Foucault News

Adriany, V., Newberry, J. Neuroscience and the construction of a new child in early childhood education in Indonesia: A neoliberal legacy (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

21 March 2021

Adriany, V., Newberry, J.
Neuroscience and the construction of a new child in early childhood education in Indonesia: A neoliberal legacy
(2021) Current Sociology.

DOI: 10.1177/0011392120985875

Abstract
Neuroscience has become a new ‘truth’ in early childhood education across the globe, including in Indonesia. This article aims to demonstrate how the alignment of neuroscience discourse and the legacy of neoliberalism constructs a new form of childhood in Indonesia. The conceptual framework of brain science, predicated on biological determinism, suggests that the brain will significantly influence not only children’s development in the present but also will have an impact in the future. Neuroscience is also based on the idea of transparency. Beneath this conceptual framework lies the idea that a child’s mind can be made visible through both technological means and standardized development measures. Global neoliberal discourse reinforces this techno-scientific approach through the concept that stimulating children’s development facilitates economic growth in a country. This instrumental use of child development contrasts with the paradigm which emphasizes children’s agency. This article is based on ongoing and previous fieldwork from both authors. Using Foucault’s concept of discourse and disciplinary power, the authors argue that neuroscience has become the truth that hides societal issues such as poverty as well as becomes a form of surveillance that constructs a child as being open to the adult gaze and surveillance. The findings will also illuminate the tension and negotiation between local values and global values in assembling a new form of childhood in Indonesia. © The Author(s) 2021.

Author Keywords
childhood; children; discourse; neoliberalism; Neuroscience

Kim, J. Rethinking public administration and the state: a Foucauldian governmentality perspective (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

20 March 2021

Kim, J.
Rethinking public administration and the state: a Foucauldian governmentality perspective
(2021) International Review of Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1080/12294659.2021.1889102

Abstract
Public administration as a field of study (PA) has long suffered from a chronic identity crisis. Against such a background, by adopting Michel Foucault’s governmentality perspective, this paper critically examines the key assumptions and orientations of public administration and its relationship with the state. The basic arguments are that PA’s silence about the nature of the state has led to the chronic identity crisis and that PA has yet to offer a coherent vision for redefining itself in the context of governing the state and for constituting and engaging the citizens, especially in their counter-conducts amid the governing practices of public administration. Based upon such arguments, it proposes to redirect our attention to the exercise of power across the administrative encounters and explores a future direction for rethinking administrative practices. © 2021 The Korean Association for Public Administration.

Author Keywords
conduct; counter-conduct; governmentality; Public administration; the state

Rethinking the biopolitical: Borders, refugees, mobilities… (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

19 March 2021

Minca, C., Rijke, A., Pallister-Wilkins, P., Tazzioli, M., Vigneswaran, D., van Houtum, H., van Uden, A.
Rethinking the biopolitical: Borders, refugees, mobilities…
(2021) Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

DOI: 10.1177/2399654420981389

Abstract
This Symposium reflects on the growing relevance of biopolitical perspectives in camps studies, border studies, refugee studies, and in particular in research at the intersection between mobility studies and political geography. The five interventions accordingly engage with questions regarding the use of biopolitics as an analytical framework, but also as a pervasive strategy and governmental tool in Western societies. Through an analysis of several empirical cases – most notably hotspots on the Greek Aegean Island, refugee’s forced hyper mobility in Europe, speech acts connected to the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in Myanmar and the ‘voluntary return’ policies in Europe, and the paper borders created by visa systems – the authors indicate new possible fields of enquiry related to the biopolitical critically inspired by the work of authors such as Giorgio Agamben and Jasbir Puar, while also clearly restating the fundamental importance of Foucault’s original contribution to any biopolitical analytical framework today. © The Author(s) 2021.

