can use their image as representatives of civil society to pacify demands for radical changes and allow the government to control the social sphere from a distance. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
civil society; governmentality; neoliberalism; NGOs; policymaking

Håkanson, L. The death of the Uppsala school: Towards a discourse-based paradigm? (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

23 February 2021

Håkanson, L. The death of the Uppsala school: Towards a discourse-based paradigm? (2021) Journal of International Business Studies

DOI: 10.1057/s41267-020-00392-0

Abstract
The key elements of the Uppsala school paradigm of the internationalization process of the firm are the historical context to which it applies and the micro-foundations that shape firm internationalization. Technological, institutional, and political developments of recent decades have fundamentally changed both the context of international business activities and the managerial practices that guide firm behavior. Consequent revisions of the model shifted its focus from ‘internationalization’ to ‘evolution’ in firms more generally, thereby undermining its relevance and paradigmatic status. This calls for a new conceptual basis and a ‘paradigm shift’ in research on the internationalization process of the firm. To promote this endeavor, this Counterpoint advocates the explicit adoption of historical perspectives, such as that of the original Uppsala studies, and methodologies, especially ‘archeological’ discourse analysis, as originally developed by Michel Foucault. Its aim is to understand the process of knowledge creation in specific societal contexts. Combined with social constructivist approaches to the sociology of knowledge, it could fruitfully be applied to the analysis of the formation and content of beliefs and practices regarding the efficacy of different internationalization strategies, as they have evolved in business firms and other relevant epistemic communities, such as those of professional experts or industries. © 2021, Academy of International Business.

Author Keywords
discourse analysis; historical method; internationalization theories and foreign market entry theories; Uppsala model

Thomas Macho and Sascha Rashof, Alone with oneself: solitude as cultural technique (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

22 February 2021

Thomas Macho and Sascha Rashof, Alone with oneself: solitude as cultural technique (2021) Angelaki – Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 26 (1), pp. 9-21.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2021.1863587

Abstract
The essay examines solitude not as fate, sacrifice or passion, but as an experience that is actively initiated, that is perceived ambivalently, sometimes painfully, but also sensually, and that functions as context as well as occasion for the practice of cultural techniques–talking (to oneself), reading, writing, drawing or painting. Solitude techniques are analysed as “technologies of the self” (Michel Foucault) and “techniques of the body” (Marcel Mauss), as strategies for self-perception and “internal policy” (Paul Valéry). The history of these self-techniques as solitude techniques is unfolded using examples from Stoic philosophy and early Christian theology. An emphasis is placed on self-doubling or splitting techniques: those who are alone with themselves also see themselves as more or less resilient objects that can be strengthened against the influences of other voices and people. Among the techniques of solitude is, above all, the quest for suitable places that are often–desert, sea, mountain peak, etc.–characterised not only by being devoid of humans, but also by a kind of uniformity. In this way, they resemble writing or drawing surfaces on which meanings can be brought to light through sketches or graphic characters. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
cultural techniques; places of solitude; self-perception; Stoicism

Call for Abstracts: Feminist Takes on Post-Truth Politics. Special Issue Philosophy and Social Criticism (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

21 February 2021

Call for Abstracts: Feminist Takes on Post-Truth Politics
Special Issue Philosophy and Social Criticism

PDF of Call for Abstracts Feminist Takes on Post Truth

This volume solicits essays that address the politics of (post-)truth as a distinctive matter of concern for feminist philosophy.

Post-truth, both as a political phenomenon and an emergent discourse, has not yet been extensively addressed from feminist points of view. As a political phenomenon, post-truth represents a crisis of democratic legitimacy and democratic norms, the disruption of trust in shared governance, and the unspooling of a shared world. As a discourse, post-truth is deployed to both describe and construct reality: on the one hand, it has become shorthand for the dissolution of political norms of truth; on the other hand, it is weaponized as a way of furthering that dissolution by making claims to truth or reality less and less legible.

Our concern is that citizens in a post-truth world have lost access to a shared political community and are led to dis-invest from caring about a common world. Feminist theory can re-orient us toward action in the world: by recognizing “what we’re up against” (Ahmed), it ‘stays with the trouble’ (Haraway), even, or especially, in light of a rising sense of civic nihilism and despair. As feminists and democratic theorists, we affirm the need for a shared reality, but we also acknowledge the necessity in democratic politics for ongoing, agonistic, challenge to the regime of the given, in order to build a genuinely common world. Given the realist, materialist, pragmatist, antagonistic, and public presuppositions/dimensions of feminist theory, feminist politics attends critically to what is and how it is failing us, rather than to abstract, normative ideals of what could be. Because feminist theorists recognize the ways in which overlapping systems of oppression intersect, feminist theory provides unique analytical resources that would better enable democratic theorists to understand and combat the phenomenon.

