Foucault News

Call For Papers
After The Death Of The Human
Michel Foucault’s 100th Anniversary International Conference
University of Lisbon, Portugal | June 18–19, 2026

Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2025
Notification of acceptance: October 30, 2025

PDF flyer

The centenary of Michel Foucault’s birth offers a timely opportunity to reassess the profound contribution of his philosophy to our understanding of human subjectivity in the interwoven contexts of knowledge, power, ethics, and aesthetics, as these unfold throughout history, culture, and society.

Inspired by Foucault’s oeuvre and its diverse legacies, this conference invites reflection on a fundamental question: What is—and what can become of—humanity after the “death of man”? How does this notion relate to the “death of God,” the rise of biopolitics, and the ongoing erosion of core values such as truth, justice, freedom, equality, solidarity, and peace?

The implications of a post-human critique must be reexamined in light of contemporary global challenges, including the renewal of democratic institutions, the protection of universal human rights, and the pursuit of sustainable development. Engaging with, and perhaps also moving beyond, Foucault’s concepts and methodologies, we aim to better understand our historical condition—one in which the apparent farewell to “humanity” and “human nature” coexists with both the proliferation of nihilisms and the unexpected revival of plural humanisms animated by distinct philosophical stances, including the Enlightenment ideal of the public use of critical reason.

We welcome proposals for individual papers and panel sessions that address Foucault’s philosophical anthropology (or lack thereof) across the full span of his intellectual trajectory. Topics may include, for example, Foucault’s engagements with psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and existential psychology, as well as his readings of Stoicism, Kant, Marx, and Nietzsche. The conference seeks to offer an interdisciplinary forum for exploring Foucault’s diverse “views of man” from multiple perspectives—ethical, aesthetic, political, legal, educational, medical, psychiatric, or criminological—employing his key methodological tools (notably archaeology and genealogy), while remaining open to innovative reinterpretations.

As suggested by the conference title, the thematic scope is broad. Possible areas for contribution include, but are not limited to:

1. Ethics and Aesthetics of the Self
2. Power in Foucault and Emerging Forms of Power (e.g., Algorithmic
Governmentality)
3. Foucault’s Concept of Man and New Anthropologies (e.g., Donna Haraway)
4. Foucault and the Anthropocene
5. Epistemology and Interdisciplinarity in Foucault
6. Knowledge, History, and the Historical A Priori
7. Sexuality, Gender, and Pleasure in Foucault
8. Medicine, Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychopathology
9. Education, Schooling, and Disciplinary Practices
10. Literature, Art, and Cinema in Foucault’s Thought
11. Criminology, Surveillance, and Social Anxiety
12. Critique and Parrhesia
13. Kant’s Enlightenment and Foucault’s Modernity
14. Foucault and Postmodern Critique (e.g., Decolonial and Racial Theories)
15. Foucault and the Question of Realism
16. Foucault Today: Reflections on New Publications and Unpublished Texts

Submission Guidelines
We invite submissions for individual papers and thematically cohesive panels (consisting of 3 or 4 papers). Each submission should include:
• A title, abstract (300–500 words), and 4–5 keywords
• A separate bio-bibliographical note (50–100 words)

Please submit two separate documents (in MS Word or PDF format). Papers may be written in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish. Submissions should be sent to:
Fernando Silva: fernandomsilva@campus.ul.pt
Marita Rainsborough: marita.rainsborough@leuphana.de
Paulo Jesus: paulorenatus@edu.ulisboa.pt

Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2025
Notification of acceptance: October 30, 2025

To ensure broad accessibility, participants presenting in languages other than English are kindly asked to provide at least a partial English version of their paper (e.g., handout or PowerPoint). Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes, followed by discussion. Each panel will include up to four papers.

Participation and attendance are free of charge. Following the conference, we plan to publish a volume featuring selected contributions.

With thanks to Progressive Geographies for this news

Call for Papers
Discipline Filosofiche, XXXVI, 2, 2026: Foucault’s Archaeology: Sources, Questions and Legacy, ed. by Elisabetta Basso and Andrea Cavazzini

In Michel Foucault’s published and unpublished writings, between Naissance de la Clinique (1963) and L’archeologie du savoir (1969), the recurrence of the term “archaeology” marks the centrality of this notion in the period when the philosopher’s research stood out in the “structuralist” intellectual landscape for its binding together of philosophical reflection and historical research.