Author Keywords
Biopolitics; borders; mobilities; refugees

Archive: Bregham Dalgliesh, Critique as Critical History (2017)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

18 March 2021

Bregham Dalgliesh, Critique as Critical History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Description
This book presents the first sustained articulation of a Foucauldian œuvre. It situates Foucault’s critique within the tradition of Kant’s call for a philosophical archaeology of reason; in parallel, it demonstrates the priority in Foucault’s thought of Nietzsche over Heidegger and the framing of reason against an ontology of power. Bregham Dalgliesh hereby claims that at the heart of the Foucauldian œuvre is the philosophical method of critical history. Its task is to make the will to know that drives thought conscious of itself as a problem, especially the regimes of truth that define our governmentalities. By revealing the contingency of their constituent parts of knowledge, power and ethics, Dalgliesh demonstrates that critical history offers an alternative mode of critique to the hithertofore singular reading of the intellectual heritage of enlightenment, while it fosters an agonistic concept of freedom in respect of our putatively necessary limits.

Author
Bregham Dalgliesh is associate professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He previously taught in Canada, the U.K. and France, where he remains an associate researcher of LASCO (Laboratoire Sens et Compréhension du monde contemporain) at the Institut Mines-Télécom. He has published widely across disciplines, with the task of philosophical critique taken up through an engagement with the multifarious effects of technoscience on the human condition.

Robb L., Deane F. Smart Cities as Panopticon: Highlighting Blockchain’s Potential for Smart Cities Through Competing Narratives (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

17 March 2021

Robb L., Deane F. (2021) Smart Cities as Panopticon: Highlighting Blockchain’s Potential for Smart Cities Through Competing Narratives. In: Wang B.T., Wang C.M. (eds) Automating Cities. Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8670-5_12

Abstract
This chapter argues that the narratives of smart cities demonstrate the potential value of blockchain technologies. Drawing upon competing narratives within the cultural imaginary, both the ‘dream’ of a better city, and the ‘fear’ of an oppressive structure will highlight the need to consider both Bentham and Foucault’s Panopticon. The term ‘panopticon’ is defined and explored within the context of blockchain technology. In doing so three concepts are identified: the enabling nature of a panopticon; the use of a blockchain-enabled-panopticon to encourage human flourishing; and the ability for technology such as this to enhance standards above a basic minimum of the law. This chapter suggests that understanding smart cities, panopticon and blockchain, may allow for a better account for competing narratives of fear that can lead to a deeper understanding of how this technology can be deployed. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021.

Author Keywords
Blockchain; Cultural imaginary; Law and society; Law and technology; Panopticon; Smart cities; Supply chain; Technology

Orsini, G., Smit, S., Farcy, J.-B., Merla, L. Institutional racism within the securitization of migration. The case of family reunification in Belgium (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

16 March 2021

Orsini, G., Smit, S., Farcy, J.-B., Merla, L.
Institutional racism within the securitization of migration. The case of family reunification in Belgium
(2021) Ethnic and Racial Studies.

DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2021.1878249

Abstract
Institutional Racism (IR) in Europe is rarely mentioned in studies of race-based discrimination. Yet, structural racism occurs within most European societies. Due to the increasing securitization of immigration, countries have introduced several (in)formal strategies to exclude foreign populations. Given that, we propose an updated way of conceptualizing IR to uncover contemporary manifestations and practices of structural racist discrimination in a European country. By concentrating on the case of Belgium and, in particular, on family reunification, we first operationalize Agamben’s “state of exception” to show how exceptional measures applying to non-nationals conflict with other constitutional and international legal frameworks. As we discuss, such incompatible legal tools generate space for racist considerations to drive judicial decisions involving non-nationals. Second, in relying on Foucault’s governmentality, we explore migrants’ everyday experience of administrative discrimination–as the same procedures are implemented differently on foreigners of diverse nationalities. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Belgium; governmentality; Institutional racism; multilevel; securitization of migration; state of exception

Qazi, M.H., Javid, C.Z. Educational parlance of equity and inclusivity and students’ gendered national identity constructions in public schools in Islamabad, Pakistan (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

15 March 2021

Qazi, M.H., Javid, C.Z.
Educational parlance of equity and inclusivity and students’ gendered national identity constructions in public schools in Islamabad, Pakistan (2021) International Journal of Inclusive Education.