This volume will explore the embodiment of truth in truth-tellers and in material practices and will highlight the dual values of contesting the given order and striving to create a common world. Given the ways in which post-truth undermines the conditions for democratic thinking and action and diminishes practices of truth-telling, it seems crucial that feminist philosophers address both the phenomena and discourses of post-truth in order to take up the crisis, catastrophe, and possibilities of contemporary reality. We anticipate contributions from multiple perspectives including those of decolonial studies, democratic theory, critical phenomenology, and new materialism, and making use of figures as varied as Arendt, Foucault, Rancière, Mouffe, Latour, Haraway, Ahmed, Guenther, Brown, Honig, Hill Collins, Zerilli, among others.

This special issue will be keyed into resources that emerge from the continental feminism literature and will be attentive to the institutional and democratic contexts in which post-truth emerges.

Among the questions we ask here:

Does (political/feminist/democratic) truth require or assume a shared reality? How can there be a common ‘ground on which we stand’ if the ground itself is open to contestation?

How can democratic political practices and institutions sustain a sense of a ‘shared reality,’ while allowing for contestation and plurality? (How) do publicity, materialism, and truth-telling act as interlocking constraints on, or worldly conditions of, the role of truth in democracy?

How can feminist theory engage with post-truth discourses which appropriate the arguments of emancipatory movements that have previously been excluded from the public conversation? Do post-truth challenges to democracy stand on the same footing as emancipatory movements that expand the political?

How does post-truth bring us face to face with core assumptions about how democracy works and the standing of truth within? How does it undercut emancipatory and democratic politics? How does it highlight tensions between deliberative and antagonistic views of democracy?

Given democratic contestation, is there an inevitability of post-truth within a democratic context? Will democratic truth always present itself as a field of battle? Must we understand post-truth as a (necessary or inevitable) feature of democratisation?

How do epistemic and political authority establish both truth and post-truth? How are norms such as ‘rationality’, ‘publicness’ or ‘truth’ used as (exclusionary) political techniques? What counts as true and who counts as a truth-teller?

How does feminist theory’s insight into the widening of what is considered political, (exemplified by the slogan ‘the personal is political’) give it unique insight into post-truth culture?

What are the repercussions of rendering the status of truth perpetually embattled and insecure? How does post-truth politics further the anti-democratic project of delegitimization and distrust and creates a spiral of dissolving public reality?

How is post-truth (discourse or politics) used as a weapon of white supremacy and/or of patriarchal hierarchy/misogyny?

(How) can feminist politics help us move beyond/out of post-truth politics? (How) can feminist theory contribute to a recovery of democratic truth?

We welcome both theoretical and praxis-oriented approaches to these questions.

Submission Timeline and Expectations
• Abstracts with provisional title should be 500-750 words and submitted in either .doc or .pdf
• Please include in your email your name and university affiliation
• Deadline for Abstracts is April 15, 2021
• Authors will be notified whether they are invited to submit full papers for peer-review by May 15, 2021.
• Papers (no longer than 5000 words) will be due by November 15, 2021

Abstracts should be sent to Special Issue Editors Catherine Koekoek (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Emily Zakin (Miami University) at feministposttruth@gmail.com

Carozzi, G. Hope and responsibility: embracing different types of knowledge whilst generating my own living-educational-theory (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

21 February 2021

Carozzi, G. Hope and responsibility: embracing different types of knowledge whilst generating my own living-educational-theory
(2021) Educational Action Research

DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2021.1880458

Abstract
For Foucault, discourses shape people’s knowledge and inform how they act in a society. Power over others is legitimated by dominant discourses, a means through which hegemony discloses itself: a given group is entitled to oppress another. As a parent-educator based in Italy, I see such discourses manifesting themselves in actions and speeches. As a researcher, I also perceive the power of the dominant discourse promoted by the Western academies, which excludes many diverse knowledge systems present in the world. Using personally-orientated action research, in my living-educational-theory enquiry I aim to make a more aware contribution in the socio-historical and socio-cultural context I live in. I therefore clarify which values inform my way of being, and I analyse how much I’ve been influenced by dominant discourses which go against the values I hold. It is my responsibility to respect and absorb different types of knowledge, recognising the other as significant. In this, I’m led by a sense of hope: while acting against dominant discourses, I, and others, are making use of our social imaginations. In my hometown a community of authentic learners is forming. In it, we seek to convert ‘power-over’ to ‘power-with’ as we generate educational knowledge together. © 2021 Educational Action Research.

Author Keywords
dominant discourses; Hope; living Theory; ontological values; responsibility

Daniele Lorenzini, The normativity of biopolitics (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 February 2021

Registration link

Soleymanjahan, I., Maleki, N., Weisi, H. The real America: Representation of American society in Jack Kerouac’s on the road based on Michel Foucault’s notions of institutions, normalization, and surveillance (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 February 2021

Soleymanjahan, I., Maleki, N., Weisi, H. The real America: Representation of American society in Jack Kerouac’s on the road based on Michel Foucault’s notions of institutions, normalization, and surveillance (2020) Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 28 (4), pp. 2913-2927.