Following an analogy that Freud applies to psychoanalysis, archaeology emerges as a historiography of the unthought: that is, as an attempt to reconstruct how what from the past arrives to constitute the present in which we live, without ever having been present in the explicit consciousness of historical agents. Archaeology therefore starts from what is given in the present – in Foucault’s work, the objects or practices of knowledge – and traces back the layers of historicity that remain imperceptible to the immediate gaze of those whose actions are shaped through these objects and practices of knowledge.

However, the title of the chair at the Collège de France that Foucault came to hold in 1970 – Histoire des systèmes de pensée – suggests a more traditional history of philosophy or ideas. And from 1970 onwards, Foucault largely abandons “archaeology”, rendering the term somewhat enigmatic and, in any case, not fully explored in its implications.

The hypothesis animating this special issue is that archaeology, far from being reduced to a stylistic device, constitutes a philosophical concept in its own right, whose meanings and possible developments are not limited to Foucault’s direct reference to it in his works. A decisive factor in the reconfiguration of the relationship between philosophy and historiography (which is far from any philosophy of history in which becoming is crushed under the weight of retrospective awareness), archaeology also implies – as Enzo Melandri suggested as early as 1968 (La linea e il circolo) – an intention to recover what remains unexpressed or repressed from the past. While in the historical field, this entails the distinction in principle between res gestae and historia rerum gestarum (between actual events and their appearance in explicit awareness), in the philosophical field the effect of archaeology seems to consist in a therapeutic posture aimed at dissolving the painful “cramps” in the self-consciousness of an epoch or a society.

On the occasion of the centenary of Michel Foucault’s birth and in light of the posthumous publication of numerous unpublished works by the philosopher, this special issue of Discipline Filosofiche aims to offer a reflection on the “archaeological” method in philosophy and the history of thought. With this in mind, contributions addressing the following topics are encouraged:

1) the relationship between archaeology and historiography;
2) Foucauldian archaeology and its sources;
3) the archaeological method and phenomenology;
4) archaeology and psychoanalysis;
5) archaeology and structuralism;
6) archaeology and language analysis;
7) archaeology and archives;
8) archaeology and genealogy;
9) the philosophical legacy of Foucault’s concept of archaeology.

Guidelines for the authors:
Submissions should not exceed 9,000 words including abstract, refer-ences and footnotes. Manuscripts may be submitted in Italian, English, French, German, or Spanish. They must be sent as an email attachment in .doc or .docx format, along with a .pdf version, to Elisabetta Basso (elisabetta.basso@unipv.it) and to Andrea Cavazzini (andreacavazzini78@gmail.com).

Submitted manuscripts will be sent to two independent reviewers, following a double-blind peer review process. The reviewers may ask authors to make changes or improvements to their contributions in view of publication. Authors are kindly requested to attach both an anonymous version of their contribution entitled “Manuscript” and a separate “Cover Page” stating their name, academic affiliation and contact details. Manuscripts must include an English abstract of less than 150 words and 5 keywords. Any property of the file that might identify the author must be removed to ensure anonymity during the review process. A notification of receipt will be issued for each submission. In drafting their text, authors can adopt any clear and coherent style, but should the text be accepted for publication, they will be required to send a final version in keeping with the style guidelines of the journal (please refer to the style guidelines at https://www.disciplinefilosofiche.it/en/norme-redazionali/).

Submission of a manuscript is understood to imply that the paper has not been published before and that it is not being considered for publication by any other journal. Should the manuscript be accepted for publication, the author will be required to transfer copyrights to the University of Bologna. Requests to republish the article may be made to the Editorial Board of the Journal.

Deadline for the submission of manuscripts: June 15, 2026
Notification of acceptance, conditional acceptance, or rejection: August 31, 2026
Deadline for the submission of the final draft: October 15, 2026

CFP-Pisa 2026