DOI: 10.1080/13603116.2021.1889051

Abstract
This exploratory qualitative study problematises how Pakistan’s public-school education shapes female identities, employing compulsory school textbooks. Drawing on Foucault’s Discourse Analysis and other selected notions, the study also analyses 12 teachers’ and 424 students’ perspectives on this. The findings highlight Pakistani females’ disproportionate and gendered stereotypical social representations in textbooks, which the teachers further reinforce through teaching/social practices in schools. Discursively constructed, most students identify with these and reproduce them when conceptualising an ideal Pakistani woman. The study also underlines how an education system, apparently promising equity and inclusiveness, can be incredibly exclusive, ‘guiding’ the country’s 50% female population to make homemaking their destiny. This education perpetrates social othering, encourages self-righteousness and privileges men over women. Social ramifications of this education entail exclusion and disempowerment of Pakistani women as a social category. This has serious implications for certain sustainable development goals SDGs, 2030, inter alia. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
gender stereotypes; Gendered identities; identity construction through school education; inclusivity; students’ agency

FOUCAULT AND NON-PHILOSOPHY: permeable boundaries

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

14 March 2021

AGENT SWARM

“To the extent that, in spite of everything, I was an academic, a professor of philosophy, what remained of traditional philosophical discourse disturbed me in the work I had done on madness. There is a lingering Hegelianism there. To exhibit objects as derisory as police reports, internment procedures, and the cries of the mad is not enough to exit from philosophy. For me Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot and Klossowski were ways of exiting from philosophy.

In the violence of Bataille, in the sort of insidious and disturbing softness of Blanchot, in Klossowski’s spirals, there was something that began with philosophy, put it into play and into question, then left it, and returned again…Something like the theory of breaths in Klossowski is connected by God knows how many threads to the entirety of Western philosophy. And then, through the staging, the formulation, the way in which all that functions in Le Baphomet…

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Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference. Online event (2020/21}

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

14 March 2021

Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference 2020/21:
Continental Philosophy and its Histories
Online event
25-27 March 2021
University of Warwick (UK)
(Covid Postponement of WCPC 2020)

Registration

Amo-Agyemang, C. Unmasking resilience as governmentality: towards an Afrocentric epistemology (2021)

Clare O'Farrell

no comments

13 March 2021

Amo-Agyemang, C.
Unmasking resilience as governmentality: towards an Afrocentric epistemology
(2021) International Politics

DOI: 10.1057/s41311-021-00282-8

Abstract
This paper is a discussion of how indigenous Afrocentric epistemologies proffer critiques and alternative to neoliberal discourses of resilience and what differences it makes for the study of International Politics. There has been an epistemological shift in recent times towards resilience as a form of governance aimed at enhancing the agency and adaptive capacity of populations. This has necessitated the mainstreaming and theorisation of local systems of ontology. Importantly, the current emphasis privileges how societies absorb and manage natural exigencies of life. The underlying assumption of this shift in the contemporary critical and policy discourse is that indigenous forms of ‘‘knowledge’’ and indigeneity can enhance the ability of local actors to navigate the uncertainties of a globalised world. I question this assumption by highlighting the fact that the apparent epistemological interest in local ontology is a crisis resolution strategy that has become necessary after the universal neoliberal project faced crisis and rejection. Given this, the promotion of resilience epistemology is meant to extend the reach of global actors into the deep recesses of peripheral systems and to instruct how resistance can be reduced. This makes resilience a technology or strategy of governmentality, a new emerging form of governance agenda. Given that the globalisation crisis for neoliberalism has not abated, the only insurance of Africa will be to formalise and own its ontology of resilience strategies to insulate its populations from external pressures of disruption. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited part of Springer Nature.

Author Keywords
Afrocentricity; Foucault; Governmentality; Indigeneity; Neoliberal governance; Resilience