DOI: 10.47836/PJSSH.28.4.23

Abstract
This study aimed to scrutinize and analyze the novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac in the light of the political theory of Michel Foucault. The focus, however, would be specifically on the concepts of normalization, institutions and surveillance put forward in his book Discipline and Punish (1995), coupled with some other works that wrestle with the close links of power, society, and institutions. This research seeked to describe the real America in the 1950s, a decade that witnessed both conformism and radicality, represented in the novel. The study pointed out that the novel was a depiction of the American society in the 1950s in which distinct, overlapping institutions did a great deal in restricting the freedom of individuals who seeked liberation and authenticity. The American government draws on the power of the law, police, prison, academia, family, and different other overlapping and satellite institutions, working hand in hand to create a matrix. The concept of matrix, therefore, highlights the nexus through which the normalization and conformity of the individuals are guaranteed, leading to the creation of perfect institutionalized men who are reduced to the level of simpletons. The whole novel becomes the story of some men who advocate abnormality as their credo to live a free life. Quite the contrary, they are transitioned into meek and docile bodies whose identity hinges on being like others in fitting in and following the norms through different dominant fragmenting institutions. © Universiti Putra Malaysia Press

Author Keywords
Abnormality; Foucault; Freedom; Institutions; Normalization; On the road; Representation; Surveillance

Joseph Zajda, Discourse analysis as a qualitative methodology (2020)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 February 2021

Joseph Zajda, Discourse analysis as a qualitative methodology
(2020) Educational Practice and Theory, 42 (2), pp. 5-21.
https://doi.org/10.7459/ept/42.2.02

Abstract
The article analyses the term discourse and discourse analysis with reference to Foucault and other critics. Foucault used the role of discourses in wider social processes of legitimating power, and emphasizing the construction of current truths. The article argues that discourse analysis, as employed by Foucault, concentrated on analysing power relationships in society, as expressed through language and social practices. The article examines the use of genealogy, where Foucault attempted to trace the beginnings of internalised moral behaviour, or a reflexive relation to the self in human beings. Examples are presented of various approaches to discourse analysis, including deconstruction and preferred reading and interpretation of the text. The article concludes with the evaluation of discourse analysis as a qualitative methodology. © 2020 James Nicholas Publishers.

Author Keywords
Discourse; Discourse analysis; Foucault; Genealogy; Identity; Ideology; Power

Remigiusz Ryziński. Foucault in Warsaw (June 2021)

Clare O'Farrell

1 comment

17 February 2021

Remigiusz Ryziński. Foucault in Warsaw, Open Letter Books (Forthcoming, June 2021)

The previously untold story of the plot to kick Michel Foucault out of Poland in the 1950s

In 1958, Michel Foucault arrived in Poland to work on his thesis—a work that eventually came to be published as The History of Madness. While he was there, he became involved with a number of members of the gay community, including a certain “Jurek,” who eventually lead the secret police directly to Foucault’s hotel room, causing his subsequent exit from Poland. That boy’s motivations and true identity were hidden among secret police documents for decades, until Remigiusz Ryziński stumbled upon the right report and uncovered the truth about the whole situation.

Nominated for the Nike Literary Award, Foucault in Warsaw reconstructs a vibrant, engaging picture of gay life in Poland under communism—from the joys found in secret nightclubs, to the fears of not knowing who was a secret informant.

About the Author: Remigiusz Ryziński is a philosopher, cultural critic, writer, and academic lecturer who works on gender and queer theory; he has published three academic books. He is a graduate of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and has also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. He has received grants from the French government, the Robert Schuman Polish Foundation, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, and the city of Warsaw. Foucault in Warsaw is his literary nonfiction debut.

About the Translator: Sean Gasper Bye is a translator of Polish fiction, reportage, and drama. He has published translations of Watercolours by Lidia Ostałowska, History of a Disappearance by Filip Springer, The King of Warsaw by Szczepan Twardoch, and Ellis Island: A People’s History by Małgorzata Szejnert. He is a winner of the 2016 Asymptote Close Approximations Prize, a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts translation fellow, and former Literature and Humanities Curator at the Polish Cultural Institute New York.

Pele, Antonio, and Stephen Riley. For a Right to Health Beyond Biopolitics: The Politics of Pandemic and the ‘Politics of Life.’

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 February 2021

Pele, Antonio, and Stephen Riley. “For a Right to Health Beyond Biopolitics: The Politics of Pandemic and the ‘Politics of Life.’” Law, Culture and the Humanities, (February 2021).
DOI: 10.1177/1743872120978201
Open access

Abstract
We argue, drawing on the work of Didier Fassin, that the right to health can be understood as an essential part of a radical politics of life. Since the right to health implies fostering the well-being of individuals in a way that is structural, progressive and non-discriminatory, the right not only problematises the ‘governmentality’ approach to power but allows push-back against statist and market discourses through a specific phenomenology of right. The discourse of rights – like the pandemic itself – oscillates between general and particular in a way that makes normative responses unstable. Nonetheless it is this dialectic that is characteristic of human rights discourse and allows a right to health to be the proper response to pandemic without it being subsumed within neoliberal logic. A politics of life is a multi-focussed analysis of life, health and society potentially resisting the appropriation of biological life by neoliberalism.

Keywords
Biopolitics, COVID-19, Fassin, Foucault, Health, Human Rights, Pandemic, Politics of Life